THE FIRST BLOOD

The door burst open before I could scream.

A figure in dark clothing slipped inside fast, closing the door behind him without a sound, and for one frozen second neither of us moved. Then he lunged.

I threw myself sideways off the bed as something sharp cut through the air where I'd been standing, and I hit the floor hard, the small blade still gripped in my hand, my heart pounding so loud I could barely hear anything else.

"Guards!" I screamed the word as loud as I could. "Guards, now!"

The man didn't stop. He came around the bed fast, and I scrambled backward until my shoulders hit the wall, nowhere left to go, his blade catching the moonlight from the window as he raised it again.

I did the only thing I could think to do. I threw myself at his legs.

We went down together, hard, and something in my shoulder screamed with pain as I hit the floor beneath him, but I didn't let go. I got my blade up between us and pushed with everything I had left in my body, and I felt it catch on something, felt him jerk back with a sound that wasn't quite a shout.

The door slammed open again. This time it was real guards, three of them, and they hauled the man off me before I even understood the fight was over.

"Princess!" One of them dropped to my side, hands hovering like he was afraid to touch me and make things worse. "Are you hurt?"

I couldn't answer right away. My whole body was shaking too hard to make words come out properly, and I stared at the blood on my hand, dark in the low candlelight, not sure at first if it was mine or his.

"I'm fine," I finally managed. "I'm fine, check him."

The guards had the attacker pinned to the floor, and one of them ripped the cloth mask away from his face. I didn't recognize him. Just a man, ordinary looking, the kind of face you'd pass in a market and never think twice about.

"Who sent you?" the guard demanded, pressing a knee into the man's back.

The attacker said nothing. He looked at me instead, and something about his eyes made my skin crawl, calm, almost satisfied, like failing tonight hadn't cost him anything at all.

"You should have stayed home, Princess," he said quietly. "The Ashlands won't save you either."

"What does that mean?" I pushed myself up off the floor, ignoring the guard's hand trying to steady me. "Who are you? Who sent you?"

He smiled instead of answering, and that was somehow worse than any words could have been.

The door burst open a third time, and my father strode in with Cassian right behind him, both of them still half dressed like they'd been pulled straight out of bed. My father's eyes swept the room fast, taking in the blood, the overturned chair, the man pinned beneath the guards, and finally me, standing there shaking with my nightgown torn at the shoulder.

"What happened here?" His voice was sharp, controlled, the voice of a man managing a crisis rather than a father seeing his daughter nearly killed.

"Someone tried to kill me," I said. "In my own room. Hours after I got a letter warning me not to trust the people closest to me."

Something flickered across my father's face, gone before I could name it. "What letter?"

Cassian stepped forward before I could answer. "It doesn't matter right now, Father. Someone just tried to murder Elara. We need to know who sent him."

My father turned to the guards. "Take him to the lower cells. I'll question him myself in the morning."

"No." The word left me before I'd fully decided to say it. "I want to be there."

"Elara..."

"I want to be there," I said again, louder this time, and something in my voice must have surprised him, because for once he didn't argue.

The guards dragged the attacker out, and the room slowly emptied until it was just my father, Cassian, and me standing among the wreckage of what used to feel like the safest place in the palace.

"This changes things," my father said finally, rubbing a hand across his jaw. "If someone is willing to strike inside these walls, we can't wait three days."

My stomach dropped. "What are you saying?"

"You leave for the Ash Dominion at first light."

"Father, she needs time—" Cassian started.

"She needs to be somewhere they can't reach her," my father cut in. "And right now, that isn't here."

I looked between the two of them, my hands still trembling, the memory of the attacker's calm smile burned into my mind. *The Ashlands won't save you either.* If that was true, then wherever I was going, I wasn't just walking into a marriage with a stranger they called a monster.

I was walking straight into whatever this man had been sent to finish.

"Pack only what you need," my father said, already turning toward the door. "You leave in four hours."

Four hours.

I looked down at the blood still drying on my hand, and for the first time since this whole nightmare began, the fear inside me started twisting into something else. Something sharper. Something closer to anger.

Whoever sent that man wanted me dead before I ever reached the Ash King.

Which meant somebody, somewhere, was far more afraid of me than anyone in this palace had ever let me believe.