THE WARNING

The letter was short. Shorter than I expected from a king.

"*Princess Elara,*

*You do not know me, and you have no reason to trust anything I write. But I need you to hear this before you cross into my lands. You are not being sent away to marry a monster. You are being sent away from one. Watch the people closest to you. Trust nothing that feels safe. I will explain when you arrive, if you arrive.*

*— D.A.*

I read it twice. Then a third time, because the words didn't make any more sense the second time than they had the first.

"What does it say?" Cassian asked.

I handed him the letter without a word, because I didn't trust my own voice yet. He read it fast, his eyes moving quickly over the short lines, and when he looked up his face had gone pale.

"This doesn't make sense," he said. "Why would the Ash King warn you about your own family?"

"I don't know." I took the letter back and folded it carefully, like it might fall apart if I wasn't gentle with it. "But he knew my name before Virell finished the treaty. He knew four days ago. That's not something a stranger does for no reason."

The messenger was still standing in the doorway, patient, like he expected exactly this kind of confusion.

"Is there a reply?" he asked.

I looked at him properly for the first time. He was younger than I first thought, maybe not much older than Cassian, with dark eyes that gave nothing away.

"Tell your king I received it," I said. "Tell him I'll have questions when I arrive."

The messenger bowed and left, and the steward closed the door behind him, and then it was just Cassian and me again, standing in the middle of my room with a letter that had turned everything I thought I understood upside down in the space of a few sentences.

"He said trust nothing that feels safe." Cassian said the words slowly, like he was trying to find a way to make them mean something less frightening. "That could mean anything. It could be a trick to turn you against Father before you even leave."

"It could," I agreed. "Or it could be true."

"You don't actually believe that."

"I don't know what I believe." I sat back down on the edge of my bed, the letter still in my hand. "But I know Father lied about why he chose me. You told me that yourself, an hour ago. And now a man I've never met is telling me to watch the people closest to me. That's not exactly a comforting coincidence, Cassian."

He didn't have an answer for that. He paced the length of my room instead, running his hand through his hair the way he always did when he was working through a problem he couldn't solve by force.

"I should tell Father about the letter," he said finally.

"No." I stood up fast. "You can't."

"Elara, if someone dangerous is close to you, he needs to know—"

"He needs to know?" My voice rose before I could stop it. "Cassian, what if he's the danger? What if that's exactly what this letter means?"

Cassian stopped pacing. For a long moment he just looked at me, and I watched something shift behind his eyes, doubt creeping in where certainty had been a minute ago.

"You really think our own father would hurt you."

"I think our own father sold me to a kingdom he's called monstrous my entire life, and he did it without blinking," I said. "I think that's already worse than most of what I'm afraid this letter is warning me about."

Neither of us said anything after that. The fire in my hearth had burned low, and the room felt colder than it had an hour ago, though nothing about the temperature had actually changed.

"Get some sleep," Cassian said eventually. "We'll figure this out tomorrow."

He left, and I sat alone with the letter in my lap for a long time after the door closed, turning the two letters at the bottom over and over in my mind. D.A. Not a name I recognized from anything I'd ever heard about the Ash Dominion. Not a title either.

I finally set the letter down and blew out my candle, and I lay awake in the dark longer than I meant to, listening to the ordinary sounds of the palace settling for the night, footsteps in the hall, a door closing somewhere far off, the wind against my window.

I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I knew, I was awake again, sitting straight up in bed with my heart slamming against my ribs before I even understood why.

Something had woken me. A sound. Not the wind.

I held my breath and listened. There it was again, soft, deliberate, coming from just outside my door. Footsteps, moving slowly, the kind of slow that wasn't tiredness. It was caution.

Someone was trying not to be heard.

I slid out of bed without making a sound and reached for the small blade I kept hidden in my nightstand, the one Cassian had given me years ago and told me never to mention to Father. My hand was shaking as I gripped it.

The footsteps stopped right outside my door.

I stared at the handle, waiting for it to turn, my whole body frozen in place, the letter from a stranger still lying open on my desk with a warning I hadn't had nearly enough time to understand.

The handle began to move.