CHAPTER 21 the letter from Mina

My hands shook as I took the folded parchment from the guard.

I knew that seal. A small crescent moon pressed into dark wax, the same mark I used to find on the little notes my nursemaid left tucked under my pillow when I was a girl, silly things like sleep well, little star or tomorrow we'll pick berries by the stream.

"Mira," I whispered.

"You know her well," Damian said from inside his cell, his voice almost gentle now. "She practically raised you those first few years. Combed your hair. Sang you to sleep. Nobody in the palace ever thought twice about a quiet nursemaid coming and going through every hallway, every private room, completely unnoticed."

"Shut up," Cassian said sharply, stepping between me and the bars.

I didn't wait to hear anything else. I turned and hurried up the dungeon stairs, my father and Cassian close behind me, my heart hammering with every step.

We reached my chambers, and I broke the wax seal with trembling fingers, unfolding the parchment inside.

The handwriting was neat and familiar, the same handwriting that used to write my name on birthday cards when I was small.

My dearest Aurora,

If you are reading this, then Damian has already told you what I always feared he would tell you one day. I am sorry you had to learn it this way, and sorrier still that I am not brave enough to stand in front of you and explain it myself.

I did not want to hurt your mother. Please believe that much, even if nothing else I say tonight earns your trust. I was young, frightened, and deeply in debt to men far more dangerous than anyone in your father's court. They came to me quietly, promised to erase everything I owed, and asked only for one small thing in return. I told myself it was only information. A few papers left unlocked. A door left open at the right hour.

I did not know what they intended to do with what I gave them until it was already done.

I have spent twenty years watching you grow from that little girl I sang to sleep into the woman standing wherever you are reading this letter now, and every single day of it has been its own punishment. I could never undo what happened, so instead I stayed close, hoping in some small, foolish way that I could protect you from whatever came next, even if I never deserved to.

Damian is not lying to you tonight. There are others, Aurora, powerful people who believe your bloodline stands in the way of something they have wanted for a very long time. I do not know all their names, but I know enough to say this clearly: trust no one at court simply because you have known them your whole life. I am living proof of how little that means.

I am leaving tonight, and I do not expect to return. Perhaps that makes me a coward. Perhaps I have always been one.

Forgive me if you can. If you cannot, know that I understand completely.

Mira

I read the letter twice before I finally lowered it, my vision blurred with tears I hadn't realized were falling.

"She's gone," I said quietly. "She helped kill my mother, and she's just... gone."

My father took the letter gently from my hands, reading it himself, his jaw tightening with every line.

"We'll find her," he said. "Wherever she's run to."

"Will we?" I asked. "Damian built an entire rebellion under your nose for years, Father. Mira lived inside our walls for two decades without anyone suspecting a thing. How many more people are we missing right now, standing close enough to smile at us at dinner?"

Nobody answered that, because nobody had a good answer.

Cassian took the letter next, scanning it carefully. "She mentions men she owed debts to. Powerful men. That's not vague guilt talk, that's a real lead."

"A lead that's now twenty years cold," my father said heavily.

"Then we start walking it backward," Cassian said. "Damian is still in that cell. He knows more than he's told us. And now we have Mira's letter confirming there's a wider group involved, which means we finally have two threads to pull instead of guessing blind."

I wiped my eyes and forced myself to breathe steadily.

"There's something else," I said slowly. "Something that's been bothering me since Damian mentioned it. He said these people have been working toward the same goal for generations, across three kingdoms. That's not a small conspiracy, Father. That's something old. Something that started long before my mother ever found those documents."

"I know," my father said quietly. "Which terrifies me more than anything Damian said tonight."

A knock sounded at the door before anyone could say more. One of Cassian's guards stepped inside, looking pale.

"Alpha. Your Majesty. There's something you both need to see downstairs. It's Damian."

We hurried back down to the dungeon, my stomach twisting with dread the entire way.

Damian's cell was empty.

Not broken open. Not forced. The lock still hung neatly in place, untouched, exactly as it had been when we left. But the man himself was simply gone, vanished from a sealed stone cell with no visible way out.

"That's impossible," Cassian said, stepping closer to examine the bars. "No one passed through here without being seen. I had two guards posted at the top of these stairs the entire time."

"We saw no one, Alpha," one of the guards insisted, standing frozen near the entrance. "I swear it on my life."

I stared into the empty cell, my mind racing back to Damian's calm, knowing smile just moments before he told me the truth about Mira. He had known, even then, sitting in chains, exactly how this night would end.

"He wasn't afraid," I said slowly, the realization settling over me like ice water. "The whole time we spoke to him, he wasn't afraid at all, because he already knew he wasn't staying in that cell."

My father's face had gone pale as stone.

"Which means," he said quietly, "someone inside this very keep helped him disappear tonight."

Behind us, a soft, familiar laugh drifted down from somewhere deep in the shadowed corridor, echoing off the stone walls until none of us could tell exactly where it was coming from.