Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 11 - Chapitre 20

Morning comes slowly, and my head still aches where I hit the bed frame last night. Dara brings breakfast in early, quieter than usual, and I know something's changed by the careful way she won't quite meet my eyes."The Alpha's sending the healer to see you," she says, setting the tray down. "Wants your wound looked at properly. And your blood checked against the one you scratched off the intruder.""Checked how?""Scent," she says, like it's obvious, because to anyone born a wolf, it probably is. "A good healer can tell blood apart the way you or I tell faces apart. If whoever attacked you is a pack, she'll know before the day's out."My stomach turns over. I don't know what my blood smells like now, wearing Selene's skin, and I don't know if that matters, or if it'll give something away I'm not ready to give.There's a knock, soft, and a woman steps in without waiting for an answer. She's maybe my age, curly chestnut hair pulled back loose, a leather satchel over one shoulder, and

The name hangs in the air between us, and for a second I can't breathe at all."Don't," I say, quiet, panicked. "Don't say that name out loud. Not here."Iris presses a hand over her own mouth, like she's trying to physically stop herself from saying it again, eyes still fixed on the scar in my palm."It's really you," she whispers through her fingers. "Four years, and it's really you.""Iris." I reach out, grab her wrist, not hard, just enough to pull her attention back to me instead of the shock written all over her face. "Please. I need you to keep this to yourself. Just for now. Just until I understand what's happening."She looks at me, and slowly, carefully, she nods, lowering her hand from her mouth. "Okay. Okay, I won't say anything. Just — give me a second. This is a lot to take in.""I know.""You died," she says, like she's still working through the plain fact of it. "I watched them carry your body out of the courtyard myself. I helped prepare it. How are you sitting in fro

Iris says I should walk a little, get my strength back, so the next morning a guard lets me down to the lower hall under close watch, close enough that I can't do much besides move slowly along the stone wall and breathe air that isn't the same four walls I've been staring at for days.I end up near the kitchen entrance without quite meaning to, drawn there by the warm smell of bread and the low hum of voices, the kind of ordinary sound I haven't heard in what feels like forever. The guard trailing me stops a few feet back, bored, more interested in a passing maid than in watching my every move, and I press myself close to the wall just outside the doorway, close enough to listen."—still can't believe they're keeping her here," one voice says, older, a woman, tired-sounding. "After everything. As if this house hasn't seen enough grief without inviting more of it in.""She hasn't done anything," another voice says, younger, defensive. "Not that we know of.""Doesn't matter what she's

Nadia's POVI watch the stable boy slip back through the servant's door, quick as ever, good at doing exactly what he's told and asking nothing in return. That's the kind of loyalty gold buys. Cheap, reliable, and blind.I fold my hands and wait by the window of my chambers, looking down at the courtyard, counting the minutes until Selene finishes reading whatever I've written for her.It wasn't hard to arrange. A folded note, rough handwriting, just enough mystery in it to pull at a woman already drowning in secrets she can't afford to keep much longer. Meet me at the old stable, I wrote. Come alone. I know what happened to you.She'll come. Women like her always come, desperate people chasing whatever thread might finally make sense of the mess they're standing in. And when she does, I'll be there in the shadows, watching, learning exactly how much she really knows, and exactly how dangerous that knowledge might be to everything I've spent four years building.Cassian doesn't see it

They take the body away before the sun comes up, wrapped in a plain cloth, carried out through the servant's gate so the rest of the pack won't wake to whispers before Cassian decides what story to give them. I sit in his study through most of it, wrapped in a blanket someone put over my shoulders, staring at the fire because it's easier than staring at anything else.Cassian comes in close to dawn, exhausted, a streak of dried blood on his sleeve that isn't his. He sits across from me without a word for a long moment, elbows on his knees, head down."Nadia's guard," he finally says. "Damon confirmed it. Name was Osric. Been with her personal detail for almost two years.""What does that mean?""I don't know yet." His jaw works. "It could mean he wrote that note on his own, decided to get greedy trying to squeeze information out of you for himself. Or it could mean someone told him to.""You think it was Nadia.""I don't want to think that." He rubs a hand over his face, and for a sec