No…no, it can’t be.
Keeper Halwen.
The man she had trusted so deeply that she had never thought to question him. The man who was supposed to bless her wedding but wasn't there.
“No,” Evelyne whispered. “Please, no.”
He gazed at her across the altar; his expression carved from sorrow and madness.
Evelyne felt the world tilt again, this time not from pain, but from something far worse—the shattering of one of the last certainties she had left.
Chapter 67
The castle had dissolved into chaos. It thrummed through the stone itself, carried in the pounding of boots, in the clash of steel on steel as soldiers snapped to orders barked sharp enough to cut, and beneath it all ran the frantic pulse of fear—barely contained, desperate to masquerade as control.
Alaric and Rhaedor hadn’t wasted a heartbeat. The gates slammed shut. Servants were dragged aside in doorways, their protests drowned under interrogation until even the most loyal flinched at every passing shadow. Patrols circled the grounds in endless, frantic loops.
By the time Alaric and Cedric reached his guest chambers, the worst had already announced itself. All of the guards lay crumpled in the corridor. Necks at an unnatural angle, bodies folded wrong. No clatter of resistance. Whoever had moved through here had done it fast.
Behind him, Cedric slowed, eyes catching on the bloodless wounds. Alaric forced his steps between the sprawled soldiers, every nerve alight, braced for the smell of copper to hit his nose.
It didn’t. Relief was a blade’s width wide, but he took it anyway.
The door sagged on its broken hinges, groaning with every shift of air. Inside, the chamber was a ruin. A chair lay belly-up by the hearth, one leg splintered. A silver tray sprawled across the carpet; goblets burst into teeth of glass. Wine soaked into the rug in black-red stains that looked far too much like blood.
She was fighting.
Alaric ran a hand through his hair, then crouched by the shattered goblets, fingertips brushing the wine-soaked rug. It was carnage without corpses. A brutal mercy. And Alaric clungto it with both fists as his eyes raked every scrap of evidence that might tell him who had come—and where they’d taken.
It had been nearly a full day since then.
A day with no sign of her and Thalen. Nor her maid. Just silence. Heavy, suffocating silence.
And all he could think was:I should have seen this coming.
While he had been tracing symbols and chasing prophecy, obsessing over echoes and theories, she had been slipping into danger. Because of him. Because he brought her closer to it, not farther. Because every question he’d asked had carried a cost he hadn’t calculated properly. And still, somehow, it was Evelyne and Thalen who were bleeding for the answers.
Vesena had found him by then, falling into step without a word, the way she always did. She’d been handling the carriages that morning. But the bell had rung, and she’d known.
Alaric's chest felt tight. He caught his reflection briefly in the polished steel of a ceremonial shield hanging on the wall of the war room. There were lines on his forehead he didn't remember earning.
But then he thought of her.
And he could almost hear her voice in his mind:
Control. Calm. Focus.
She wouldn’t be panicking. She wouldn’t be wasting breath on fear. Alaric exhaled slowly, forcing the wild thundering of his heart into a steady, measured beat.
Panic would not find them.
Only precision would.
From outside, he could hear guard dogs barking. The king was shouting again, his voice cracking like a whip across the room as he tore into the officers arrayed before him. No one was spared. Captains, advisors, guards—they all stood stiffly, enduring the storm with grim faces and sweaty palms.
In the corner of the Council chamber, half-forgotten in the shadow of the king’s rage, Ysara sat trembling on a low-backed chair. Her hands were knotted in her skirts, face blotched with grief. She wept: loudly, without asking for permission. Her maid knelt beside her, whispering soft, futile comforts as she tried to dab gently at Ysara’s damp cheeks.
“There are bodies,” Cedric muttered, approaching from the room entrance. “Found in two of the outer corridors. Silverwards.”
