chapter ten

Constance

Morning brought a folded schedule slipped under the door, written in a hand too neat to belong to anyone but Ferdinand's own household. My days, apparently, no longer belonged entirely to me. Companion duties, it read. Morning attendance in the heir's chamber. Midday meal with the other retained candidates. Afternoon instruction in household protocol. Evening vigil, chaperoned.

*Chaperoned.*

I read the word three times before its weight settled all the way in.

Julian arrived not long after, a tray balanced on one arm, and confirmed what I'd already guessed. "The regent's decided a companion shouldn't wander the keep unescorted," he said, setting the tray down with more care than it needed. "Which means, my lady, that from this morning forward, wherever you go that isn't this chamber or your own quarters, I go too."

"Everywhere?"

"Everywhere." His eyes flicked toward William, still and silent on the bed, then back to me. There was something uneasy in his expression, like he understood what this restriction would cost me and hated that he was the one standing in the doorway delivering it. "Ferdinand's orders. Not mine." He said it quickly, almost defensively, like he needed me to hear that part before anything else.

I understood the shape of the trap even before I finished thinking it through. Ferdinand hadn't only recruited me to spy. He'd made it nearly impossible for me to do anything else. Every hallway I walked from now on would have Julian's eyes on it, and however much I'd begun to trust him, I didn't yet trust him with something as dangerous as the west archive.

I waited until Julian left to fetch the midday roster before I told William, keeping my voice low even though the room was, for the moment, ours alone.

"He's boxed me in," I said. "Chaperoned everywhere. I can't get near the archive without Julian seeing exactly where I'm going."

William's jaw tightened, but he didn't look surprised. "My uncle is thorough. I told you that."

"Thorough doesn't help me get inside a locked room."

"No," he agreed. "It doesn't." He was quiet a moment, turning something over, and when he spoke again his voice had gone careful in the way it did whenever he was weighing how much to give me. "There may be another way. The archive isn't only accessed through the main corridor. There's a servants' passage that runs behind the west wing, used for moving linens and firewood without disturbing the household proper. It hasn't been sealed, as far as I know. Only forgotten."

"And you know this because?"

"Because I spent a great deal of my childhood finding ways to avoid my tutors," he said, and for one unguarded second something almost like a smile touched his mouth. It faded fast. "The passage will not solve your chaperone problem. It will only give you a way in, if you can find a reason to be away from Julian long enough to use it."

I turned that over, already feeling the shape of a plan and not liking any part of it. "I'd need an excuse. Something that explains an hour I can't account for."

"Yes."

"Something Julian would believe."

"Yes."

Before either of us could get further, the bolt on the door slid back, and I barely had time to compose my face before Julian stepped back inside, the midday roster in hand, his eyes flicking briefly between William's stillness and my own too-careful expression. Whatever he suspected, he said nothing of it. He simply held the door.

"Your first meal with the other candidates, my lady. We shouldn't keep them waiting."

I hadn't thought about the other candidates in days. It was strange, walking beside Julian down the long gallery toward the dining hall, to remember there were still girls in this keep who hadn't been chosen, who were living out their own versions of the terror I'd survived in that examination room, waiting to find out what happened to a surrogate who didn't get selected.

The dining hall held six of them when we arrived. Six, where I remembered ten girls standing in that Royal Chamber days earlier. I did the arithmetic without wanting to and felt something cold settle low in my stomach.

Ayesha, the girl who'd snapped at her friend for trash-talking me that first night, sat near the window, picking at a plate of bread and cheese she wasn't eating. She looked up when I entered, and something in her face had changed since the last time I'd seen her. Thinner. Grayer around the eyes.

"Where's Priya?" I asked, sitting across from her before I'd fully decided to. "And the other girl. The one with the bleached hair."

Ayesha's eyes cut sideways, checking who might be listening, before she answered, low and fast. "Sent home. That's the official word."

"You don't believe it."

"Priya's family lives two days' ride from here," Ayesha said. "She wrote to them the morning after the purity trial. Told them she'd write again once she knew whether she'd been chosen." Her jaw worked. "They've had no letter since. Not one. It's been four days."

The cold in my stomach spread outward, into my chest, into my hands. "Maybe the roads—"

"Don't." Ayesha's voice cracked, sharp and low. "Don't sit there and tell me about the roads. I've been in this keep long enough to know when someone's lying to make me feel better, and you're about to do exactly that." She pushed her plate away, untouched. "Four girls. Sent home, they say. Four families who should have gotten letters by now, and not one has."

I thought of the guards dragging bodies out by the ankles in the purity trial, leaving red trails across the stone. I'd assumed, in my exhaustion and terror, that the danger of this place had ended once the vials were empty and the survivors were led away. I had been naive to think the counting had stopped.

"I'll find out what I can," I said, quieter than I meant to. "I have more access now than I did before."

Ayesha's eyes sharpened on me, something wary and hopeful tangled together. "Why would you help me? You've got your spot. You don't need the rest of us anymore."

I thought about how to answer that honestly, and found, to my own surprise, that I meant every word. "Because three days ago I was the girl nobody in this keep would have lifted a finger for either. I'm not going to become the kind of person who forgets what that felt like just because it isn't my problem anymore."

Something in Ayesha's face cracked, just slightly, before she caught it and smoothed it back into wariness. "Careful who you say that to," she murmured. "Kindness gets noticed in this place. And getting noticed gets people sent home."

The warning settled into my chest right alongside everything else I now had to carry — the archive, the ledgers, the chaperone, and now four missing girls whose families were still waiting for answers.

I didn't get the chance to think through any of it before a servant appeared at my elbow, a folded scrap of paper pressed discreetly into my hand under the table, gone again before I could ask who'd sent it.

I waited until Julian's attention had drifted toward the doorway before I unfolded it beneath the table's edge, my pulse already climbing before I'd read a single word.

*You didn't answer me. That was unwise.*

*I know about the guards searching the heir's chamber. I know you were in that bed when they did. Word travels fast for the right price, Constance, and I have more than enough coin left to make sure the wrong people hear exactly where you were sleeping.*

*Meet me at the servants' gate tomorrow night. Come alone, or I go straight to Ferdinand myself.*

*—E*

The paper trembled in my hand, and I had to force my fingers still before Ayesha or Julian could notice. Four girls missing. A chaperone stitched to my every movement. A regent who'd just recruited me to spy on the one person keeping me alive. And now Elias, holding the single most dangerous secret in this entire keep over my head.

I folded the note back into my palm, smiled at Ayesha like nothing in the world was wrong, and understood that I had exactly one day to decide which danger I was going to face first.