Mag-log inKael's POV"Find everything that we can about him and let me know," I said to Dave. "Find out every one of the routes. She has barely been in this pack and they are all onto her life. Mobilize our men and make sure they are all safe. I don't want any death reported to me." I turned to Selena."Someone must have noticed something. If they formulated that poison specifically for you, then someone knows about how you heal. Someone inside this pack is not safe.""The maid who treated me the first time I was brought here," Selena said. "She noticed me healing faster than she expected. She may have been bought.""We should find her," I said."Find her for what? To investigate? To question why she sold her loyalty?" Selena asked."She—""She will not tell the truth if she is caught," she said. "That is if she has not already done what the prisoner did before anyone reaches her. Let her think she won. Find someone you trust who is close enough to watch her without making it obvious." She held
Selena's POV"Doctor," I said. "Give us the room." I’d like to talk to my husband alone.The doctor looked at Kael who nodded and then he left."Nia," I said."My lady—""Outside," I said. "I will call you." She dipped her lead downwards before walking out of the room and I turned to Kael, shifting closer as I spoke."Ask me," I said to Kael."Ask you what?" he said."Whatever you have been sitting on since Lucien walked out of here," I said. "You have been holding something for the last hour and I am not stupid enough to pretend I cannot see it."He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "When you passed out and Nia picked you up, I could not get to you. I sat in that study and watched her carry you out and I could not do a single thing about it." He held my gaze. "I have not felt that useless since the first morning I woke up in this chair.""That is not what you wanted to ask me," I said."No," he said. "It is not.""Then ask it.""The doctor says you are healing faster than any pat
Selena's POV"Someone get help!" I heard Kael scream from his wheelchair. I didn't know how long they ran but I felt Nia carry me in her hands, running to the pack hospital.The ceiling moved above me in pieces. Corridor lights, then dark, then the outside air cold against my face for a moment, then lights again. Someone's arms under my back and knees, running, the rhythm of it jarring through my body.Kael's voice is somewhere behind us. Fast. Giving instructions I could not fully track.Then the hospital.Bright lights. Hands I didn't recognize taking me from Nia. A surface under my back, hard and narrow. A mask over my face and something sharp in my arm and then the voices became one voice and then even that went somewhere I couldn't follow.---I came back in pieces.First sound. Machines, low and steady, the particular rhythm of something monitoring something else. Then light through my eyelids, more than the corridor had been. Then the specific cold of a hospital room that is ne
Selena's POV"My lady." Nia's voice came sharp through the dark. "Wake up."I was already sitting up before my eyes were fully open. Something in her tone cut through sleep completely."What happened?" I asked."The tray woman," Nia said, stepping into the room with the candle throwing light up her face. "One of the kitchen staff found her near the food preparation station twenty minutes ago. The one where your morning tray is assembled." She paused. "She was not supposed to be there. Her shift does not start for another three hours."I was out of bed before Nia finished the sentence."Where is she now?" I asked, reaching for my robe."Dave's men have her in the east corridor," Nia said. "They are waiting for instruction."I crossed to the connecting door and knocked twice. Hard.The door opened faster than it should have if Kael had been sleeping."The tray woman," I said. "She was found near my food preparation station in the middle of the night. Dave's men have her."His jaw tighte
Selena's POV"No," he said. "We never were."The office was quiet around us. The folder sat open on the desk between us with the name on it and I kept looking at it the way you look at something that has rearranged everything you thought you understood about where the danger was coming from."How long do you think they have been in position?" I asked."Three years minimum," Kael said. "The compound was made three years ago. Whatever role they play in this palace, they have had that long to make themselves indispensable. To make sure nobody looks at them.""Which means they are good at it," I said. "Nobody has looked at them in three years.""Until now," he said."Until now," I agreed. I sat back. "We cannot move on them yet.""No," he said. "Not until the clinic confirms the sourcing. If we move too early and the evidence is not airtight they walk free and disappear and we never find them again.""So we watch," I said."We watch," he said."And in the meantime they are still in this p
Kael's POV"Dave was in my office at seven."You look terrible," he said, setting two cups of coffee on the desk and dropping into the chair across from me."The visitor records," I said, ignoring that. "Tell me you started last night.""I started last night," he said. "I also slept for three hours so whatever I look like, you look worse." He pulled a folder from under his arm and opened it on the desk between us. "Three years of palace visitor logs. Everyone who came through the main gate, the staff entrance, the supplier entrance, and the east wing private access. Cross-referenced against the clinic head's preliminary notes on who would have had the knowledge to prepare that compound.""How many names?" I asked."On the full list, forty-seven," Dave said. "People who visited this palace in the six months before the attack three years ago with enough access and enough time inside the walls to store something." He turned a page. "Cross-referenced against the clinic's notes on preparat







