Chapter Six

Constance

I dove under the quilt so fast my elbow cracked against William's ribs. He didn't flinch. He was already moving, already arranging his limbs into the same boneless stillness I'd seen in the Royal Chamber, his face going slack, his breathing dropping into that slow, even rhythm that fooled an entire keep.

I pressed myself against his side and made myself small.

The door handle rattled again, harder this time. Then a key scraped in the lock, and it swung open so fast it cracked against the stone wall.

Three guards filed in. Not Julian's men. These wore the black-and-silver of the regent's personal guard, and the one in front had a hand already resting on the hilt of his blade.

"Search the room," he barked.

My heart slammed so hard I was certain the man would hear it from across the chamber. I kept my eyes shut and my face turned into William's shoulder, breathing in short, shallow pulls, praying my shaking didn't show through the quilt.

Boots crossed the stone floor. A wardrobe door creaked open, then shut. Something scraped against the wall, a curtain being yanked back, the balcony doors rattling as a guard checked the latch.

"Nothing out here," one of them said.

"Check the bed," the lead guard said.

My stomach dropped straight through the mattress.

Footsteps came closer. I felt the weight of someone standing over us, close enough that I could smell leather and cold night air clinging to his coat. I forced my breathing to slow, to match the rhythm William had taught his own body to fake, and I made myself go still the way I'd learned to when there was nowhere left to run . I hadn't believed I'd survive that room either. Maybe I'd be wrong about this one too.

"That's the surrogate," a second voice said, lower, almost bored. "Keeping vigil, they said. Regent's orders were to leave her be."

"She's practically on top of him," the first voice said.

"So? He's a corpse with a pulse. She's not going to catch anything from him but a chill." A short, ugly laugh. "Poor girl probably fell asleep crying. Leave her."

I felt the guard's stare linger one more second, long enough that my skin prickled under it, and then, mercifully, the weight of him lifted away. Footsteps retreated toward the door.

"Report to the regent," the lead guard said. "Chamber's clean. No sign of intrusion."

"What were we even looking for?" the bored one asked.

"Above my pay grade," the lead guard said. "Ferdinand said someone tampered with the ward stones outside the east corridor. Probably a servant with a grudge. Lock this up and let's move."

The door shut. The bolt slid home.

I did not move for a long time. I counted my own heartbeats the way I had after Julian left the night before, and this time I got to fifty before my body finally believed we were alone.

William's arm loosened from around me. When I lifted my head, his eyes were already open, gold gone dark and thoughtful in the candlelight, and he was staring at the ceiling instead of at me.

"Ward stones," he said quietly, like he was turning the word over in his mouth to see what it tasted like.

"What does that mean?"

"It means someone tried to get into this wing tonight who wasn't supposed to." He sat up slowly, dragging a hand through his hair, and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked genuinely rattled instead of merely dangerous. "The wards along the east corridor are ancient magic. They've been held since my grandfather's time. Nobody breaks them by accident."

"Elias," I said, the name coming out of me like a curse.

William's jaw tightened. "Perhaps. Or someone using the chaos he's already caused as cover for something else entirely." He looked at me then, and something in his expression made my skin go cold in a different way than fear. "Either way, my uncle now has soldiers hunting for an intruder in the one part of this keep where the truth about me could actually be found. I don't like that."

I pulled the quilt tighter around my shoulders, my mind racing back through everything that had happened since I'd stepped off that transport van. The examination room. The static spark in the Royal Chamber. The vials of murky poison. Elias's hands on my wrists. None of it had felt connected at the moment. Now, laid end to end, it was starting to look deliberate.

"You think someone's investigating you," I said. "Not just guarding you."

"I think," William said slowly, "that my uncle has spent a great deal of effort making sure the entire territory believes I am dying quietly in this bed. If he suspected otherwise, he would not send three guards to search a chamber over a rumor about ward stones. He would come himself."

"So this was a test," I said. "To see if the rumor was true."

"Or to see who reacts to it." His eyes cut to me, sharp again, the softness from a moment ago folded away like it had never existed. "Which means we cannot assume anyone in this keep is safe to trust. Not the guards. Not the servants."

"Julian suspects," I reminded him. "He saw enough, the night the spell tore through you, to know something is wrong with the story everyone's been told."

"Suspecting isn't the same as knowing." William's voice had gone flat, careful. "And it isn't the same as choosing what to do with it." There was something almost cold in the way he said Julian's name, a wariness I hadn't heard before. "Loyalty bends, Constance. I have watched it bend in men I trusted with my life. I will not assume Julian is different simply because he's brought me broth and called me my lord for twenty years."

The way he said it, flat and certain, told me this wasn't a new fear. This was an old wound, one he'd carried into this room long before I'd ever touched his wrist in the Royal Chamber.

"What happened to you?" I asked quietly. "Before the coma. Before any of this. Who taught you to expect betrayal before you even see it coming?"

Something flickered across his face, quick and sharp, gone before I could name it.

He didn't answer.

Instead he got up and crossed to the balcony doors, testing the latch the guards had already checked, his shoulders a hard line against the candlelight. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped low, almost to himself.

"This wasn't a search for an intruder."

"Then what was it?"

His eyes settled on the door, and stayed there, like he could see straight through it to whoever might be standing on the other side.

"A warning."

"For who? You, or Ferdinand?"

He turned to look at me, and for the first time since the guards had left, I saw something in his face that looked almost like fear, quickly buried under the same cold mask he wore for everyone else in this palace.

"That," he said, "is what worries me.”