CHAPTER 8 NO ONE SLEEPS TONIGHT

Nobody slept that night. By sunrise, half the keep already knew about the stable hand.

I stood at the window of my room, watching soldiers carry a covered stretcher across the courtyard. Freya was down there too, wrapped in a heavy cloak, watching the same thing I was. She didn't look shocked. She looked like she was waiting for something.

There was a knock at my door. Cassian, still in yesterday's clothes, dark circles under his eyes.

"We need to talk," he said. "Before the generals start asking questions I can't answer yet."

I followed him down to his study. The note from last night sat on his desk, smoothed out flat under a paperweight, like he'd been staring at it all night trying to make it mean something else.

The Princess should have stayed hidden.

"Who else knew I was coming here?" I asked. "Before I even arrived."

"My generals. My cousin. The household staff who prepared your room." He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "And whoever they told."

"So it could be anyone."

"It could be anyone," he agreed. "Which is why I want you to stay inside the keep walls until I find who did this."

"No."

He looked up, surprised.

"I didn't survive three years under Julian's roof by hiding every time something got difficult," I said. "I'm not going to start now."

Cassian studied me for a long moment. Something in his expression shifted, like he was reconsidering an opinion he'd already formed about me.

"Fine," he said. "But you don't go anywhere alone. Not even to the garden."

I could live with that.

We spent the morning going through what little his men had found. The stable hand's name was Tobin. Nineteen years old, no family in the keep, no enemies anyone knew of. He'd been on duty checking the horses when someone got to him.

"There's no blood trail," Cassian said, spreading a hand-drawn map of the stables across the desk. "Whoever did this knew how to kill quietly and get out without being seen."

"That takes training," I said. "Not a random attacker. Someone who's done this before."

"Lyra," Cassian said quietly.

"Lyra," I agreed.

Neither of us said the rest out loud. If the same person had killed her, they'd been walking around this keep for two years, waiting.

A guard interrupted us just before noon. General Baron wanted an audience. Word had spread fast, and the older man wasn't the type to sit quietly with unanswered questions.

We met him in the great hall. He didn't bother with pleasantries.

"There's a killer inside these walls, Alpha, and now there's a note naming the princess," Baron said, loud enough for the soldiers nearby to hear. "The men are asking why we brought royal trouble into a keep that's already stretched thin fighting rogues on the border."

"The princess isn't the trouble, General," Cassian said. "Someone in this keep is."

"With respect, that's exactly my point." Baron's eyes flicked to me. "Every problem we've had started the week she arrived."

I stepped forward before Cassian could answer for me.

"Tobin's death has nothing to do with when I arrived, General. It has to do with someone who's been getting away with murder in this keep for two years and just got confident enough to leave a note." I held his gaze. "If you'd like to blame someone, blame whoever's been letting a killer walk free since Lyra died."

Baron's mouth tightened, but he didn't have an answer for that. A few of the younger soldiers behind him exchanged looks I couldn't quite read.

Cassian didn't say anything, but later, walking back through the corridor, he glanced at me sideways.

"You didn't have to defend yourself like that."

"Yes, I did," I said. "If I let one general talk to me like that, they'll all try it."

He almost smiled. Almost.

That evening, I went looking for Freya.

I found her in the small library off the east wing, sitting near the fire with a book she wasn't really reading. She looked up when I came in, and for once, the sharp smile wasn't waiting for me.

"Come to accuse me of something, Princess?"

"Should I?"

She closed the book. "I didn't kill Tobin. And I didn't kill Lyra, if that's the next question."

"Then who did?"

Freya was quiet for a moment, staring into the fire. "I don't know. I've wondered for two years. Lyra and I weren't close, but she didn't deserve what happened to her." She looked at me properly for the first time. "Neither did Tobin. He used to sneak my horse extra apples when he thought no one was watching."

It was the first honest thing I'd heard her say since I arrived.

"Why do you dislike me so much, then?" I asked. "If it's not about Lyra."

"Because everyone who marries into this family for politics ends up either dead or heartbroken," Freya said flatly. "And I didn't want to watch it happen a third time."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

"Careful, Princess," she added, standing and pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders. "Whoever left that note isn't finished. People like that don't stop after one warning."

She left before I could ask her what she meant by that.

I couldn't sleep again that night. Around midnight, I gave up trying and walked down to the kitchens for something warm to drink, one of Cassian's guards trailing a careful distance behind me, just like he'd promised.

The kitchen was empty except for the low glow of the hearth. I was reaching for the kettle when I noticed the back door standing slightly open, the night air curling in through the gap.

That door was always locked at night. Every servant in the keep knew that.

I motioned for the guard to check it, my hand instinctively going to the dagger at my hip. He stepped past me, pushed the door open wider, and went still.

"Princess," he said, his voice tight. "You should see this."

I walked over slowly. Someone had left something on the back step, half-hidden in the shadow of the doorframe.

It was a small wooden box, the same size and shape as the one I'd carried out of Julian's apartment weeks ago, the one holding my royal seal and identity papers.

Except that box was locked safely in my room upstairs.

I crouched down and opened the lid with shaking fingers.

Inside, resting on a bed of dark velvet, was a single silver wedding ring.

Thin. Tarnished at the edges. Practically weightless.

The exact ring I had left behind on Julian's tablet, the night I walked out of his life for good.