Page 241 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Then came his words, Only a few old bags from the previous council called me that.

I rushed out to his balcony and bolted to Taren. The second my feet touched the roof of my castle, I almost ran to find Nia.

She perked from the dining chair where she’d been hunched over whatever poison she was grinding on the mortar and raked her gaze over my half naked form. “You really need to stop taking fashion advice from that courtesan.”

“I need his letters.”

She frowned. “Whose?”

“Nia, I know you still have his letters. I know you didn’t throw them away when I asked you to.”

Her features pulled in an apology. “Will you throw them away if I give them to you? I really don’t want you to throw them away. Not those words. You can’t throw them away.”

All my limbs shook, but I managed to say, “No…no, of course not. Get me the letters, please.”

It took her seconds to fade back and forth to her chambers with the letters. But too many seconds too long for my brain to lose all sense of comprehension from incredulous thoughts. One moment then two and ten, I sat on the cold marble ground just holding them. My fingers shook over the lilac paper, over the broken black seal. And finally, slowly, I pulled a letter from its envelope. I waited, calming my nerves, my eyes shut tightly while I breathed in and out. And when I opened them, I saw what I didn’t want to see. Yours…Kilian Castemont.

It read the same on the next one I opened. Also on the next ten. Yours, Kilian Castemont. The curve of them, the slightly slanted angle he wrote, the delicate end tails, the sharp dots on all the ‘i-s’. They resembled nothing of the clean-cut signature of the attack orders. Henrik Castemont II. He’d written Henrik Castemont II.

“It wasn’t him. It wasn’t him, Nia,” I repeated, my fists bunching to give me some grounding that kept slipping away from me. He had lied to me. All this time, he’d lied to me. It had not been him. When she remained silent, my eyes shut again. “You knew.”

She said quietly, “I did.”

A bitter laugh left me and my whole body burned with ire. “Who was it? Who signed off on the attack?”

She bit on the skin of her cheek. “He won’t say. The only thing he has told me is that he’d fallen very ill on the day of the attack, and he’d awoken to the chaos. Driada told me he’d not spoken a word till the day that they had found you alive. She said he blamed himself for everything and that is why he took responsibility for it.”

I threw the letters on the ground and stalked to the closest balcony, bolting back to Adriata.

He was there. Expectant. Staring over the mess I made on his table. From the downcast of his gaze, I knew he was aware I had found out more of his lies.

“Who are you trying to protect?” I asked calmly, my hands curling to fists.

He bent down to pick a discarded letter. “No one.”

“Liar!” I shouted. “You damned liar and your damned lies. Who are you trying to protect? Why are you letting the real person behind that attack escape my judgement? Who is it that you are protecting?”

“No one,” he repeated, and I turned into fury.

The outside blistered with thunder, a deep dark rumble reiterated over Amaris, and I could feel control slipping through my fingers. A cloud formed over my vision and the bargain seal on my hand pierced with an intense burn already sensing what I was about to do. He too knew what I was about to do because he turned to me, worry etched in his features and a flutter of his usually calm pulse was caught by my senses. “I will rip every heart in this kingdom, one by one if I have to. And you’ll watch mine bleed if you must.”

I rushed for the balcony and bolted right in the middle of Amaris. Screams tore the electric air and flutters of fleeing bodies passed across my blurred vision.

I grabbed onto the first body that had the misfortune of bumping into me. Before my hand dove onto their chest, a large hand spanned over my wrist to stop me. He spun me round, my back to his chest, his arms embracing me. “Don’t, please.”

The air chilled at my command and spread from under my feet to blister the whole of my surroundings—trapping people in it. “I like you begging. Beg some more perhaps I’ll consider.”

“If you do this—”

“What?” I asked, cocking my head to the side to look him in the eye. “Will you fight me? Will you kill me? You can stop me if you want. One name. Give me one name.”

“It was me.”

“Liar.” I pulled out of his touch and bolted again. This time landing in the outskirts of Amaris, a quaint little white housed village. The tip of my fingers itched for carnage so I obeyed. Magic ushered out of me, skittering around my body and climbing onto the forest greenery till flames erupted around me. The burn from the seal had long dulled now.

Someone faded behind me. It was not Kilian, but the presence was familiar. “I did it, Snow. I signed the document that night.”

Magic froze around me. Frost climbed trees, grass and rock, dousing the fire. Slowly, I turned to face the reason for my demise. The true evil of my nightmares. Only to find him. The person who’d been nothing other than a light hearted dream one had when they slept out in a meadow on those warm summer day sunsets.