CHAPTER 23 The List

Tomas's hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the papers he pulled from inside his cloak.

"Slow down," Cassian said, lowering his sword slightly but not sheathing it. "Start from the beginning. Who are you, and why are you hiding in a weapons cave under my keep?"

Tomas swallowed hard. "I work in the royal archive. Copying old records, filing treasury reports, nothing important, really. Three weeks ago, I was asked to help pack a shipment of old documents for storage, papers that were supposed to be destroyed, actually, records too old to matter anymore."

"But you didn't destroy them," I guessed.

"I got curious," Tomas admitted. "I read a few pages before I burned the rest, and what I read scared me too much to finish the job. I hid the papers instead, and I've been running ever since, terrified someone would notice they were missing."

"Running to a secret tunnel underneath my keep," Cassian said flatly. "That's a strange place to hide."

"I didn't know it led here," Tomas said quickly. "I followed an old servant, a woman traveling with the king's convoy, three nights ago. She moved like she knew exactly where she was going, so I followed her through the woods, hoping she might lead me somewhere safe. Instead she led me straight into this tunnel, and then she vanished deeper into it before I could catch up."

My stomach turned. "Mira."

"I don't know her name," Tomas said. "Older woman, gray hair, moved fast for someone her age."

"That's her," I said. "Show us what you found."

Tomas held out the stack of papers with trembling hands. Cassian took them first, scanning quickly, his jaw tightening with every page.

"These are old treasury records," Cassian said. "Decades old. Payments authorized under royal seal, going to accounts with no names attached, only symbols."

"Crescent moons," I said, my blood running cold as I looked over his shoulder.

"Not just crescent moons," Tomas said. "Keep going. There's a list further back, names of every noble house that received payments over the years, going all the way back to before either of you were born."

Cassian flipped through several more pages, and I watched his face go pale as he reached the list Tomas mentioned.

"Read it," I said.

Cassian's voice came out low and grim. "House Sterling."

My breath caught. "Your family."

"My grandfather," Cassian said slowly, staring at the page like it might change if he looked hard enough. "Payments received, dated over forty years ago, marked with the same crescent moon symbol from Mira's letter."

"There's more," Tomas said quietly. "Further down."

Cassian kept reading, and I watched something break slightly behind his eyes.

"House Bloodmoon," he read aloud.

I grabbed the paper from his hands, scanning it myself, my heart pounding. There it was, plain and undeniable, an old payment recorded decades ago under my own family's royal seal.

"This can't be right," I said. "My father would never—"

"It's not your father's name," Tomas said gently. "Look closer at the date."

I looked again, and the breath left my lungs entirely. The payment was dated nearly sixty years ago, long before my father was even born.

"My grandfather," I whispered. "This was during my grandfather's reign."

"Both families," Cassian said slowly. "Sterling and Bloodmoon. Both accepting payments from whoever built this network, generations ago."

"For what?" I demanded, looking at Tomas. "What were they paying for?"

Tomas hesitated, glancing nervously between us. "I don't know exactly. The records only show payments and dates, not reasons. But there's a name mentioned several times throughout the older pages, always connected to the largest payments. A group calling themselves the Ashen Circle."

"I've never heard of them," Cassian said.

"Neither had I," Tomas admitted. "Not until I found these papers. But whatever they are, they've apparently been quietly funding and influencing royal families across at least three kingdoms for generations, buying loyalty, buying silence, buying whatever they needed to keep working in the shadows."

I thought of Damian's words in the cell. Powerful families, working toward the same goal for generations.

"This is what my mother found," I said quietly. "This exact record, or something like it. This is what got her killed."

"If that's true," Cassian said, "then whoever leads the Ashen Circle now has been hiding successfully for at least twenty years since her death, probably longer."

"And they're still active," I said. "Damian confirmed that much himself. Whatever this Circle wants, they're still working toward it right now, tonight, while we're standing in a cave full of stolen weapons."

Tomas shifted nervously. "There's one more thing. The last page. I almost didn't include it because I wasn't sure what it meant, but given everything else..."

He pulled one final sheet from the stack, handing it directly to me this time.

It was a short list of names, more recent than the others, the ink darker, clearly written within the last few years rather than decades ago.

I read the names slowly, and my whole body went cold.

Lord Halden. Advisor Corwin. General Reyes.

Names I recognized instantly. Men who sat at my father's council table. Men who had advised him on matters of state for years. Men I had grown up seeing at royal functions, trusted completely simply because they had always been there.

And at the very bottom of the list, one final name that made my knees nearly buckle beneath me.

Lady Freya Sterling.

"No," Cassian said immediately, snatching the paper from my hands. "That's impossible. My cousin has hated outsiders her entire life, but she would never betray this family."

"Cassian," I said gently, "she was the first person to warn me something dark was happening in this keep. She knew about Lyra's death before anyone else mentioned it to me."

"Because she suspected foul play, not because she caused it," Cassian argued, though I could hear the doubt creeping into his own voice as he said it.

"I'm not accusing her," I said carefully. "I'm saying we need to ask her directly, tonight, before she has any reason to run like Damian and Mira already have."

Cassian's jaw tightened, clearly torn between loyalty to his cousin and the mounting evidence stacking up against everyone we'd trusted so far tonight.

"Fine," he said finally. "We ask her. Together."

We gathered Tomas's papers carefully, and Cassian ordered two of his guards to stay behind and secure the weapons cache while the rest of us made our way back through the tunnels toward the keep above. Tomas walked close beside me the entire way, still shaking slightly, clearly relieved to finally be free of whatever fear had kept him hiding underground for two days straight.

By the time we climbed back up into the dungeon corridor, the sun had fully risen outside, weak morning light filtering down through the small barred windows near the ceiling.

My father was waiting for us anxiously near the stairs, his face tightening with worry the moment he saw the stack of papers in Cassian's hands.

"What did you find?" he asked.

Cassian handed him the papers wordlessly, watching his face carefully as he read through them. I watched my father's expression shift from confusion to horror to something close to grief as he reached the list of names near the end.

"Halden," he read aloud, his voice hollow. "Corwin. Reyes." He looked up at me slowly. "These men have advised me for over a decade, Aurora. I trusted them with everything."

"There's one more name, Father," I said quietly. "The last one on the list."

He turned back to the paper, scanning further down, and I watched the color drain completely from his face as he reached Lady Freya's name.

"We need to find her immediately," he said, already moving toward the stairs. "Before she realizes we know."

We rushed up through the keep, following the corridors toward Freya's chambers, my heart pounding with every step, uncertain whether we would find answers, an empty room, or something far worse waiting behind that door.

Cassian reached her chamber first, throwing the door open without knocking.

The room was empty, the bed untouched, as if no one had slept there at all that night.

But on the small writing desk near the window, laid out neatly in plain view, sat a single folded letter, sealed with the same crescent moon symbol we had seen twice already that morning, addressed clearly, unmistakably, to me.