CHAPTER 24 What Freya Left Behind

Nobody moved for a moment. We all just stared at the letter sitting on Freya's desk, the crescent moon seal catching the pale morning light.

"Don't touch it," Cassian said quickly, stepping in front of me before I could reach for it. "We don't know what it is."

"It's a letter, Cassian, not a bomb."

"After tonight, I'm not ruling anything out," he said, but he stepped aside and let me approach the desk.

I picked it up carefully, my fingers trembling slightly as I broke the seal. The parchment inside was thick and expensive, the handwriting elegant and controlled, nothing like the shaky letter Mira had left behind.

Aurora,

If you're reading this, you've already found the list, or you're close enough to it that it no longer matters whether I hide. I won't insult either of us by pretending otherwise.

Yes, my name is there. Yes, I've known about the Ashen Circle for years. But before you let Cassian's anger, or your father's grief, decide what kind of person I am, I want you to understand something. I did not choose this the way Damian chose it. I did not choose it the way whoever poisoned your mother chose it.

I was born into it, the same way you were born a princess and never asked for the weight that came with it.

My mother served the Circle before me. Her mother served it before her. By the time I was old enough to understand what that meant, I was already tangled so deep inside it that walking away would have meant a knife in my back before nightfall. I have spent my entire life playing a role I never wanted, feeding small pieces of information to people who terrify me more than any rogue wolf ever could.

I warned you about the danger in this keep because some part of me hoped you would be smart enough, and strong enough, to survive what I could not stop. I have watched two women die in this castle already, Aurora. I did not want to watch a third.

I am leaving tonight, not to escape justice, but because staying means someone silences me before I can tell you what I actually know. There are people higher than Halden, higher than Corwin, higher than even the shadowy figures who call themselves the Ashen Circle's leadership. People close enough to your own father's throne that even he would never suspect them.

I will find a way to reach you again, somewhere safer than these walls. Until then, trust no one simply because they wear a familiar face. I learned that lesson from watching my own mother smile at people she was quietly helping to destroy.

I am sorry, cousin. For everything I could have stopped and didn't.

Freya

I lowered the letter slowly, my chest tight with a strange mixture of anger and pity I hadn't expected to feel.

"What does it say?" Cassian asked.

I handed it to him without a word. He read it twice, his jaw working silently, before finally setting it down on the desk.

"She's been part of this her whole life," he said quietly. "Born into it. Trapped in it."

"Do you believe her?" my father asked.

Cassian was quiet for a long moment. "I don't know. I want to. She's family. But after everything that's happened in the last two days, I'm not sure I trust my own judgment about who deserves the benefit of the doubt anymore."

I understood that feeling completely.

"She says there are people even higher up," I said. "Close enough to the throne that Father would never suspect them."

"That could mean anyone," my father said grimly. "Which is exactly the kind of fear these people want us feeling right now. Confused. Suspicious of everyone around us. Unable to trust our own council."

"Then we don't play their game," Cassian said. "We stop guessing who might be involved and start proving who actually is."

"How?" I asked.

"Marcus and Elira are still in my dungeon," Cassian said. "They know pieces of this. Damian escaped, but he can't have gone far without help, not with half his army destroyed and my soldiers combing the countryside for him already. And now we have Tomas's records, proof going back decades." He looked at my father. "Your Majesty, I suggest we move everyone we've captured to the capital together, where we can question them properly under royal authority, away from whatever influence might still be hiding inside my walls."

My father nodded slowly. "Agreed. I'll send riders ahead to secure the palace dungeons and double the guard around the treasury and archive."

"What about Freya?" I asked. "And Damian? And Mira?"

"We send trackers after all three," Cassian said. "But we don't wait for them before we start pulling apart what we already have."

The next few hours passed in a blur of preparation. Wounded soldiers were moved carefully into wagons. Marcus and Elira were bound securely and loaded under heavy guard, both silent, both clearly aware of how much trouble waited for them at the capital. Tomas rode close to my father's convoy, still nervous, still clutching the satchel of papers that had turned his quiet archive job into something far more dangerous than he ever expected.

Before we left, Cassian pulled me aside near the stables, away from the noise and rush of soldiers loading supplies.

"You don't have to come with us," he said. "The Iron Keep still needs rebuilding after last night. The grain stores, the wall damage, the men we lost. Someone needs to stay and manage that."

"You're staying," I said. It wasn't a question.

"I'm the Alpha of this territory," Cassian said. "I can't abandon my people the moment things get difficult, especially not right after an attack like this."

"Then I'm staying too," I said.

"Aurora, this is bigger than the keep now. This is about your family, your mother, the throne itself. You should be there when your father questions these people."

"I know," I said. "But I made you a promise the day I signed that contract. Full partnership. That means I don't run off to chase my own answers while you stay behind cleaning up a mess that's partly my fault for bringing here."

Something softened in Cassian's expression, the same look he'd given me the night I impressed his generals with a solution about trade routes.

"It's not your fault," he said quietly. "None of this is your fault, Aurora. You didn't ask Damian to build an army, or Elira to seek revenge, or your uncle to poison your mother's tea sixty years before you were even born. You walked into a fire that was already burning long before you arrived."

"Maybe," I said. "But I'm not walking away from it now that I'm standing in the middle of it."

Cassian studied me for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind his gray eyes.

"Send Tomas and the papers with your father," he finally said. "Let the capital start questioning Marcus and Elira properly. But you and I stay here, finish securing the keep, and figure out where Damian and Freya might have run to. We're closer to wherever they're hiding than the capital is."

"That works," I said.

My father, when we told him the plan, didn't argue as much as I expected.

"I understand wanting to stay close to the ground where the trail is freshest," he said. "But Aurora, promise me something."

"What?"

"Promise me you'll be careful. I already lost your mother to this shadow game. I won't survive losing you to it as well."

"I promise," I said, and meant it, even though some small part of me already suspected keeping that promise might prove far harder than making it.

We watched the convoy disappear down the mountain road an hour later, wagons full of prisoners and evidence heading toward the capital under heavy guard. Cassian and I stood together at the gate long after they vanished from sight, the morning sun finally warming the cold stone beneath our feet.

"Where do we start?" I asked.

"Damian's forces retreated toward the eastern woods," Cassian said. "If he's still alive and hiding somewhere nearby, that's the most likely direction. Freya, though, that's harder to guess. She could have gone anywhere."

"She said she'd find a way to reach me again," I said. "Somewhere safer than these walls. That suggests she has somewhere specific in mind already."

"Family property, maybe," Cassian said. "There's an old hunting lodge my father used to own, north of here, mostly abandoned now. If she wanted somewhere quiet and familiar to disappear to, that's exactly the kind of place she might choose."

"Then that's where we start," I said.

We gathered a small group of trusted soldiers, enough to protect ourselves without drawing unwanted attention, and set out toward the northern hills before the sun had even fully cleared the treetops. The ride was quiet, tense, both of us watching the tree line carefully for any sign of movement.

By late afternoon, the old hunting lodge came into view, exactly as Cassian described, a weathered stone building half-swallowed by overgrown vines, smoke curling faintly from its chimney.

"Someone's there," I said quietly.

Cassian nodded, signaling for the soldiers to spread out around the perimeter before we approached the door together, weapons ready.

He knocked once, hard, the sound echoing through the quiet woods.

The door creaked open slowly from the inside, and standing there, pale and exhausted, was not Freya at all.

It was Julian.

"Aurora," he said, his voice hoarse, his eyes wide with something close to genuine terror. "Thank the stars you found me. You need to leave right now, before it's too late."

"Where's Freya?" I demanded.

"She's not here," Julian said quickly, glancing nervously over his shoulder into the dark lodge behind him. "But something else is, and it's not something either of us can fight.”