The fury coming off Caldan wasn't loud. It wasn't theatrical, no grand gestures. It was cold. Measured. It filled the room like smoke fills lungs—slow and choking, the kind that didn't burn so much as smother. Arin felt it before she saw it, that subtle shift in the air.
It felt like a storm pulling in tight over still ground. The warmth of the hearth, though physically present, seemed to fade, replaced by something heavier, denser, pressing in on her.
He stared down at the crumpled letter in his hand, his gaze so intense it seemed he could kill the parchment itself for daring to cross him.'Whatever that says… it's not politics,' Arin thought, her stomach tightening with a familiar dread. 'It's personal. Deeply personal.'
Her grip on the dagger, a reassuring weight at her hip, didn't loosen. Not out of fear, but pure instinct. She didn't trust men who went quiet when they were angry. Caldan looked like he wanted to break something, but was waiting to decide what would inflict the most exquisite hurt.
"What is it?" she asked, keeping her voice low, level, betraying nothing. She didn't care if it was risky to ask; she'd earned a few questions by now. Besides, silence was always worse than knowing.
He didn't respond. Not immediately. The tension stretched taut.
Then—with a tight, deliberate snap of his wrist—he crushed the letter into a fist, the paper crackling like brittle bone. When he finally looked at her, the burning heat was gone from his eyes. Just ice. Sharp, unforgiving, and truly dangerous.
"Stay here," Caldan said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. Just two words, but they dropped like a slab of cold stone between them, solid and unyielding.
"Do not move. Do not touch a single damn thing. Wait." His words were clipped, absolute.
And then he was gone. His cloak caught the air like a striking wing, a sudden, dark blur, and the heavy door slammed with such force the stone floor actually shivered under her bare feet.
Arin stared at the closed door, half expecting him to come right back in. To tell her he'd changed his mind, that she wasn't worth the trouble. That she was too reckless. That this was all some elaborate joke, a cruel game he played.
But the door stayed shut, silent and unmoving.
She was alone. And he'd said… wait?
A snort escaped her lips. Sharp. Derisive. Wait. As if she were a caged hound, told to sit patiently until master returned with a leash and a command. She wasn't a pet, and she wasn't waiting for anyone.
She stepped away from the center of the room. Slowly. Not recklessly, but deliberately. Her heart was still thudding hard, a frantic drum, but her silk-clad steps were soft, measured.
Her mind spun fast, piecing things together, analyzing. Caldan wasn't someone who rattled easily. That letter—whatever it had said—had clearly struck a wound buried deep beneath that polished, arrogant armor of his.
And that, she realized, made it immensely valuable.
So if he didn't want her to see something, it meant there was something worth seeing. She knew how these games were played.
Her sharp eyes scanned the chamber. Opulence, of course. Velvet drapes in rich hues. Gold-framed mirrors reflecting dim light. Crimson silks adorning everything. But beneath all of it, she saw strategy. Power. Weapons in plain sight—if you knew where to look, if you knew what mattered.
Her fingers trailed across the spines of the leather-bound books on the shelves. She recognized the thick, worn bindings, even if the titles were written in flowing court script she couldn't fully decipher from memory. A healer's manual. A poisoner's compendium. A heavy, ancient ledger of bloodlines.
This wasn't merely a prince's bedroom. It was a war room disguised in silk and shadow. A place of dangerous knowledge.
She pulled the poison book, its weighty, whispering pages a treasure trove. The kind of volume her mother would've slit a throat to own, to learn from. Everything here was lethal knowledge dressed as literature.
Her fingers brushed the cover of the family ledger—thicker, older, reeking of ancient entitlement—and froze. The Kaerythene crest. Gold-embossed. Arin flipped to the middle, scanning page after page of intermarried lines, looping back into themselves like twisted, venomous vines. She found Caldan's name, near the top, bold and clear. Dhaelon. Viera. Roen. Vaeren. Tysha. Iryna. Half siblings.
And then… a blank line beneath one of the late King Kaelthor's many mistresses. No name. No dates. Just a faint, incomplete scrawl, a hint of something unfinished. 'My mother was never in these books,' she thought, a cold certainty. 'But maybe she should've been. Maybe she's the blank line.'
She closed the heavy book. Her breath felt shallow, thin.
That's when she saw it. A seam in the obsidian wall. Not a crack—cleaner than that, too deliberate. A manufactured line, faint and perfectly vertical, just beside the full-length mirror.
She pressed her hand against it, testing.
Click.
The mirror hissed open, smooth as oiled leather, receding into the wall. A hidden door. A secret passage.
Every instinct screamed at her: Don't. It's a trap. But she was already moving, drawn by an irresistible pull.
'He left me alone,' she thought, a defiant spark in her gut. 'In this room. With this secret.'
She slipped her dagger from her hip, tucking it close to her thigh, its cold weight a comfort.
Then she heard it—soft. The almost imperceptible whisper of bare feet on stone. Someone was coming.
Arin moved fast. Behind the heavy velvet drapes. Silent. Still. Blending into the shadows.
A figure emerged from the hidden passage. Tall. Graceful. Ghost-like. Silver silks gliding over the floor without a sound. Her hair, a pale cascade against her shoulders, seemed to shimmer in the dim light. Her lips bloodless. Her eyes—sharp. Too sharp, like chips of ice. Princess Iryna.
Arin had seen her before, from afar, at the parade. From a distance, Iryna had looked like a glass statue brought to life, regal and fragile. But up close—like this, silent and unobserved—she moved like a shadow trained to kill.
Iryna didn't hesitate. She stepped directly to the ornate bedside table and knelt, her movements fluid and purposeful.
Arin watched from her hiding place, barely breathing, every sense alert.
The princess found a hidden panel beneath the drawer—opened it with a swift, practiced motion—and pulled out a small wooden box. It was intricately carved, sealed with dark wax.
She didn't open it right away. She just stared at it, tilting her head slightly, one corner of her bloodless mouth lifting in a faint, knowing smile.
Then she opened it with a soft click, a tiny sound in the vast silence.
Arin couldn't see what was inside from her vantage point. But Iryna's smile widened, a thin, chilling curve of her lips.
Not warm. Not cruel. Just satisfied. Deeply, utterly satisfied.
Whatever was in that box wasn't jewelry. It was something older. Something far more important. Something powerful.
And then, just like that, Iryna closed the box, replaced it, smoothed the hidden panel, and disappeared back into the passage without a sound. The mirror door sealed shut behind her, silent once more. Arin waited—thirty, sixty, eighty heartbeats—until the profound quiet felt real again, until she was sure the princess was truly gone.
And then she moved.
Not toward the box. Not toward the bed.
She went to the mirror door and pressed the catch. It opened. Again.
This time, she stepped through.
The air inside the passage was colder. Stale. It tasted like dust and ancient secrets, a grim history lingering. The narrow corridor twisted like a burrow beneath the palace, a labyrinth of stone. Arin walked slowly, blade held ready in her hand, ears straining for any sound.
She passed a vent, and through it, heard soft laughter. Maids, giggling about a dress too sheer for a noblewoman. Arin kept going, deeper. Down. Left. A spiraling stairwell. Another long, silent hall.
Then she heard it. A voice. Male.
"You were told to come to my chambers. A simple request." The words were too smooth. Too polished.
Then the sickening crack of leather against flesh.
A sharp, choked sob.
Arin's stomach dropped, a cold wave washing over her.
She edged forward, toward the noise, her heart pounding. Through a break in the wall—another narrow vent—she saw it.
A linen room. Stone floor. Wooden hooks lining the walls.
And on one of those hooks… a servant girl. Hanging by her wrists, barely standing, suspended just above the floor. Her back was streaked with fresh blood, dark against her pale skin. Her thin silk shift was torn and soaked red, clinging to her bruised flesh. Her face was turned away, hidden by a tangled mess of hair.
The man before her had dark, neatly curled hair. He wore a princely coat of rich velvet. Fine, glittering rings adorned his fingers. A heavy, braided whip hung casually in his hand.
Arin didn't know his name. But his eyes, even from this distance, were a startling, icy blue. And they were wrong. Cold. Detached. Enjoying himself.
That had to be Roen.
"Your mother would disown you?" he said, his voice mocking, a cruel sneer in his tone. "Your mother will thank me. She'll thank the court for making you useful, child."
He raised the whip again, slowly, deliberately.
The girl whimpered, a soft, broken sound, flinching, bracing for the inevitable impact.
Arin felt something coil in her chest. Something tight. Burning. And furiously, blindingly angry.
This wasn't about politics. This wasn't about bloodlines or ancient riddles. This was pure power. Pure abuse. The same kind that had torn down her village, that had taken her mother, that called itself nobility and left only pain and ruin behind.
Roen raised the whip again, poised to strike.
Arin moved.
She didn't think. She didn't breathe.
She just moved.