“Yes?” He stepped closer and bent his head so they could talk.
“Listen, there is something I’ve needed to talk to you about. Something I’ve put off too long.” Shane scrubbed his hand down his face tiredly.
Gods, what could Shane possibly have to tell himnow? “If this is about Izzy, then I don’t want to hear it.”
“No. I mean, it is, but not how you think.”
A thousand horrible thoughts spiraled through his mind. “What is it? Is she okay?”
Shane opened his mouth, but the small side door opened, cutting off whatever he was about to say. Probably for the best,if Shane called Izzy “his” or gently explained how Izzy was lost to Luka forever, as if he didn’t already know that perfectly well, Luka was going to let his beast declare whatever challenges it wanted.
And then he looked more closely at Izabel as she came into the study with Cori close behind her. Emotions crossed her face in a mix of shock, sadness, and anger. Gods of Chaos. This was just one of the many reasons he did not want her involved. He was going to put an end to this. He was going to?—
Don’t. Say. Anything.
He wasn’t going to say anything bad. He was just?—
Not a word!
Izzy didn’t see him wrestling with his beast, or if she did, she ignored it. She looked around the room, meeting their gazes calmly, slipping into the polite cadence of an experienced healer.
She’s too calm. Too restrained. This is worse than we thought.
“I’ve found how Narya died,” Izabel said quietly. She took a breath and then continued. “There is no bruising or trauma anywhere on her body. From what I can tell, she wasn’t sexually assaulted?—”
Thank the Mother. Luka breathed out a sigh of relief. But Izabel wasn’t finished.
“However,” she continued, “there is a small puncture wound behind her ear, likely from a needle blade.”
Luka shook his head. “There was no blood.”
“There was a little hidden under her hair,” Izzy explained. “With such a sharp blade, she would have died almost instantly, with almost no bleeding. It was clean, neat, and quick. Expert, even. And there’s more.” Izzy clenched her hands tightly together. “There’s stiffness in her face, already spreading to her neck and arms. She’s been dead for a while, several hours at least. Given that her clothes are only dirty where she lay onthem, and not on the bottom of her skirts where she’d have picked up mud if she’d walked, I think that she was killed some time before she was left on the Nabaspath. Either in the castle or in the cleaner parts of the city.”
“Gods. She was assassinated,” Luka muttered.
Izabel met his eyes. “Yes, I think that’s likely.”
There was a long moment of shocked silence as they all looked at each other.
His belly churned. “Someone killed her in cold blood and then took her body all the way to our holy mountain on purpose. Perhaps the light Dashiell saw was there to draw him in and ensure she’d be found.”
“That would make sense,” Izzy agreed. “No one uses that path. It could have been days, weeks even, before she was found. This way, there’s immediate outrage. The killer could’ve drawn in a guard precisely to ensure maximum exposure. A murdered Kwanam noblewoman carried through the streets by Hugaebian guards would cause the worst kind of spectacle.” Sapphire scales glittered at her throat where her pulse thudded. “They wouldn’t have known you’d keep it quiet.”
“They wanted her foundtonight. Before the treaty signing tomorrow.” His eyes flew to Shane’s. “And half the court saw you together.”
Shane leaned forward, face pale and hair sticking up where he’d dragged his fingers through it. “They wanted the royal house blamed. They wantedmeblamed.”
“It would be a good way to destroy the treaty,” Luka agreed. “A good way to restart hostility, maybe even return us to outright war.”
Cori rocked back on her heels while Aiden and Kai blanched. Parents and grandparents still spoke of the years of constant threat, of incursions and fear. No one wanted to go back to that time.
Luka wrapped his hand around the rigid muscles at the back of his neck and looked around the room. He might have done a shitty job of showing it, but these people were his family. It was more than his duty; it was his life’s purpose to take care of them. He’d known from the beginning that someone was going to suffer for this. He would do anything to make sure it wasn’t Izzy, Shane, or any of the others.
His beast stirred, hackles rising.No. There has to be another way.
Maybe, but he couldn’t see it. He stepped forward, glad he’d resisted the wine. “Shane, I know you wanted to keep them out of it, but the queen and Iona need to know. We need to tell them, right now.”
“I agree,” Kai murmured.
