Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 11 - Chapitre 20

Cassian was already sprinting toward the east side of the keep, shouting orders as he went. I ran after him, my skirts bunched in my fists, guards scrambling past us toward the smoke. "Get every water barrel to the grain stores!" Cassian bellowed. "Form a line from the well! Move!" The eastern storehouse was a long stone building built against the outer wall, usually quiet, usually locked. Tonight, flames were already licking out through the wooden shutters, thick smoke pouring into the sky. "How bad is it?" I asked, coughing as the smoke reached us. "Bad enough," Cassian said grimly. "That grain feeds this whole keep through winter. If we lose it, we're rationing by midwinter and starving by spring." Soldiers formed a line fast, passing buckets hand to hand from the well. I grabbed one without thinking and joined the chain, ignoring the way my arms burned within minutes. Nobody stopped me. Nobody had time to argue about what a princess should or shouldn't be doing. It took almos

My mind scrambled to catch up with what my eyes were seeing."Elira," I whispered.She smiled, and it was the same warm, easy smile she'd given me every morning since I arrived at the Iron Keep. The same smile she wore while braiding my hair, while bringing me tea when I couldn't sleep, while listening patiently the night I told her, half in tears, about Julian's betrayal. She was the one person in this whole cold fortress who had never once made me feel like an outsider."You've been kind to me," I said slowly. "Every single day.""I know," Elira said. "It wasn't hard. You're an easy person to like, Princess. That's rather the problem.""Why?" My voice cracked. "Why do all this?""Because Lyra was my sister."The words hit me like a slap."Cassian's first wife," I said."My sister," Elira repeated, her voice suddenly sharp underneath the calm. "Sweet, gentle Lyra, who came here trusting the same promises you did. Full authority. Equal partnership. A husband who respected her." Her ja

Marcus stared at Julian like he was seeing a ghost."You're supposed to be halfway to the border by now," Marcus said, his grip tightening around Elira's arm. "That was the plan. You cause a scene at the gate, I finish things quietly, we meet at the old mill afterward.""Plans change," Julian said, echoing Marcus's own words from a moment ago, a thin smile curling at the corner of his mouth. "Especially when I realize my partner's been keeping secrets from me.""What are you talking about?""You never told me about her." Julian nodded toward Elira, still frozen in Marcus's grip. "Two years of paying you for information, and you never once mentioned you had your own reasons for wanting Aurora dead. Your own grudge against the Alpha.""It doesn't matter," Marcus snapped. "It got the job done.""It matters to me," Julian said, taking a slow step closer, ignoring the swords and bows pointed at him from every direction. "Because I've been sitting in the shadows for two weeks watching you b

For a moment, I couldn't breathe."Your uncle," Cassian repeated slowly. "You're certain.""I've known his face since I was a child," I said, my voice shaking. "Uncle Damian. My father's younger brother. He used to bring me sweets from the eastern markets when I was little. He sat at every family dinner. He was there the day I was born.""And now he's leading an army against your husband's keep," Cassian said grimly.Below us, Damian sat calmly on his black horse, watching my reaction from a distance, a thin smile spreading across his face like he'd been waiting his whole life for this exact moment."Surprised, little niece?" he called up. "You always were slow to see what was right in front of you.""Why?" I shouted down, my voice cracking despite myself. "Father trusted you. Gave you land, titles, a seat at his own table.""Your father gave me scraps," Damian shouted back, his calm cracking into something bitter and cold. "I was born only two years after him. Two years, Aurora. And

I stared at my father, waiting for him to say something else, something that would make the words he'd just spoken make sense. He didn't. He just sat there, looking older than I'd ever seen him look, his hands still shaking in his lap."Twenty years," I said slowly. "You've known for twenty years that someone murdered my mother, and you never told me.""I told you what I thought would keep you safe," my father said. "You were five years old, Aurora. What was I supposed to say? That someone inside our own palace poisoned your mother's tea, and I couldn't find who did it no matter how hard I searched?""You could have told me the truth when I was older.""I was afraid," he admitted quietly. "Afraid that whoever did it was still watching, still waiting, and that telling you the truth would only paint a target on your back before you were old enough to protect yourself."I thought about Damian, sitting in a cell downstairs with a smile on his bloodied face, claiming to know the answer my