[Cassandra’s POV]
I am done guessing. The servant at the dinner—dark-haired, head down, weight shifting to favor her right leg. Kael's encounter in the corridor, rattled by a name he couldn't say. The tournament winner who defeated a senior warrior with bonded-level speed.
Three threads, and I've spent days testing every alternative. The version where my pathetic sister isn't hiding inside these walls doesn't exist.
But it's Venna who pulls the cloth tight. I find her in the lower courtyard after the second bell, cleaning her blade with the rigid precision of a woman keeping her hands busy so they don't curl into fists. She looks up when I approach, and the resentment in her eyes is so clean I almost admire her for it.
"You carry yourself like someone who deserves better than this post," I say, settling onto the stone bench beside the weapons rack. "I've seen how he reassigned you after the tournament. A woman of your caliber, reduced to perimeter rotations. It must sting."
"I serve where I'm placed," Venna replies, but the blade strokes sharpen. Steel rings against the whetstone. "My lord's decisions are his own."
"Of course. But you're a soldier who built her position through years of loyalty, and that position was handed to a stranger overnight. Any warrior would have questions." I let the silence stretch, then add quietly, "I would."
Venna's jaw flexes. Her hands slow on the blade. "What do you want to know, Lady Cassandra?"
"The tournament winner. She moves through the compound at unusual hours, doesn't she? Late at night, through the service corridors that connect to the private wing." Her eyes flick up. For a moment I think she'll deflect.
But loyalty requires feeling protected in return, and this woman has been hollowed out by months of watching someone else stand where she used to stand.
"Every night," Venna says. The words come clipped, precise—delivered with righteous certainty. "After midnight. She uses the eastern service corridor behind the kitchens, the one that connects to the private wing stairwell. Same route every time, like she doesn't expect to be watched."
"And the restricted areas near his quarters? I noticed new locks on the lower passages during the tour."
"Installed three months ago.” She explains coolly without looking up. “Reinforced iron, keyed to the lord and two others only. The sealed sections extend past his chambers into old storage vaults—spaces that haven't been used in decades, suddenly off-limits to everyone."
Her blade stills. "Whatever he's hiding down there, it's growing. The seals have been expanded twice since I lost my position. Corridors that were accessible when I held senior rank are now locked behind iron I don't have keys for."
"Growing," I repeat softly.
"I've said what I've said because this house deserves better than secrets eating it from the inside." Venna sheathes her blade and stands, shoulders squared. "Use the information however you see fit, Lady Cassandra. I trust you'll remember who provided it when the time comes."
"I always remember my allies," I tell her, and mean every syllable. She walks away. The pattern completes itself. Every night. Service corridors. New locks expanding outward. Whatever Draven is hiding isn't static—it's growing, pressing against containment. I know what grows like that.
The compound settles into sleep. I wait until the midnight bell, then dress in dark wool and soft-soled boots—no jewelry, no metal. The eastern service corridor is narrow and unlit, residual heat from banked ovens warming the stones.
I press into an alcove where shadow pools deepest, where the corridor bends and anyone passing must come within arm's reach, and let my heartbeat drop into the patient rhythm of a hunter trained to outlast her prey.
She comes after the second quarter bell. Soft footsteps, careful but confident—the cadence of someone who's walked this route so many times it lives in her muscles. Dark hair braided back. Head lowered. Moving through dimness like she belongs to it.
I let her pass close. Close enough to catch the profile in thin light from the kitchen grates—her jaw sharper than I remember, leaner, the softness carved away by something harder than hunger.
She tilts her head to listen, chin angled left, ear turned toward the passage behind her. I know that gesture. I watched it across a thousand dinners, a thousand training sessions where my sister thought no one was paying attention.
Three more steps. On the fourth, she shifts weight onto her right leg—that familiar hitch, the compensation pattern from the injury I gave her when we were twelve.
She's hidden it well, but compensation patterns don't disappear. They settle into bone. I know this one the way I know my own handwriting, because I'm the one who wrote it into her body. The last shred of doubt burns away like paper touching flame.
It's Evelyn. Alive, walking through our mortal enemy's stronghold with the ease of a woman welcomed rather than imprisoned. Not cowering. Not scrubbing floors. Moving with purpose toward the private chambers of the most powerful lord in the western territories. Thriving. The word rises like bile.
I don't follow her. The pattern is confirmed. I return to my chambers, close the door, and sit in the high-backed chair by the dead fireplace without lighting a candle.
The dark is better for this. For the contempt—the old familiar contempt that's lived in me since my sister was born. But something colder has joined it, because the math has changed.
If Evelyn really defeated an elite warrior with the speed that made Venna look outclassed, something transformed her. That girl does not defeat seasoned fighters or earn a lord's personal mark—she’s not built for that, not worthy of that.
The egg. It must have hatched. Whatever grew inside that stolen shell—the egg that was supposed to be mine, that Father promised to me—it bonded to her. Chose her. Poured its power into my sister's undeserving body and made her into something she was never meant to become.
That thought burns worse than everything combined. The dragon that should have been mine looked at Evelyn and decided she was worthy, and every impossible thing she's accomplished flows from that single, unforgivable choice.
I sit with it until the sky shifts from black to grey. Clarity joins the contempt—sharp enough to cut through sentiment. I cannot retrieve the dragon here, surrounded by Draven's warriors.
I cannot expose Evelyn without revealing the egg was mine, and admitting I lost a bonded egg carries its own death sentence. The weapon available to me is older than dragon law—the one I've wielded since childhood. Fear. Dominance. The certainty that I see her and nothing she builds will ever be safe from me.
Direct confrontation. Not to take—but to break. To remind her what she's always been, crack her open, establish the hierarchy, and determine how deep this goes. The dragon's nature. Its abilities. How much Draven knows.
I'll find her tomorrow in the corridors she thinks are safe, hidden by the fantasy that she could become someone new. She can't. She never could.