The Lycan king's Unwanted Luna のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 41 - チャプター 50

Kael's POV>>>>>>>I dismissed the captain but didn't move from my desk. The sketch of the ring sat where he'd left it, three wolves circling a crown split down the middle. I had seen it before. I just hadn't let myself remember where.I crossed to the far wall and unlocked the old cabinet behind the bookshelf, the one that hadn't been opened since my father died. Dust had settled thick along the top shelf. I pulled out the first stack of bound reports and started reading by candlelight.Nothing. Trade agreements, border disputes, none of it useful. I pulled a second stack, then a third, working through letters with broken seals and ledgers that meant nothing to me now. An hour passed. Then two. My eyes ached from the candlelight, and more than once I nearly put the whole cabinet back and told myself the seal meant nothing at all.I almost missed the last folder, tucked flat against the back panel like someone had wanted it overlooked. Inside, a single page, half burned at the corner,

Kael's POV>>>>>>I hadn't slept. The documents sat spread across my desk exactly where I'd left them, and I'd spent most of the night reading the same three pages until the words stopped meaning anything.I summoned the archivist again at dawn. He arrived looking like a man who hadn't slept either."Yesterday you answered my questions," I said. "Today I want the answers you chose not to give."He didn't pretend not to understand me. "My lord, there are parts of the royal archive even kings cannot enter without permission.""Permission from whom?"He lowered his eyes to the floor. "From the Keepers.""There is no council in this kingdom called the Keepers. I would know.""Not in this kingdom, my lord. Not anymore." He said nothing else, no matter how I pressed him, only repeating that he had already told me more than he should have.I let him go, though the word refused to leave my thoughts long after he'd left. Keepers. Not a title I recognized from any record I'd ever read, and I had

Selene's POVI reached the outskirts of the Northern Capital after four days of hard travel, my legs stiff from the carriage and my patience thinner than it had been when I left Black Hollow. I did not ride through the main gate the way a noblewoman would, banners announcing her arrival before her carriage even reached the guards. I changed into plain wool in a roadside inn an hour outside the city and finished the journey on a hired cart, just another traveler among dozens entering the capital that day.I took a room above a tavern near the market square, small and unremarkable, exactly what I wanted. My first thought, once I'd set down my bags, wasn't of Seraphina at all. It was simpler than that.I need to understand what the King is protecting.I found my answer sooner than expected, sitting near the hearth over a bowl of stew I barely touched. Two merchants at the next table talked over their own meal, voices loose with the kind of ease men have when they don't think anyone worth

Kael's POV>>>>>>>The chapel was smaller than I expected, barely large enough to hold a dozen worshippers. Old benches lined the walls, half collapsed with age. A broken altar sat at the front, its stone face cracked down the middle. Dust covered everything, thick enough to show our own footprints the moment we stepped inside.My captain walked me through it exactly as he'd found it the night before. The door. The silence. The hour of waiting that led nowhere.I didn't believe a man simply vanished inside four stone walls. I started touching things instead of looking at them, running my hand along the altar, pressing against the walls, checking the floor beneath my boots.That was when I found the scratches.Faint lines cut into the stone floor just in front of the altar, the kind left by something heavy dragged across the same path again and again over years, not days. I crouched and traced one line with my fingers."Help me," I said, and my captain set his shoulder against the altar

Kael's POVI went myself this time, no reports waiting for me over breakfast, no captain relaying secondhand what he'd seen. I needed to see the house with my own eyes.The house looked lived in from the street. Someone had swept the porch recently, the flagstones clear of leaves. Flowers still bloomed in a small bed along the front wall, tended well enough that they hadn't gone to seed. Smoke stained the chimney, dark against the grey stone.The moment I stepped inside, the illusion fell apart.The wardrobe stood empty, not a single garment hanging from its rail. The cupboards held no food, no dishes beyond what looked like a single cup and plate. No books anywhere, no letters, no photographs on any surface. One chair. One table. One bed, stripped bare of blankets.It looked less like a home and more like the idea of one.I crossed to the table and ran my hand across its surface. Dust covered most of it, thin and even, except for one clean square near the center, sharp edged, as thou