Novels by Juliet writes

Seraphina's POVI read the summons a third time before I let Kael speak.It didn't only question my ancestry. It questioned my right to exercise authority under the pact. They weren't asking who I was. They were asking what I was allowed to be."Do you intend to answer it?" Kael asked."Yes.""He'll use the hearing to make you look like a threat to the kingdom.""My family was treated as a threat before I was born. I'm not afraid of the word."He set the summons on the table, reached for the chair beside his own, and drew it out for me.I didn't sit. "I won't stand beside you as your wife while that assembly questions me as an heir. They'll see a woman the King is shielding. I want my own place."He looked at the chair, then at me. For a moment I thought he would argue. He pushed it back in."Then you'll have your own place," he said.The preliminary hearing was held in a smaller chamber, the second Alpha seated across from me with a representative murmuring at his shoulder."The Ashb

Seraphina's POVThe fifth Alpha read everything twice. Verrin's routing sheet. The record of the second Alpha's house holding the eastern passage. Lucien's message about Eamon, and the woman in the second Alpha's colors who had taken a nine-year-old boy.When he set the last page down, he did not give me a riddle."My house kept this much," he said. "The second Alpha's house was charged with finding Ashbourne survivors and reporting where they were to the royal household. Verrin was posted at the eastern passage with a general order to hold anyone who crossed it. The second Alpha's house had learned Evelyne would be the one to cross.""But he let her through.""He disobeyed. That's why his record has a gap, and why his return was authorized afterward under the king's seal. Someone wanted him quiet, and wanted him kept close.""And your house?""Objected. The original agreement never authorized removing survivors. We said so in writing, and we were overruled.""And then?"He didn't ans

Chapter 97: The Orders He Left BehindSeraphina's POVMy hands wouldn't stay steady. I told myself it was the cold of the sealed wing, the dust, the hour. It was my mother. Somewhere in these walls, twenty-four years ago, men had written her name on orders while she ran, and every page I touched carried the same hand that had once decided what she was worth."This says Verrin's assignment ended before she escaped," I said, forcing the dates into order. "But he didn't return to duty for weeks afterward."Kael took the ledger from me. "The original order should explain it. Not the summary."I found a locked dispatch compartment behind a loose panel and worked it open with a letter opener. Inside lay a damaged routing sheet, the authorization mark still legible.Captain Verrin is assigned to hold the eastern passage for the king's household, and to bring back, alive and unharmed, any person who attempts to cross it.I read it twice."Alive," I said. "They wanted her alive.""My father's

Chapter 96: The King's Deadly SecretKael's POVSeraphina took the record from my hand before I could close it.Her eyes moved over the final lines. Then she stopped at the seal.For several seconds, she said nothing.I watched her thumb pass over the stamped crest, the same crest that had appeared on royal orders throughout my childhood. My father's mark. The one I had trusted without question until the night he died and left me a kingdom full of secrets."Tell me that's not his."I couldn't.She looked up at me. "Kael.""It's my father's seal."She lowered the page, but she didn't give it back."Your father authorized Verrin's return to service. Now we're finding his seal on an order connected to the eastern passage, the same route my mother used to escape." Her voice tightened. "How many times am I supposed to find your family at the centre of what happened to mine before I start asking what you know?"The question struck harder than an accusation."I didn't know about Verrin's mis

Chapter 95: The Authority to Claim HerSeraphina's POVThe council's reply reached us by midmorning. The hearing was set for three days' time. Until then, I was permitted to keep the blade, on the condition it remained within the Citadel's walls under guard Kael had already posted.Three days. Not nearly enough."We start with the order itself," I told Kael. "Someone authorized its drafting two days before the vote.""The investigation record is sealed. But the authorization to draft it is an administrative entry, not a sealed finding. I may be able to reach it without triggering the restriction at all."Kael's POVThe clerk who maintained the administrative ledger didn't want to hand it over. I reminded him I was asking him to confirm a single entry, not surrender a sealed record he had no authority to release anyway.He turned the ledger toward us."Look at the witness line."I bent closer. Captain Verrin.The name meant nothing to me yesterday. Now it sat beneath the second Alpha's

Seraphina's POVThey came for the blade before midday, two council officials and a guard, formal enough that I understood resistance wouldn't change what they'd already decided to do."I want to see the authority permitting this seizure," I said.The senior official produced the order, royal seal pressed into its wax. I read it myself rather than let him summarize it for me, and found the line near the bottom that stopped my breath entirely.The council shall hold authority over any surviving Ashbourne heir for the duration of the investigation."This wasn't in anything the assembly voted on," I said."It's a standard provision attached to seizures of this nature.""Show me the precedent."He couldn't, not immediately.Kael's POVI found her with the officials still in the room, the order laid flat on the table between them.I could have invoked royal authority outright and ended the seizure on the spot. The second Alpha would have called it exactly what it was, a king overriding his