"Broken by whom?"
"Unknown. The signature was... strange. Familiar but wrong, like someone mimicking a magical style they'd studied but couldn't quite replicate perfectly. Like an artist copying a master's brushwork—technically proficient but lacking the original's essence."
Kaan goes very still beside me, the kind of stillness that screams danger. "Show me."
Kadir produces a piece of parchment covered in sketched runes, his artist's hand capturing the spell work with impressive detail. I don't understand half the symbols—shadow magic has never been my strength—but I watch Kaan's face as he studies the patterns.
His expression darkens. Frost spreads from his fingers across the parchment's edges.
"What?" I demand. "What is it?"
"This technique," Kaan says slowly, his voice carrying a cold fury that makes my skin prickle, "is from the easternterritories. Specifically, from the shadow-weaving traditions of Kara Cehennem. My father's domain."
The revelation hangs heavy in the air. Erlik. Of course it leads back to Erlik.
"But you said the signature was wrong," I press, turning to Kadir. "If this is Erlik's magic, wouldn't you recognize it?"
"I would," Kadir confirms. "Which means either someone learned this technique from him, or..." He trails off, uncomfortable with the implication.
"Or someone is trying to make it look like his work," Kaan finishes. "A false trail. But why?"
"To start a war?" I suggest bitterly. "To divide the courts further? To make us suspect each other while the real enemy moves freely?" I shake my head, exhaustion pulling at me like a physical weight. "It doesn't matter. What matters is finding Banu. If she's not in the Forgotten Grove anymore, where would they take her?"
"That," Kadir says heavily, "is what I couldn't determine. The trail goes cold at the grove's edge. Whoever took her masked their movements well."
Silence settles over the war room, broken only by the faint crackling of frost still spreading across the windows.
"I'll go back," Emir says finally, and there's steel in his voice now, a promise being made. He steps forward from his post by the door, and I realize this is the first time he's spoken since entering the room. But his silence wasn't absence—it was patience. Waiting for the storm between Kaan and me to pass so something useful could be done. His dark eyes meet mine with absolute conviction. "I'll take a larger team this time. Different specialists—more shadow-trackers, blood-readers, even a dream-walker if I can locate one. Someone who can read the echo of what happened there. I will find her, my lady. This I swear to you."
The promise settles something in my chest, loosens the band of panic that's been tightening since Kadir first mentioned the empty containment circle. Emir doesn't make vows lightly. When he gives his word, kingdoms fall or rise on the strength of it. Kadir nods also. "I'll go with him."
"One week," I say, my voice steady now, deadly calm. The kind of calm that comes before the storm.
Kaan's shadows go very still. He knows that tone. Knows what it means when I stop raging and start speaking with ice in my voice.
"Emir and Kadir have one week to go back, to try again with whatever resources they need. Spare no expense. Conscript every shadow-tracker in the realm if you must. Use my authority to access the restricted archives—the sealed texts from before the Great Divide. Someone, somewhere knows what this spell work means and where it leads."
I turn to face Kaan fully now, letting him see the iron in my eyes, the absolute resolve that grief has forged into something unbreakable. "And if they don't find her..."
The unfinished threat hangs between us.
"Then I go myself," I finish quietly. "And you can either help me, or you can try to stop me."
I step closer, close enough that my light magic and his shadows brush against each other in the charged space between us, creating sparks that dance like dying stars. "We both know how that will end."
For a long moment, Kaan says nothing. His black eyes search mine, looking for something—weakness, perhaps, or the woman who used to love him before grief and rage burned everything else away.
He won't find her. She died in a dungeon, bleeding out on cold stone while he made the choice that broke us both.
"One week," he finally agrees, his voice rough with emotions I can't read and don't want to. "But you don't go alone. If it comes to that, I'm going with you."
"Like hell you?—"
"This isn't negotiable, Nesilhan." He leans forward, and I can see the exhaustion in the lines around his eyes, the toll of mutual hatred has taken on him too. "You want to throw yourself into danger to find your friend? Fine. But I'm not losing you too. You can hate me all you want. You can wish me dead, curse my name, refuse to let me touch you—I deserve all of it. But I will not let you die."
The raw honesty in his voice catches me off guard. For a moment—just a brief, traitorous moment—I remember what it felt like before everything shattered. When his obsessive protectiveness felt like love instead of a cage.
Then I remember the choice he made. Our child's life weighed against mine, and he chose me.
