Read Chapter 16: The Poisoned Words

The corridor outside the crypt was still cold when Anya caught up with Commander Voss. He walked with the clipped, measured pace of a man who had already decided what he would say, and the sight of it made her teeth ache.

“You killed her,” Anya said.

Voss stopped but did not turn. His gauntleted hand rested on the pommel of his sword, and in the torchlight his shadow stretched long and jagged across the flagstones. “I killed a traitor, Your Highness. The healer’s blood was forfeit the moment she laid hands on you with hostile intent.”

“She was about to tell me who hired her.”

Now he turned. His face was unreadable, the face of a man who had learned long ago that expression was a weapon best kept sheathed. “She told you what she wanted you to believe. Fear makes for messy confessions.”

Kael stepped forward, one hand still resting on the hilt of the blade he had drawn in the crypt. “The bolt came from the shadows. You arrived within heartbeats. Either you saw the shooter, or you were close enough to have fired it yourself.”

Voss’s eyes flicked to Kael’s hand, then back to his face. “You are out of line, guardsman.”

“He’s asking what I want to ask,” Anya said. “Did you kill her to silence her?”

A long pause. Somewhere above them, a door slammed and a servant’s voice called out in a distant hallway. Voss’s jaw worked once, twice, and then he spoke in a voice lowered to match the stone around them. “I killed her because she was a loose thread in a tapestry your father has spent fifteen years weaving. You want the truth, Princess? It is not kind, and it is not safe, and it is buried deeper than any crypt you and your pet guard can dig.” He stepped closer, close enough that Anya could smell the steel oil on his armor. “Ask your father about the night your mother died. Ask him why her chambers were sealed before the body was cold. Ask him why Marius was the one who found her, and why he has never once spoken of it since.”

Anya’s breath caught. Marius. Her brother, who had been fourteen when their mother died, who had held her hand at the funeral and promised he would always protect her. Marius, who had visited her every single morning of her curse, who watched her relearn her own name without ever flinching.

“The healer said the same thing,” Kael said quietly. “Before you put a bolt in her chest.”

Voss’s mouth twisted. “Then perhaps you should start asking better questions.” He turned and walked away, his boots echoing down the corridor until he vanished into the dark. Anya stood very still and realized she had been holding her breath.

Kael moved to her side. “Your Highness—“

“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t tell me what I already know. He’s evasive, but he’s not lying, and that’s worse.”

“Worse how?”

“Because it means the truth is real. It means I have to ask my father, and I don’t know if I can trust the answer.”

She turned and walked, not toward her chambers, but toward the east gallery where her father took his evening tea. Kael fell in step beside her, and for a moment she let herself feel the comfort of his presence, the fact that someone in this palace had walked through crypts and shadows for her without being asked.

The gallery was empty.

A servant said the King had retired early with a headache. Another said he had ridden to the west wing. A third said nothing at all and only looked at her boots. Anya stood in the center of the gallery and felt the map of her certainty crumble beneath her feet.

“He’s avoiding me,” she said.

“Or he’s genuinely unwell,” Kael offered.

“Men who rule kingdoms do not become unwell on the same night their daughter discovers the crypt beneath their own castle was built by her dead mother.” She turned sharply. “Marius. Marius will know where he is.”

She found him in the library, seated by the fire with a glass of amber wine and a book he was clearly not reading. He looked up as she entered, and his smile was the same smile he had worn when they were children, warm and open and entirely unguarded. That was what made the healer’s words feel like poison.

“Anya,” he said, rising. “I heard about the healer. Terrible business. Voss should have brought her to the King for proper questioning.”

“Voss killed her.”

Marius’s eyebrows rose. “Killed her? That seems… hasty.”

“Do you know why she was in my chambers?”

He set down his glass. Something flickered behind his eyes, there and gone, too fast for her to name. “I assume she was tending to your condition. She was the court healer. That was her role.”

“Her role,” Anya repeated. “Like Marius’s role is to visit his sister every morning and watch her forget her own name.”

Marius’s face tightened. “That’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not fair. Nothing about this curse is fair. But I need you to be honest with me, Marius. I need to know if you know more than you’ve told me.”

He was quiet for a long moment. The fire crackled. A log shifted and sent sparks up the chimney. And then Marius walked toward her, took her hands in his, and looked at her with an expression so earnest it hurt to witness.

“I have always loved you,” he said. “From the moment you were born, I loved you. And I have watched this curse take you piece by piece, and I have done everything in my power to keep you whole. But I want you to ask yourself something.” He squeezed her hands. “Why does Kael carry a ledger with your history in it? Why does he write down everything you say and do, as if he is the one who owns your story?”

Anya’s heart stuttered. “He records it so I can remember.”

“So you can remember what he chooses to write.” Marius released her hands and stepped back. “I am not accusing him of anything. I am only saying that a man with a secret past is a man with a reason to hold a pen. And you have been trusting him with the only thing that belongs entirely to you.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but Marius had already turned back to his book. “Think on it, sister. That is all I ask.”

Anya left the library with her thoughts in tatters.

She walked without direction, and when she found herself outside Kael’s quarters, she told herself she was only passing through. She told herself she would not stop. She told herself it didn’t matter that the door was slightly ajar.

Her hand was on the knob before she had decided to act.

Inside, the room was sparse: a narrow bed, a wash basin, a chest of clothes. And on the small writing desk by the window, the ledger. The black leather cover was worn smooth at the corners from handling. Her heart hammered as she crossed to it and opened it.

Page after page of her life, written in Kael’s steady hand. The first time she had been caught in the kitchens. The morning she had slipped on the frost and he had caught her. The night she had cried over a memory she couldn’t hold onto.

And then she reached the back.

The last page had been torn out. A ragged edge of paper remained, clinging to the spine, and beneath it, in Kael’s handwriting:

*…too curious for her crown.*

Anya stared at the words. Too curious for her crown. What did that mean? And where was the rest of the page?

She heard footsteps in the corridor, and she closed the ledger just as Kael appeared in the doorway. He looked at her, then at the book, and his face went very still.

“Your Highness,” he said evenly. “I did not expect to find you here.”

Anya lifted the ledger. “What did you tear out, Kael?”

The firelight from the corridor flickered across his face. For a long moment, he said nothing. And then he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

“The truth,” he said. “The one I should have told you the day we met.”