Chapter 20: Before the Confession

POV: Felicia

“If this is a trap, Your Majesty, you could lose everything.” Cassian’s voice was hard as steel.

I met his eyes.

“Then we’ll make sure they’re the ones walking into it … not us.”

⸻

Orion wanted Damien dead before he ever reached the palace gates, his voice sharper than I’d heard it since the attack that nearly took him from me. Cassian insisted the whole confession stank of bait, a lure dressed up as truth, his hand never leaving the hilt at his side the entire debate. The council split into arguing factions within minutes, voices climbing over each other until the chamber felt smaller than it was, the air thick with fear dressed up as strategy.

Lucien waited for the noise to thin before speaking, and when he did, it wasn’t as the man who’d knelt in a corridor apologizing. It was the commander … clipped, precise, already three steps ahead of the danger, laying out contingencies like he’d rehearsed them a dozen times before walking in.

Damien would arrive blindfolded. Three decoy convoys would leave the palace at staggered intervals. Moon Priestesses would screen him for illusion magic before he came anywhere near me. Hidden archers would cover every entrance, seen and unseen, arrows nocked before Damien ever crossed the threshold.

I listened to all of it before I spoke, weighing each voice against my own instinct, letting the silence stretch until every eye in the room had settled on me.

“We don’t fear the truth because it comes wrapped in danger,” I said finally.

I accepted the meeting. On my terms.

⸻

Preparations began within the hour. By afternoon, everything had already gone wrong.

One of the decoy carriages was struck on the eastern road … not by rogues, but by soldiers wearing Silvercrest armor, our own colors turned against us. Every attacker bit down on poison before capture, the same black moon insignia burned into their collars that had marked the murdered spy.

Someone inside the royal guard had betrayed us.

The conspiracy sat closer to my own throne than any of us had let ourselves believe.

⸻

I didn’t cancel the meeting. I narrowed it instead.

Only five of us would know the real location … myself, Orion, Cassian, Lucien, and the High Priestess. Even the palace guards would be given false orders, layered lies meant to catch whoever leaked the truth next.

If another betrayal surfaced after this, we’d know exactly which of five people to look at.

⸻

Sleep refused me that night. The children wouldn’t settle, restless in a way that made my own pulse climb every time I closed my eyes, my wolf pacing beneath my skin at every shadow, every creak of the palace settling around me.

I gave up trying and walked the palace alone until I found myself in the training hall, moonlight spilling silver across the floor, the space achingly familiar from months of drills I’d nearly forgotten I loved.

I picked up a practice sword. Not out of anger.

Movement was the only thing keeping the fear from swallowing me whole, my body needing something to do while my mind refused to quiet.

⸻

I didn’t hear him arrive. Only one word, quiet, careful, spoken like he’d practiced saying it gently.

“Felicia.”

Not Queen. Not Chosen.

Just my name, spoken like it still belonged to him a little.

It nearly undid me standing there, my grip faltering around the hilt.

He didn’t crowd the space between us. He crossed to the rack instead, took a second blade, and began his own drills several feet away … no conversation, no apology, just the old familiar rhythm of two people who used to know each other’s every movement without needing to ask. I found myself matching his pace without deciding to, our blades falling into an old, unspoken conversation neither of us had to name.

⸻

Eventually I spoke without turning to look at him, my eyes fixed on the wall ahead rather than his face.

“Did you know?”

Our blades stilled at the same moment, the only sound in the hall our own uneven breathing.

“Before that day… did you know something was wrong with Selene?”

A long silence stretched between us, broken only by my own breathing, long enough that I nearly turned to see if he’d simply walked away.

“Yes,” he said finally, not as an Alpha, not as a king. Just a man, stripped down to the truth, his voice rougher than I’d heard it in weeks.

My breath caught.

“I couldn’t prove it.”

Another pause, heavier than the first.

“But I knew enough to stop the ceremony.”

He lowered his sword, the tip meeting the floor with a soft, final sound, like laying down more than just a weapon.

“I chose certainty over you.”

His voice broke on the next words, and I finally turned to look at him, watching the admission cost him something visible in the set of his shoulders.

“That wasn’t Selene’s crime.”

“It was mine.”

The words hung in the space between us, and for the first time since that night in the Great Hall, there was nothing left for either of us to hide behind.

⸻

The Moon Pendant at my throat flared to life without warning, silver light spilling down my collarbone. Across the hall, Lucien’s Alpha mark answered it, glowing bright beneath his sleeve.

All four heartbeats inside me surged at once, synchronized, urgent.

Then every light in the training hall snuffed out together, plunging us into total dark.

A voice slid out of the black … not fully human, not fully anything I could name, neither male nor female, threading through the room like it came from everywhere at once.

“The Confessor comes…”

Neither of us moved.

“…but he is not the only one.”

The light returned as suddenly as it had vanished, the hall settling back into ordinary silence.

Neither of us spoke. We didn’t need to. We’d both heard it.

⸻

The captain of the night guard burst through the doors moments later, chest heaving, sweat streaking his temple.

“Your Majesty…”

His eyes moved from me to Lucien and back again.

“Damien Voss has arrived.”

His face drained pale.

“…and he isn’t alone.”