As she slips quietly from the room, I sink down onto the edge of the chaise and run my hands over my face.
Nadya had gone to her own rooms after the king’s announcement. She’d offered a squeeze of my hand and a faint, tired smile, but I could see how the weight of the day pressed on her too. A part of me wanted to pull her close, to ask her to stay and provide me the emotional strength I need, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. She deserves better than to carry my worries alongside her own.
I draw in a deep breath, tying my hair back with a ribbon from my vanity. I catch my reflection in the mirror. The dark circles beneath my eyes, the faint cut across my lip from where I bit down too hard in the throne room. The warm almond undertones of my skin seem cold and almost grey in this light. I don’t look like a princess or the commander of the Delasurvian Royal Regiment, but rather the ghost of one.
I turn away from the mirror and march toward the door. When I open it, Sir Holden stands there, ever the picture of propriety—rigid in posture, jaw set tight. His eyes sweep over my attire, but he says nothing, just offers a brisk nod.
“Your Highness.”
“Let’s go,” I murmur.
We step into the corridor together, the torches along the stone walls flickering with the movement of air. The castle feels too quiet, too aware. As if it’s listening. Judging.
“Where to?” he asks, voice low.
“To see my uncle. And don’t try to talk me out of it.”
A dry huff escapes him. “I gave up trying to talk you out of anything a long time ago.”
I glance sideways at him as we walk. “Smart man.”
He smirks, just faintly, but it vanishes as quickly as it appears. “He’s been through a lot,” he says quietly. “But if he’s as strong a general as the rumors say, he’ll fight his way through this.”
I don’t answer. Because I’m not sure if he can. No one, myself included, understands what kind of twisted power the tsar has. I have no idea how to fix my uncle because I don’t have a clue what the tsar did to him.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I flex my fingers in an attempt to alleviate the buzzing that courses through my arm. It’s not unpleasant, but it’s distracting. I should be exhilarated at the thought of my magic—as mysterious as it still is—awakening in my blood. The problem is that the feeling also serves as a reminder of Torbin and how he stabbed me in the hand to stop me from sending a warning to Delasurvia. To my uncle.
It was excruciatingly painful, but the attack resulted in an inexplicable buzz developing in my body, originating at my stab wound and slowly expanding through my body.
I haven’t told Dante about the power stirring inside me. Not yet. It’s not that I don’t trust him—I do. If anything, once I understand what’s happening to me, he will be the first person I want to tell. But after waiting so long, after nearly giving up hope, I need a moment to claim this for myself. Fae magic is supposed to manifest by the breaching age of twenty-one, as natural as breathing. If it doesn’t, there is only one fate: madness. The mind fractures, unable to hold what should have been. It happened to my brother, the madness eventually leading to his death. I had spent years preparing for that possibility, waiting for the first signs of my own unraveling. But now, my power is waking, slow and unsteady, like embers sparking but not quite catching fire. And before I reveal it to anyone, before I am faced with the fact that I’ve got something inside me I cannot control, I first need to do everything I can to understand it.
The halls are eerily silent at this hour, the usual hum of castle life reduced to the occasional flicker of a torch against cold stone. Shadows stretch long and lean across the floor, reaching like skeletal fingers in the dimglow of lantern light. My steps are soft, but every shift of my weight against the marble sends the faintest echo through the corridor, a sound I once wouldn’t have noticed—because I wouldn’t have been awake to hear it.
A shiver prickles down my spine. How many times had I wandered these halls, unaware, moving like a specter while my mind remained locked in sleep? My feet had guided me through these very corridors, even through the secret passageways, my body knowing the paths better than my waking self. I had no recollection of those journeys, no memory of slipping from my bed and moving through the castle like a ghost. But I had always known afterward that I’d done it, because I was never where I was supposed to be when I awoke.
Ezra’s powder helped. Still helps. A few pinches in my evening tea, and the incidents have stopped. At least, I think they have. There’s always the quiet fear that one night, I’ll wake to find myself standing in the woods again, my feet damp with dew, the moon glaring down at me like an accusation.
Along with the wolves.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the wolves had always been there, watching over me. At first, I thought they were hunting me, that their golden eyes in the dark were a warning, but now I know the truth. The wolves serve as guardians to the fae.
But I’m still unsure if they can protect me from what’s to come.
I round the final corner, the heavy, wooden door to my uncle’s chamber coming into view. A lantern glows dimly outside, casting a soft halo of light against the stone. My steps quicken, my pulse steadying with purpose. Whatever he has to tell me—whatever secrets his fevered mind has been holding on to—I need to hear them.
I stand at the door and cast a glance at Sir Holden, who gives me a nod before turning with his back against the wall to stand sentry.
I knock softly, only so I don’t alarm Mylo, who’s been sitting faithfully by my uncle’s side, watching and waiting for any improvement to his condition. I suck in a deep breath and brace myself for whatever awaits on the other side. As my hand twists the doorknob, my mind is tangled in the memory of Mylo staggering through the gates, my uncleslumped against him, barely clinging to life. Mylo and Sir Holden had supported his weight, bringing him to an empty room so I could try to heal him, my heart in a panic as I desperately attempted to mend the damage the Shadow Tsar had inflicted. And just before unconsciousness took my uncle, his grip tightened weakly around my wrist, his voice rasping the words that have haunted me since.
“Your father is alive.”
I swallow hard as I enter the room. I don’t know if those words were the ramblings of a half-conscious man, or if they hold the weight of truth. But I have to know. And if he’s awake now, if he can speak, I need answers.
The guest chamber he now occupies is warmer than the hall, but the tall windows show a darkening sky. The fire in the hearth casts golden light over polished floors and embroidered drapes. It’s a beautiful room, though its grandeur has faded with time. Dust once gathered in the carved, wooden trim, and the air had been thick with disuse before I had the servants air it out, change the linens, and light fresh candles. Now, the scent of beeswax and lavender lingers, though it does nothing to ease the tightness in my chest. My uncle lies motionless beneath a heavy, woolen blanket, his face pale against the shadowed curve of the pillow. The steady rise and fall of his chest is the only reassurance that he’s still breathing. Still fighting.
His body has mended in the days since he arrived—a combined effort between his healing powers and mine—but whatever the tsar did to him lingers. He hasn’t used his telepathy powers to speak to me, and he hasn’t woken since he uttered those damning words out loud.
“Your father is alive.”
