Second Chance for the Discarded Luna のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 81 - チャプター 90

"Every entrance has been checked twice," Doran said, pacing the length of my father's study with a frustration I rarely saw cross his controlled features. "No forced locks, no broken windows, no bribed guards that we've found. She simply walked in, Your Majesty, as though these walls meant nothing at all.""Then they mean nothing at all," my father said grimly, "to someone with her particular skill. That's precisely what frightens me."I sat curled in the chair nearest the fire, a blanket Nessa had insisted on draped over my shoulders despite the room's warmth, still shaking slightly from the lingering smoke and the particular cold certainty in Ashra's voice when she'd said I need you alive, for now. Rhys stood close behind my chair, one hand resting on my shoulder, as though he hadn't quite convinced himself the danger was fully past."She proved something tonight," I said quietly. "Not simply that she could reach me. That no wall we build here will ever feel fully secure again. Ever

"She didn't take anything," I said, scanning the scattered contents of the chest a second time, hands still unsteady. "The letter's here. The rose. Everything's accounted for. She just wanted me to know she'd touched it."Doran arrived within minutes of Rhys's shout, warriors fanning out through the corridors beyond, though I already knew, with cold certainty, that they'd find nothing. Ashra didn't leave traces she didn't intend to leave."Clever girl," my father read aloud, studying the note with a grim, tight expression. "Wrong door." He looked up. "What door, Elena? Is she suggesting Vesra Port specifically, or something else entirely?""I don't know," I admitted, though something steadier was already settling beneath the fear, the same instinct that had carried me through every letter and threat since this began. "But I know exactly what she wants this note to do. She wants me doubting the one option that takes me somewhere she hasn't already mapped."Rhys crouched beside the ches

"That's not possible," Kellan said, reading the note over my shoulder. "We only decided on the mission moments ago. No one left this room.""No one left this room," my father agreed, something grim settling into his expression, "which means whoever delivered this note either guessed remarkably well, or this household still has more leaks than the ones we've already closed.""Or," Doran said slowly, "it means someone is listening who was never meant to be heard at all."He crossed to the chamber's heavy door, examining the frame with the same careful attention he'd given Oswin's broken lock weeks earlier, and knelt finally beside the wall where it met the old stone floor, running his fingers along a narrow gap barely wide enough to notice unless someone already suspected it existed."Here," he said. "An old servant's passage, sealed decades ago according to the household records, though apparently not quite as sealed as those records claim."My father's face darkened considerably. "How

My father was alone in his study when I arrived, a single letter resting on the desk in front of him, his expression carrying something I couldn't quite place, caution tangled with what looked almost like reluctant amusement."Kellan said this couldn't wait," I said, settling into the chair across from him."It couldn't," he agreed, sliding the letter across the desk. "Marcus requested, formally, that Blackthorn be permitted to send an escort alongside your delegation. Warriors, properly trained, to supplement whatever protection Doran provides."I scanned the letter quickly, Marcus's familiar hand laying out the offer in careful, formal terms. "He already told me Blackthorn stood ready to help," I said. "I didn't expect him to act on it quite this immediately.""There's more," my father said. "He's offered to lead the escort himself."Something in my chest tightened with surprise. "Marcus wants to come to Vesra Port.""He does," my father confirmed. "Along with Verity, apparently, wh

"Report," Doran said, already moving toward his horse, the camp's easy evening rhythm shifting instantly into alert readiness around him."The bridge," the scout said, still catching his breath. "Washed out. Storm damage, from the look of the debris, recent enough that no repair crews have reached it yet. The crossing's impassable for wagons."Relief, cautious but genuine, eased some of the tension that had gripped my chest the moment the scout's alarm first registered. Storm damage. Not Ashra. Not another careful, patient trap woven specifically against us."How far to the nearest alternate crossing?" Corin asked, already pulling his maps from the supply wagon."Two days north," the scout said, "or a considerably rougher ford a half day south, passable for riders but risky for the wagons given the current's strength this time of year."Corin studied the map carefully, tracing routes with the same methodical focus he brought to every trade calculation. "The northern route costs us tim