SILENCED

I didn't pack first, I went to the cells.

Nobody stopped me on the way down, mostly because nobody expected me to go there at all. I moved fast through the lower halls of the palace, my shoulder still aching from the fall, my mind fixed on one thing. I needed answers before I left, and my father clearly wasn't going to get them for me in time.

The guard at the cell door looked surprised to see me. "Princess, you shouldn't be down here."

"I need five minutes with the prisoner."

"Your father gave orders that no one..."

"I'm not asking your permission," I said, and something in my voice must have carried more authority than I actually felt, because he stepped aside.

The cell was small and cold, lit by a single torch on the wall outside the bars. I expected to see the man from my room, still calm, still smiling that terrible satisfied smile.

Instead I found him slumped against the far wall, unmoving, blood pooling dark beneath him on the stone floor.

"No." I grabbed the bars with both hands. "No, no, no—"

The guard rushed forward and swore under his breath. "He's dead. Someone got to him."

"That's not possible." My voice came out shaking. "He was guarded. Who else has access down here?"

"Only palace guards and your father, Princess."

The words landed like a physical blow. I stared at the body through the bars, at the wound in his throat, clean and precise, the work of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and hadn't wasted a single motion doing it.

Someone silenced him before he could talk.

"Get my father," I said. "Now."

But even as I said it, some cold, quiet part of me already knew what his answer would be. Confusion. Outrage. A promise to investigate. And nothing would come of it, because whoever had done this had already proven they could reach anywhere inside these walls they wanted to reach.

I didn't wait for my father. I turned and walked back toward my chambers, my hands still shaking, and this time it wasn't only fear driving me. Something harder was starting to settle underneath it, something that felt almost like resolve.

Someone in my own home had just killed a man to keep him from telling me the truth.

That told me more than the man himself ever could have.

Four hours became less than three by the time I finished packing what little I was allowed to bring. A trunk of clothes. A few books I couldn't leave behind. The letter from the Ash King, folded small and tucked against my chest where no one would think to search.

Cassian found me in the courtyard as the escort finished loading the last of the horses, the sky still dark, the air sharp and cold enough to bite through my traveling cloak.

"I heard about the prisoner," he said quietly, falling into step beside me.

"Then you know what it means."

"I know it means someone close to Father is involved in this," Cassian said. "I just don't understand why."

"Neither do I." I stopped at the edge of the courtyard and looked back at the palace one last time, its windows dark except for a few scattered lights, the only home I'd ever known suddenly feeling like a stranger's house I was relieved to be leaving. "But I intend to find out."

"Be careful in the Ashlands." Cassian's voice cracked slightly on the words. "Whatever the Ash King's letter meant, you don't actually know if he's telling the truth either."

"I know." I managed a small, tired smile. "But right now, a stranger's warning is the only honest thing anyone has given me in the last day."

Cassian pulled me into a hug, quick and fierce, the kind of hug we hadn't shared since we were children. "Send word when you arrive. However you can."

"I will."

The captain of my escort called my name, and I forced myself to let go of my brother and walk toward the horses, toward the border, toward a man the entire kingdom called a monster and a warning I still didn't fully understand.

I mounted my horse without looking back again, because I knew if I looked back one more time, I might lose whatever fragile courage I had left.

The gates opened, and the escort moved forward into the dark road beyond the palace walls.

I didn't know it yet, but somewhere out past the first bend in that road, hidden among the trees lining the route to the border, someone was already watching us leave.