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A guard bowed and shut the door.
At least they went silently this time.
I moved to the papers that’d been knocked to the floor during the struggle and gathered them up.
Sirena came out of the bathroom with my robe still wrapped around her. She must have witnessed the whole scene.
“Is everything all right?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, collecting up the last of the papers. “Everything’s fine. Just a local caught in a passageway. Nothing to worry about.”
But it was something to worry about. What if someone else attempted to murder me in my sleep? No amount of guards on the outer walls would protect me from a naked blade in the shadows.
The castle was very old and who knew how many forgotten passageways there were within it?
I placed the collated papers on the desk.
“Now,” I said, turning to her with a smile, “there was something you wanted to tell me.”
She peered between my eyes.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “It can wait.”
I hugged her. She felt so warm and soft in my arms. Her neck was right there, exposed, and I couldn’t help but nibble at it.
“I’m here for you, if you need me,” I said.
She giggled and playfully tried to push me away.
But I’d already stopped.
When she pulled back to look me in the face with her smoky eyes—what ordinarily would have sent me into a crazy whirlwind of desire—I was instead focused on the papers I’d picked up from the floor.
They were reports and notifications of battlements and defenses my brother had set up when news of the Changeling attack first came to us. I hadn’t removed them yet. I still hadn’t gotten used to being the lord.
But it wasn’t the report that grabbed my attention.
It was what had been scrawled across it.
There, written in an unpracticed hand, was a depiction of the playful letters we’d created to pass notes to each other as kids. They were rushed and very rough… but then, how neat would my handwriting be if Zes was busy wrestling me at the same time?
The man must have seen the desk the moment he entered and dived for it. While Zes wrestled him, he hurried to scribble a quick message.
The man was the messenger.
It was the final message he wished for me to have.
It was so rough it took me a moment to understand. My hand shook as realization dawned.
“What is it?” Sirena said. “Is something wrong?”
I had no words for her. I stepped aside and fell into a lounging chair. I raised a single finger. It meant for her to wait a minute, to give me a little time to process what I thought had just happened in my room.
The pieces fit together like a puzzle, one after another, clicking into place. Some didn’t quite make sense. Not unless…
No… It can’t be…
Minutes dragged as the full ramifications of what I’d just learned—or what I thought I’d learned—struck home. It winded me and I could hardly breathe.
