All Chapters of A Crown Buried In Silence : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Garrett POVI caught her coming out of the greenhouse-turned-shed with a basket of cuttings balanced against her hip, mid-afternoon sun cutting sideways through the hedges behind her."Got a minute?" I asked."Depends what you're about to tell me."Fair enough. I fell into step beside her instead of blocking her path, figuring she probably appreciates not being cornered again after the last two times I'd done exactly that to her."The witness statement," I said. "Petra Hensley. I confirmed it with Thomlin, the old records clerk. No transcript ever existed. Her name got added to the file with nothing behind it."Wren didn't stop walking. Didn't even slow down."Okay," she said."That's it? Okay?""What were you expecting?" She set the basket down on the workbench once we reached the shed, starting to sort through the cuttings like this was any other Tuesday. "Gratitude? A parade?""I don't know. Something more than that.""What took you so long," she said, not looking up, and it landed

Damian POVGarrett showed up at my study door well past the hour anyone reasonable would call on pack business, still in his boots from whatever he'd been doing outside."This can't wait till morning?" I asked."No." He shut the door behind him, which told me plenty before he said another word. "Followed Calla tonight. She met someone past the eastern wall. A courier, not pack, wearing colors I didn't recognize offhand.""What colors?""Grey-green, stitched into the collar. Subtle, like it wasn't meant to be noticed unless you were looking for it."Something cold settled into my gut before I even consciously placed it. "Describe the shade exactly."He did, and the second he finished, I knew."House Malvern," I said."That mean something to you?""It should've meant something to me months ago." I sat back, dragging a hand down my face, already hating where this conversation was headed. "Malvern reached out around six months back. Sent a formal inquiry about some kind of trade arrangeme

Emeric POVI started finding reasons to walk past the training yard in the late afternoon, which was its own small, embarrassing admission I hadn't quite made out loud to myself yet.Not for sparring. For the chance I might catch her somewhere nearby, doing whatever task she picked up that day, unbothered by whoever happened to be watching.Today it was the orchard. A handful of pack children had apparently decided the fallen apples needed sorting, good from bruised, and Wren had somehow ended up supervising the whole operation without seeming to have volunteered for it.I stopped near the fence, telling myself I was just passing through."That one's mine," a small boy was insisting, holding up an apple with the fierce authority of someone defending territory. "I found it first.""You can't claim an apple, Tobin," a girl beside him argued. "It fell off the tree. It's nobody's.""It's mine because I saw it first.""Th

Calla POVI'd gotten good, over the years, at reading rooms before I walked into them. Knowing who needed warmth, who needed deference, who needed to believe they figured something out on their own that I actually guided them toward three steps earlier.I was losing my grip on reading Emeric Vane, and that terrified me more than anything else happening in this house right now.I found Wren in the small sewing room off the servants' corridor, mending something, alone, no audience worth performing for anywhere nearby. I almost turned around. Then I thought about Emeric on that terrace last night, the way he'd come back inside distracted, distant, answering my questions about the evening with half his attention somewhere else entirely."We need to talk," I said, closing the door behind me."We've done this before." She didn't look up from her mending. "Didn't go particularly well for either of us last time.""This is different."

Alaric POV I framed it as a courtesy. A routine health screening, offered to the household as thanks for their hospitality during an unusually long diplomatic stay, blood drawn from anyone willing to participate, checked against common deficiencies that affected border packs more than most. Nobody questioned it. Why would they. Healers ran screenings like this often enough that one more barely registered as unusual, and a king offering to cover the cost himself read as generosity rather than strategy. Marta drew the samples over the course of an afternoon, moving through the household efficiently, vials labeled and set aside for a courier to carry back to the capital's physicians the following morning. I made sure Wren's sample went into the batch without drawing any particular attention to it, slotted between a stable hand's and one of the kitchen staff's, nothing to suggest it mattered more than the others. I told myself that was enough caution for one day. I was wrong. The