MasukMabella's POV“Collins Argent is not your father.”Those words just hung there, thickening the air in the hall until it felt like nobody could move, and nobody dared to breathe. I stood at the front, facing Caspian, my heart dropping and my certainty tearing itself apart under my feet.“That’s a lie,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.He didn’t even flinch. Caspian didn’t need to thunder or shout; he just stood there between his two warriors, calm and locked in on me. “Is it? Ask yourself why Phebian hated you so fiercely. Not just as a rival’s child. Not just another obstacle.” He let that sit for a second. “Ask why your mother was so desperate to arrange your betrothal. Why didn’t she just talk to Rosalind about your bloodline, but about who your parents actually were?”I glanced at Rosalind.She barely moved.“Rosalind,” I called.She looked back at me, and somehow her face told me everything before she even spoke.“Sit down, Mabella,” she said softly.“Tell me,” I pushed.S
Mabella's POV"Stella Argent didn’t die from a fever.”Rosalind’s voice carried through the hall...steady, unshaken. The words hit like a dropped glass, sharp and final. You felt the air change. No one spoke. No one moved.“She was poisoned,” Rosalind went on. “It wasn’t fast. It took months. The poison was mixed into her food and water...somebody inside her home, someone who knew exactly what they were doing, did this.” She pulled open her journal to a marked page and held it up for everyone to see. “I found proof of this compound in her blood six weeks before she died. I recognized it and I understood the damage it would cause.” A beat. “I also knew who had both the skill and the access to do it.”You could have dropped a pin, and everyone would have heard.“I was threatened,” she said, no theatrics, just laying it down. “Nobody screamed or waved a weapon. Just a quiet talk in a hallway one night. I understood right away what would happen if I pushed any further.” She scanned the cr
Mabella’s POV"Everyone’s in place."Fred leaned in the doorway, looking sharp, steady, and way too awake for a guy running on just two hours of sleep. You’d never know he was exhausted...he was the type who’d never mention it anyway.I’d been up, dressed, for a while. My journal sat right there on the table, next to a mug of tea I kept staring at but never touched.Across the room, Alfredo stood at the window, motionless, hands deep in his pockets. He’d been there for twenty minutes, watching the pack gather outside. I let him be. Sometimes people have to face things in silence before they can talk about them."How many showed up?" I asked Fred."Everyone," he replied. "If they could walk, they’re here.”Alfredo turned, finally. “Elder Bowen spoke to me before sunrise.”“What about?” I asked.He kept his voice flat and controlled. “To warn me. Three current council members have known about the Ashborne files for years. Not the formula. Not what happened to you. Just that something ex
Mabella's POVThe footsteps stopped.One. Two. Three seconds of nothing.Then they started again, slower, going down through the passage Fred had mentioned twenty minutes ago in the war room, the one that connected directly beneath the Luna quarters.I was off the bed before I'd decided to be.Grabbed the journal. Opened the door. The passage entrance at the far end of the corridor was slightly open, just enough to matter, and I went through it and down the steps into a service corridor that smelled of old stone and cold air and hadn't been properly used in years.Footsteps ahead. Not hurrying. Like someone who knew exactly where they were going and wasn't afraid of being followed.I followed.The corridor turned and opened into a small room. Low ceiling. Stone walls. One lamp was burning on a table and two chairs were pulled up to it.Caspian in one.Elmira in the other.She looked up when I walked in and her face moved through something fast.He didn't look up at all."I wondered ho
Mabella's POV"He's in the east guest quarters."Fred said it quietly from the doorway of the war room where Alfredo had spread Rosalind's journal across the table and was going through it page by page with the focused stillness of a man who needed to do something with his hands while his head caught up with everything the night had given him.I was beside him, reading over his shoulder, and every page was worse than the last in the particular way that things are worse when they confirm what you already knew but hadn't yet seen written down by someone who was there."East guest quarters," Alfredo said without looking up. "Why is he in the guest quarters and not his usual rooms?""He moved six months ago," Fred said. "Said his usual rooms were too far from the healer's supply corridor. Said it at his age the distance was inconvenient." A pause. "The east guest quarters are directly above the passage that connects to the Luna quarters."Alfredo looked up from the journal.Fred looked ba
Alfredo's POV"She's asleep."Fred said it low and I checked the mirror. Rosalind had her head against the window, hands folded in her lap, the twenty years of waiting finally finished with her for the night.Mabella was in the front with the journal and she hadn't opened it once since we left the house. Just kept her fingers on the cover like she was checking it was still there."You know you can read it," I told her."I know." She looked down at it. "I just keep thinking what if I open it and something's missing. What if twenty years of her keeping this thing safe and hiding and waiting and it's still not enough." She shook her head slightly. "Stupid.""Not stupid," I said."A little stupid," she said."Maybe a little," I said.She almost smiled.Annabella was in the second vehicle behind us. She'd tried to get into ours and Fred had looked at her with a particular expression and she'd gotten into the second one without further discussion and I had stayed completely out of it becaus
Mabella's POV"Sit down, Mabella."My father's voice came out quiet and stripped bare, the way a person sounds when every performance they've been running has finally run out of fuel.I didn't sit."You have thirty seconds to explain why you walked through that door," Alfredo replied from in front
Alfredo's POV"She's asking for you."Fred appeared in the doorway of the war room where I'd spent the last two hours pulling Elder Crest's network apart with three of my most trusted men and a table full of documents that were going to end several careers before morning.I was already moving befor
Alfredo's POV"Move. Now."Fred hit the door before the word left my mouth and I was through it before the echo settled.Two rogues inside. The one by the door never got his hand to his weapon. Fred handled the second and the room went quite fast.Mabella stood in the middle of it all. Wrists raw.
Mabella's POV"We move in an hour."The rogue said it to Annabella like I wasn't sitting three feet away. Like I was furniture. Like the blindfold they'd tied over my eyes had also switched off my ears.I filed that away.People got careless around things they didn't consider threats.The blindfold







