"Unsettled how?"
A pause. "She couldn't eat breakfast. She's been in the library for the past hour with a cup of coffee. Her hands are shaking, sir.And when I asked if she was feeling well, she just...looked at me. Like she'd seen something terrible."
Devyn's blood went cold.
"I'm sure it's nothing," Mrs. Lyme continued, "but after what happened with—" She stopped herself. "I thought you should know."
"You did right." His voice came out sharp. Hard. "I'm on my way."
He ended the call and changed direction, his stride eating up the ground. The helicopter pilot was running final checks when Devyn appeared, and the man took one look at his face and stopped asking questions.
"Home," Devyn said. "Now."
The pilot didn't argue.
THE HELICOPTER LIFTEDoff, banking hard over the forest canopy, and Devyn stared out the window without seeing any of it.
His mind was at the estate. In the library, where his wife sat with shaking hands and haunted eyes. Where something had frightened her badly enough that Mrs. Lyme—unflappable, professional Mrs. Lyme—had broken protocol to call him.
What had Bailey seen?
What had she found?
He thought about the dreams. Abigail's dead face, her bloody hair, her empty eyes. The locked door that all four kings had seen in their sleep, waiting in the darkness beneath his home.
And he thought about Bailey.
His wife.
Hisqueen.
The woman who'd appeared from nowhere, who claimed to know nothing, who looked at him with those violet eyes like she was trying to decide if he was her salvation or her doom.
She was changing him.
He could feel it happening—the way his thoughts drifted to her during meetings, the way his chest tightened when she smiled, the way he'd carried her to bed last night like she was something precious instead of something suspicious. She was working her way under his skin, into his blood, becoming necessary in a way that terrified him.
An obsession.
He'd had obsessions before. They always ended badly—for him or for someone else.
But this was different. This was worse. Because Bailey wasn't just an obsession. She was a weakness. A soft spot in armor he'd spent a decade making impenetrable. And in his world, weaknesses got exploited. Weaknesses got people killed.
The helicopter banked again, and Devyn closed his eyes.
If Abigail were to come back—
The thought surfaced unbidden, cold and sharp as a blade.
If Abigail were still alive. If she walked through his door tomorrow, whole and unharmed, with explanations for everything. If he could go back to the way things were supposed to be—the arranged marriage, the strategic alliance, the queen who made political sense instead of emotional chaos.
Could he give Bailey up?
Could he look at her—his wife, his obsession, the woman who'd somehow become necessary in a matter of days—and tell her it was over? Send her away? Watch her walk out of his life?
For the sake of eliminating weakness. Eliminating softness. Eliminating any vulnerability that enemies could exploit.
Could he do it?
