جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 450

EMBER’S POVI straighten up. The fatigue burns off into pure, invigorating adrenaline, relief flooding into my system like air. So much air I’d been denied. I turn back to the guards waiting a few steps away.“I want Lady Hale’s rooms searched,” I say, my voice dead steady. “Marjorie isn’t the only one in this house who knows her herbs or walks through that garden. Check for traces of foxglove or mud on her shoes. Pull up the floorboards, go through her papers, her books. Everything. I want it gutted.”The guard standing behind Daxon clears his throat, shifting his weight.“With respect, my alpha…” He looks at me, his tone sliding into something dangerously condescending. “Lady Hale is a Volkov. Are you sure, Miss Ember, that you know what you’re asking us to do?”A low growl rips out of Knox’s massive chest, dropping the temperature in the hallway to absolute zero. The exhaustion flips instantly into murderous irritation.“Are you questioning my wife?” Knox asks softly, stepping towa

KNOX’S POV“Hale—”“No, don’t stop now. You started this shit, so finish it.” She rounds on the unit, and her voice goes bright, sharp, and absolutely poisonous. “You, with the gloves. The bench by the fire lifts up. Huge space under it. Excellent place for all the murder weapons I apparently keep lying around. And the second floorboard past the rug is loose. It’s been loose for years, so congratulations, you’ve finally found a use for it. Pull it up.” She’s moving as she talks, throwing open her own wardrobe doors so hard they bang against the frame, dragging out a drawer of her own and dumping it- hats, gloves, a lifetime of small folded things- all over the floor. “There. Winter drawer. Done. Want the chimney next? Go ahead. Maybe I’ve stuffed poison up the flue with the soot. Very witchy of me.”“Enough.”“No, it’s fucking not.” She whirls on me.She is crying properly now, but her eyes are still dead cold, and it is almost impressive to see the lengths this woman will go to.I ha

KNOX’S POVI turn the next page. Nothing. I turn the next. Nothing.It is page after page of completely blank, yellowing paper. I go faster, thumbing frantically through the rest of the book with my heart hammering against my ribs.Empty.The entire thing is fucking empty. I drop it and snatch up the next one from the pile. I rip it open. This one has writing in it.For one split second, everything inside me lifts.4th. Raining again. The kitchen ruined the roast for the second time this week and I kept my mouth shut, which honestly makes me a saint.7th. Had to listen to Marjorie whine about her joints for twenty minutes. The woman is an absolute hag. I miss grandmother so much today. She always knew exactly how to fix things like this.11th. Sat with Ember today. She really is a lovely girl when she drops the nervous act. I think I am growing quite fond of her. Knox is so different lately, though. He is so paranoid and closed off. He used to be so much easier to manage.I turn the p

KNOX’S POVHer voice climbs. Then she forces a sharp breath, swallowing down the hysterical heave of her chest.“I know how it looks. Of course I know how it looks. Ida’s little fucking weirdo. But when did it become a crime to be strange? When did my obsession with the otherworldly ever scare you before that woman showed up? None of you understand what it is like. Not a single one of you knows what it has been like losing Ida. She was the one fucking person who saw me. Who loved me and cared and actually understood me. I used to think you did, too. I thought you were still the same boy who defended me when everyone else judged me.“But I know better now, don’t I? I am standing in the middle of your hatred. I knew this day was coming. I knew eventually you would believe all the whispers about me. Do you know I used to go to Celeste’s room during the day? The only fucking reason I started going at night is because the entire house would not stop poking and judging and gossiping. That i

KNOX’S POV“Yes, My King.” His voice cracks. “It was her. It was Ms Marjorie. I’ve known her my whole life, My King. My mum worked in the laundry here. I know what she looks like.”“And you didn’t stop her.”“I—” He swallows. “She’s the housekeeper, My King. I thought she’d been released. I thought somebody higher up had given the order and nobody told me. She looked right at me and kept walking as if she belonged there, and I thought if I grabbed Ms Marjorie and it turned out she’d been cleared, I’d be finished.”“So you watched her go upstairs.”“Yes, My King.”“What about the cell?”“Locked,” the older one says. “We checked again around half three. The door was locked; she was inside, looked asleep. That’s the part I can’t make sense of, My King. She was back in there.”And there it is.“So let me get this straight,” I say, and I can hear my own voice going somewhere I don’t like. “A seventy-year-old woman gets herself out of a locked cell, strolls past two armed guards, goes upsta