Inside, there were bundles of letters. Dozens. Some were frayed; others crisp. I reached for the one on top, the parchment Dorian had given me.
It wasn’t long. A few lines, written in efficient, courtly script:
“Intercept the envoy before Wildervale. Focus on the soft one. The girl with the healer’s hands. If the forest doesn’t take her, Riven will.”
I could feel my face fall open wide, the raw sting of unshed tears burning behind my eyes.
I opened another letter, this one marked with Kaelen’s personal seal; faint, but still visible beneath the cracked wax.
“Ensure the knight dies. He’s very loyal. Burn the bond before it forms.”
My mouth went dry.
“Payment approved for intercept at Wildervale. Risk is high, reward is higher. Remove the girl quietly. Do not damage the face.”
And finally, the last letter and the most chilling: “The girl bears a mark. But her fire is not from birth. Watch her. She is not what she believes she is.”
My knees buckled. I sank to the ground, scrolls sliding from my lap like wilted petals.
He knows my gift.
He tried to kill us.
Not random bandits and mercenaries. Not misfortune. Not fate.
Kaelen.
He’d sent Riven, planned the attacks. Approved assassination orders were like diplomatic paperwork.
We were all meant to die before we ever reached Caerthaine.
Instead of a sob, a sound clawed its way from my throat, hoarse and guttural. It was the raw, protesting sound of grief trying to break free.
But no tears came. Crying was something you did when the pain still belonged to you.
This pain belonged to all of us.
A truth burned behind my ribs, terrible and certain.
If Kaelen had his way, we wouldn’t be negotiating a union.
We’d be burying the last of my people in foreign soil.
I didn’t remember leaving the archive. One moment, I was kneeling on the floor, scrolls splayed around me like broken wings; the next, I was stumbling through a half-lit corridor, my hands trembling, my skin cold and damp.
Now, I tucked the letters under my arm, crumpling them slightly from how tightly I clutched them.
My feet moved of their own accord, taking me nowhere in particular. The castle was silent but not still. Caerthaine always breathed beneath its own stone, whispering through cold halls like a thing alive. The sconces flickered low, casting warped shadows that trailed behind me like ghostly apparitions.
Each step echoed.
He planned this.
He paid for my death. Everyone’s death.
I couldn’t get the words out of my head. They looped like a fever chant, each time twisting deeper, sicker. My heart was beating too fast and too shallow.
“You’ll sign it. We both know you will,” Kaelen had said to me. “Shame the wilds didn’t take you.”
