“My kind of woman,” Lexie said, though softly.
“You would’ve loved her as much as me.”
Kerralyn opened the journal. “The cipher appears to be… Oh, this is clever. She’s used a substitution based on—” Her eyes lit up like. “I think she’s using courtly dance steps as her key. Look, these symbols correspond to?—”
“You figured that out with one look?” I asked, incredulous.
“Of course.” Kerralyn’s grin was pure smugness wrapped in false modesty. “Really, Isi, I’d expect more from your royal education. Didn’t they teach you basic cryptography?”
Lexie snorted from her perch on Derren’s lap. “Ouch.”
“They taught me seventeen different ways to poison someone with garden herbs and how to negotiate trade agreements while being seductive but not falling into bed,” I shot back. “Apparently, they missed the decoding secret journals lesson.”
“Tragic oversight,” Derren said. “Though the poisoning bit sounds useful.”
Kerralyn was already scribbling translations in her own journal, her pencil moving quickly across the page. “Your sister had an amazing mind for this. Most people use predictable patterns, like birth dates, lover’s names. But dance steps? That’s brilliant.”
I watched her work, marveling at the ease with which she untangled Addie’s carefully crafted secrets. My sister had always been clever. Too clever, Father used to say. He’d scorned what he should’ve been proud of.
While I’d been learning statecraft and strategy, Addie had been collecting languages like other girls collected ribbons, reading philosophy texts for pleasure, and asking questions that made our tutors uncomfortable.
“Here,” Kerralyn said, pointing to a decoded passage. “She mentions being rescued but look at the context. She says, ‘the golden cage didn’t open by force, but by choice. This court offers truth where others offer only pretty lies’.”
My chest tightened.
“It gets more interesting.” Kerralyn’s finger traced down the page. “She writes about staying with us—the rebels.” Her lips quirked up before smoothing. “I believe that’s what your court calls us, am I right?”
I nodded.
I remembered Addie at fourteen, standing on our balcony and pointing toward the south. “Something’s wrong out there, Isi. Can’t you feel it? Like the land itself is screaming.”
“There’s more.” Kerralyn’s voice dropped. “She mentions falling in love with the king’s cousin, Fenmark.”
“He’s gorgeous,” Lexie said. “I think half the women and some of the men in this court are in love with him themselves.”
“Agreed,” Derren said.
Kerralyn continued to read. “I wrote to Isi, telling her I was safe.”
“I never received her letter. Why?”
The room fell silent except for the shuffle of footsteps in the hall.Addie had tried to contact me. Tried to tell me she was alive, safe, happy even. And I’d never known.
“What else?” I whispered.
“As you said, she went through the Rite of Bonds,” Kerralyn said. “Then was claimed by a ruby red dragon.”
“A dragon like me,” Lexie said. “Not many of them bond.”
Kerralyn’s brow furrowed as she flipped through the pages. “It ends with her stating she and Fenmark were being sent on a mission, that she’d opted to leave her journal with Trew in case…”
My belly dropped out. “She didn’t come back.”
Dead. So dead. I could still see the blood matting her hair. Dripping…
Kerralyn pointed. “She says here she volunteered for the mission with Fenmark.”
Confirming that Trew had been honest with me.
