A Letter From Home

Marlowe's hands were shaking before she'd even taken the letter from Serah's fingers, Priya's name landing in her chest like a struck match, hope and terror tangled too close together to separate.

"How," she managed. "How does she even know where to send something? How did anyone get this past your walls?"

"It wasn't delivered past our walls," Serah said carefully. "It was found at the northern gate an hour ago, tucked into the collar of a hawk that dropped dead the moment the guards approached it. We don't know who sent the bird. We only know the handwriting matches a sample Ronan's man collected from your apartment this morning, when he went to look in on her."

Ronan's expression had gone tight and unreadable, watching Marlowe unfold the paper with hands that wouldn't quite steady.

The handwriting was Priya's, unmistakably hers, looping and hurried in the way it always got when she was scared. *Marlowe — if this reaches you, please, please tell me you're alive. A man came to the apartment today asking questions I didn't understand, said you were safe somewhere called Blackwood territory, and then he just left, like that was supposed to be enough. I called the police. They think I'm having a breakdown. I don't know what's happening, but I know you didn't just disappear on your own. Please find a way to tell me you're okay. I'm scared, Mar. I'm so scared.*

Marlowe's vision blurred, the paper trembling in her grip. "You sent someone to my apartment and let him tell her I'm somewhere called Blackwood territory? Do you have any idea how insane that sounds to someone with no context? You didn't reassure her. You made it worse."

"That's not what I ordered," Ronan said, something sharp entering his voice now, directed inward rather than at her. "I told my man to confirm she was safe, to leave a message that you were alive and would explain everything in time. Nothing more."

"Then someone disobeyed you," Kellan said, appearing in the doorway, having clearly heard enough of the conversation to piece together what was happening. "Or someone else got to her apartment first and said exactly enough to make her panic, then vanished before your man arrived to do the job properly."

The room went very still.

"You think this was deliberate," Marlowe said slowly. "You think someone wanted her scared like this."

"I think," Ronan said, his voice dropping into the same cold register she'd heard once before, the night the note had been left beneath her pillow, "that whoever is behind these attacks understands exactly how to hurt you without ever laying a hand on you directly. First the rogues at the courtyard. Now this. If someone wanted to remind me how little control I actually have over every door into your old life, they've succeeded."

"This isn't about you," Marlowe snapped, the letter crumpling slightly in her fist. "This is about Priya, sitting alone in our apartment right now thinking her best friend has been kidnapped by lunatics, because that's exactly what happened. I need to see her. I need to tell her myself that I'm alive, not through some man breaking into our apartment to deliver half a message and vanish."

"That's not possible right now," Ronan said, and she watched him brace for the fury that answer was guaranteed to bring. "Not with rogues active near our borders, not with whoever orchestrated tonight's attack still unaccounted for. Bringing you into the human world right now would put you both at greater risk than leaving things as they stand."

"So the answer is just to let her keep thinking I'm dead, or worse."

"The answer is I'll go myself," Ronan said. "Tonight, the rogue threat near the northern gate has been fully cleared. I'll speak to her directly, explain enough to ease her fear without endangering her further, and I will not send an intermediary to do a job that clearly requires more care than I gave it the first time."

"You'd do that." Marlowe searched his face for the calculation she was so certain had to live somewhere underneath every promise he made her. "Just go, talk to a total stranger, explain the unexplainable, because I asked."

"I'd do considerably more than that," he said quietly. "I've taken enough from you without asking. This is the smallest thing I can offer back."

Kellan cleared his throat, drawing both their attention. "There's something else you should know before tonight goes any further." His expression had shifted into the grim caution Marlowe had learned to associate with genuinely bad news. "The guards who found the hawk. They tracked the direction it came from before it dropped dead at the gate."

"And?" Ronan asked.

"It came from the southern ridge," Kellan said. "The same territory Vex used to claim as his own, fifteen years ago, before he vanished." His eyes flicked to Marlowe, something almost apologetic in them. "Whoever sent that letter either found it themselves in your apartment and used it deliberately, or they have someone inside the human world feeding them information about her. Either way, it means the threat we're facing isn't only watching the palace anymore. It's watching everyone you love."

The words landed like a physical blow, the letter suddenly feeling less like comfort and more like a weapon aimed directly at the one person in the world Marlowe had left to lose. She looked up at Ronan, at the fury and fear warring openly across his face now that the pretense of composure had fully cracked.

"You need to protect her," Marlowe said, voice breaking on the words. "Whatever it costs, whatever guards you have to send, Priya cannot become collateral damage in whatever war I've somehow been dragged into. Promise me that. Not the vague kind of promise you keep giving me. A real one."

Ronan crossed the room and took her face gently between his hands, gold eyes steady despite the storm clearly moving behind them. "I promise you," he said, "on everything I am, that no harm will come to her while I have breath left to prevent it. But Marlowe, I need you to understand something before I send anyone north to secure her." His jaw tightened, the weight of what he was about to say settling into his voice like stone. "If whoever's behind this has already found a way to reach into the human world and touch the people you love, bringing her here, into Blackwood territory where we can actually protect her, may be the only option left that doesn't end in tragedy."