CHAPTER 9 THE RING

I stared at the ring until my eyes burned.

It couldn't be the same one. It couldn't be. I had left that ring on Julian's tablet three days before I ever set foot in the Bloodmoon estate, let alone the Iron Keep, hundreds of miles away.

And yet there it sat, thin and tarnished, exactly the way I remembered it.

"Princess?" The guard was watching me carefully. "Do you know what this is?"

"Get Cassian," I said. "Now."

He didn't wait for a second order.

I stayed crouched by the box, not touching the ring again, staring at the open door and the darkness beyond it. Someone had walked right up to the kitchen entrance in the middle of the night, past guards who were supposed to be watching every corner of this keep, and left this without being seen.

Cassian arrived within minutes, hair mussed like he'd been dragged straight out of bed, a sword already in his hand. He took one look at the box and then at my face.

"Talk to me," he said.

"That's my wedding ring. My old one. The one I left with Julian." My voice came out steadier than I expected. "I left it on his tablet the night I walked out. I never touched it again."

Cassian crouched beside me and studied the ring without picking it up, the same way a soldier studies a trap before deciding whether to step over it or around it.

"Are you certain it's the same ring?"

"There's a small scratch on the inside band. Julian did it the first year we were married, trying to resize it himself instead of paying a jeweler." I swallowed. "If it's there, it's the same ring."

Cassian pulled a cloth from his pocket, lifted the ring carefully, and turned it toward the firelight streaming out from the kitchen. He went quiet for a long moment.

"It's there," he said.

The room felt colder all of a sudden.

"Someone either dug through Julian's belongings and stole this," Cassian said slowly, "or Julian gave it to them himself."

"Or Julian brought it here," I said. "Personally."

Cassian's eyes snapped to mine. "You think your ex-husband is inside my keep."

"I don't know what to think. But someone left a note calling me a princess who should have stayed hidden, and now someone's left the exact ring I threw away when I stopped being his wife. That's not a coincidence, Cassian. That's a message."

He stood, sheathing his sword, and called two more guards over from the hallway.

"Search the grounds. Every outbuilding, every gate, every place a stranger could have gotten in or out unseen. If anyone saw a visitor tonight, I want to know within the hour."

The guards scattered. Cassian turned back to me, and for the first time since I'd met him, I saw something close to worry sitting plainly on his face, not hidden behind that stone-cold commander expression he wore for everyone else.

"Come with me," he said. "You shouldn't be standing near an open door right now."

He walked me back to my room himself, staying just inside the doorway while I sat on the edge of the bed, my hands still faintly trembling. I hated that they were trembling. Three years with Julian, and I never once let him see me shake. I wasn't about to let a piece of tarnished silver do what he never managed.

"You think it's Julian," Cassian said. It wasn't really a question.

"I think it's exactly the kind of thing he'd do," I said. "He's proud. If he found out I remarried, and remarried well, he wouldn't just let that go quietly. He'd want me to know he knows. He'd want to rattle me."

"And the note? The dead stable hand?"

I hesitated. "That doesn't sound like Julian. He's cruel in small ways. Petty ways. He's never been the type to get his own hands dirty."

"So either he's working with someone inside my keep," Cassian said, "or two different threats just happened to land on your doorstep in the same week."

Neither option sat well in my stomach.

"There's a third possibility," I said quietly. "Someone here wants me to believe it's Julian. To make me look over my shoulder at the wrong enemy while the real one stays hidden."

Cassian was quiet for a long moment, considering that.

"That's the kind of thinking that keeps generals alive," he said finally. "Where did you learn to think like that?"

"I spent three years pretending to be someone with nothing to plan for," I said. "It gave me a lot of time to think about everything I wasn't allowed to say out loud."

Something passed between us then, something that had nothing to do with the ring or the note or the dead boy in the stables. He looked at me the way he had the first day we met, like I was a puzzle he hadn't expected to find interesting.

"Get some rest," he said finally, stepping back toward the door. "I'll post two more guards outside your room tonight."

"Cassian."

He paused.

"Thank you," I said. "For believing me instead of telling me I'm imagining things."

"I don't think you imagine anything, Aurora," he said. "I think you notice everything. That's what worries me."

He left, and I sat alone in the quiet for a long time before I finally lay down, still fully dressed, my dagger resting under my pillow where I could reach it in half a second.

I woke to shouting.

Not the panicked kind from the night before, but something sharper, more urgent. I was up and moving before I fully understood why, throwing on a cloak and stepping into the hallway where one of my guards stood waiting, pale-faced.

"What's happened?" I asked.

"A rider came in at dawn, Princess. From the border patrol." He hesitated. "There's been an attack. A small trade caravan heading through the eastern pass. Six dead."

My stomach dropped. "Rogue wolves?"

"That's what the survivors are saying. But—" He glanced down the hallway before lowering his voice. "One of the wounded is asking for you by name. Says he has information about who's really behind it. Says he won't talk to anyone but you."

I felt the floor tilt slightly under my feet.

"Where is he?"

"The healer's wing. Alpha Cassian's already there, but the man's refusing to speak until you arrive."

I didn't wait for an escort. I moved fast down the corridor, my guard hurrying to keep pace, my mind racing through everything that had happened in the last two days — the note, the ring, and now a survivor from an attack on the border who apparently knew something worth staying silent for.

When I pushed open the door to the healer's wing, Cassian was standing over a cot near the far wall, his face grim.

The man lying there was badly injured, bandages soaked through at the shoulder, his breathing shallow and ragged. But when his eyes found mine across the room, something like relief flooded his face.

"Princess Aurora," he rasped, reaching a shaking hand toward me. "You need to hear this before I lose my nerve. It wasn't rogue wolves that hit the caravan."

"Then what was it?" I asked, kneeling beside the cot.

His grip tightened weakly around my wrist.

"It was your husband," he whispered. "Your first one. He's alive, Princess, and he's not alone.”