guided me during my early days as king had stolen my wife. I didn’t want to believe it. There had to be a reason she’d taken
Ornella to her family. Perhaps they offered her something in exchange. Maybe it was done as a peace treaty.
“Nicholas, she,” Vanessa began to choke up as she spoke. Morgana hid her face from me. They’d both been crying.
“Nora is the one who killed Mother and Father,” April finally confessed.
I couldn’t feel anything. I forgot what words were as the truth sank deep into my bones. Nora couldn’t have been the
murderer. It was someone from Ornella’s father’s court. They’d been here for months, pretending to be ambassadors, trying to
keep the peace between our two families.
My mother and father welcomed them, tried to put the past behind them. I’d tracked that Fae down and strung him up, but
not before torturing him to death. He’d even admitted to the killings. He’d done it, under the orders of Ornella’s mother. Not
Nora. No. She was our most trusted captain, friend, even family.
“How do you know this?”
“We found letters—journals—detailing everything in her room after we found out she was seen following Ornella. Percy
has, however, suspected something for weeks, Nic.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
I felt dizzy, sitting down suddenly on the edge of Ornella’s bed. Percy’s job was to tell me everything that went on within
the castle walls, but if he’d suspected something he’d never once told me. Could that be why he always looked uncomfortable
whenever Nora was in the room? Why he would only say the minimum, allowing her to speak?
“Bring Percy to me.”
“He’s in your study, waiting for you,” Morgana said.
M y fingers tapped against the oak table as Percy set the letters and journals down in front of me, his hands shaking from
nerves, but his face said something different entirely. He was just as angry as everyone else in the room. Angry from the
betrayal and trust that was seemingly broken.
“She’d planned it all along, right from the start. She found out about your relationship with Ornella years ago. Detailing
everything down to the finest detail,” Percy began to speak as I flicked through the letters, all addressed to Nora from none
other than Ornella’s uncle. “Somewhere along the way, they decided to get King Theodore and Queen Helena out of the way.
Lord Dorian writes in code that someone was to admit to the killings, leaving her to continue on as planned. I suspected
something was going on when she kept returning to the border, but not where we’d stationed our soldiers. She would meet with
someone in secret at a tavern. The same one, she said, she’d brawled with some soldiers.”
“So, you followed her?” I asked.
“I sent one of my most trusted spies to find out what really happened there. No one would talk, so he watched the comings
