About the queen who smiled through humiliation and won hearts anyway.
About Bailey.
She was becoming visible.
And every report that confirmed it made his jaw tighten another degree.
He shoved back from the desk and walked to the window. Hartford spread out below him—city lights glittering against the dark, a world that didn't know it was being ruled from the shadows. A world that didn't know a killer walked free among them.
The investigation was a dead end. Every lead dried up before it could be followed. Every witness had nothing useful to offer. Amos Karp smiled his too-smooth smile and promised progress while delivering nothing but polished reports full of empty words.
The fox guarding the henhouse.
Devyn's hands curled into fists. He wanted to drag Amos into a room with no windows and no witnesses and get the truth the old way. He wanted to stop playing politics and start breaking bones.
But he couldn't prove anything. Not yet. And moving too soon would tip his hand.
So Amos kept circling. Kept smiling. Kept leading an investigation designed to find nothing. His fists clenched, his knuckles cracking as he imagined Amos circling Bailey, and a memory came to him, unbidden.
The Baron of Greenwhich calling out to him just as Devyn had stepped out of his house, uttering words in a voice that was made hoarse by grief and impotent rage over the murder of his flesh and blood.
“You must find him, Your Majesty. Make him pay. Because I have a feeling...he is out for you, too. So find him...before it is your own queen he takes away next.”
Devyn pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the window.
Bailey.
He could still feel her. That was the problem. Five days away and he could still feel the softness of her skin. The warmth of her breath. The way she'd looked at him after he kissed her—flushed and dazed, her lips parted, her eyes full of hope.
Hope. In him. For him.
When had he started caring whether she hoped?
He thought of the way she'd defended him at Court. Standing in front of a room full of powerful people, calling him sweet, talking about puppies and blizzards and little girls, escalating into increasingly ridiculous specifics until the whole room was laughing and the Baron's accusations had dissolved into irrelevance.
He thought of the way she'd hidden under a blanket afterward. "Bailey has left. There is only blanket." And he'd laughed. Actually laughed. For the first time in years.
He thought of the way his chest went tight whenever she smiled—that real smile, the one with the dimple she didn't know he tracked. The way he couldn't stop looking at her mouth. The way he'd called three kings, his brothers, his equals, and asked them for a favor because the thought of her alone among wolves had made him want to burn the entire party to the ground.
She was under his skin.
In his blood.
Wrapped around every thought until he couldn't think straight.
She was his weakness.
And someone out there—someone who had already killed a woman under his protection—knew it.
The territory was talking about her. Celine was spreading stories. The staff adored her. She was visible now. A target. A pressure point that could be exploited, threatened, destroyed to bring him to his knees.
His. She was his. And he couldn't even keep her safe.
The thought made him want to put his fist through the glass.
Find him...before it is your own queen he takes away next.
He couldn't protect her. Not like this. Not while she was beloved, visible, the darling of the territory. Not while Amos was circling and the investigation was stalled and the killer was watching, waiting, planning.
