POV: Mara
Jax calls it “a walk,” but it’s a hunt. Me, Pia, Jax with a lantern and a small bag for “findings.” We move through back stairs, storage rooms, the under-arches nobody cleans unless Silvie yells.
The lantern throws a low, yellow circle around us, everything outside it smeared into gray shapes and guesses. The stones down here are colder than the ones near the hearth, slick with old spills and forgotten leaks. My boots make soft, sticky sounds; Pia’s braid keeps catching on rough brick when she turns too fast. Jax walks ahead with that particular ease soldiers have—like he’s ready to run or fight or sit down for tea with the same muscles.
“Why us?” Pia whispers.
Her breath fogs in the cool air, eyes wide, hands tucked into her sleeves like the shadows might bite her fingers. She’s still Pia—dramatic, fluttery—but there’s a tightness around her mouth that doesn’t belong on her face.
“Because you two know what looks wrong,” Jax says. “And because I can’t put six Shields in a pantry without turning rumor into thunder.”
His tone is matter-of-fact, but there’s an undercurrent of apology there. The kind you use when you ask someone to carry something heavy but invisible. Aster hums faintly, wary.
We start at the south corridor. Under the second stair, behind a broken crate, Pia makes a small sound. “Um. Hello?”
A pile of dried hibiscus petals. Neat. Too neat. And a strip of red cloth tucked under them. Moonfell sash. The knot is wrong, like someone copied what they think Moonfell knots look like from a picture.
The petals are crisp, still holding their color—a deliberate red, not the murky brown they’d turn if they’d been there long. They rest on the stone like an offering. Or a threat dressed up as an altar. My scalp tingles. The sash lies half-hidden, the fabric cheap compared to real Moonfell silk, edges roughly cut. Someone tried very hard to be convincing. They almost pulled it off.
My scalp tingles. Aster leans forward. Planted.
“Someone is framing our path,” Jax says. He speaks gently, like to a skittish horse. “We don’t panic. We document.”
His calm feels like a hand on the back of my neck, grounding but not heavy. Still, my pulse climbs anyway, a quick staccato against my throat. Pia steps closer to me without seeming to think about it, shoulder brushing mine.
He uses a handkerchief to lift the cloth like it’s poison. He slips it into the bag. He writes on a small slate. “Found under south stair, shelf level, hidden behind crate. Witness: Mara, Pia.”
The chalk scrapes quietly, each letter another nail in the idea that this might be nothing. Evidence, he calls it. To me it looks like a list of ways things can go wrong.
Pia rubs her arms. “I feel itchy.”
“Me too,” I say.
The itch isn’t on my skin; it’s under it. A crawling discomfort that says you have been moved on a board you didn’t know you were standing on. Aster mutters something that sounds like a growl and a prayer tangled together.
We check three more spots. In a gap in the wall next to the laundry chute, more petals. In a rusted lantern cage, a smear of red wax.
The petals rustle dryly when the lantern light hits them, little tongues of color licking at the shadows. The wax on the lantern is thick, messy, as if someone pressed the seal with a shaking hand. It doesn’t bear a clear crest, just a suggestion of one—as if all that mattered was red and Moonfell and here.
I press my lips together so hard they hurt. “They want someone to ‘find’ this later,” I say. “When an inspector is bored. When a clerk gets curious.”
I picture it: some junior scribe sent to fetch extra salt, stumbling over the crate, seeing the petals, the sash, running to tell someone Important. The way my name would slip into the story, because my routes pass here. Because my shadow is already suspicious in the right mouths.
Jax nods. His face is calm. His jaw jumps. “Shadow list,” he says, mostly to himself. “Who has access? Who knew your routes? Who hates you? Who doesn’t care about you but wants chaos?”
The way he says who hates you is strange—light, like it’s just a slot to be filled on the form, not a knife. I could probably offer a few names myself, starting with Seris and working my way down. The thought makes my stomach dip.
We finish the loop. Back in the kitchen, Jax gives me a look like a promise. “I’ll put a plain-clothes Shield near Hearthworks,” he says. “Someone who eats soup and looks useless.”
The idea of an invisible guard makes my skin prickle and relax at the same time. Watched is safe. Watched is trapped. I don’t know which side weighs more tonight.
“Everyone here looks useful,” Pia mutters.
Jax’s mouth tips. “Good.” He claps my shoulder once, careful, and leaves.
As the door swings shut behind him, the kitchen breathes out around us. The ovens hum. The air smells like onions and fresh bread and something sweet cooling on the far counter.
I sink onto a stool. My hands finally shake without asking me.
The wooden seat is rough beneath my legs; the tremor in my fingers makes the edge of the table blur. Aster curls close and low, trying to steady me from the inside. “You saw it,” she murmurs. “Seeing is better than being surprised.” I don’t argue, but the reassurance feels thin.
Pia slides a bowl of stew in front of me. “Eat,” she says. “Or I will cry, and my crying is ugly.”
“It is very ugly,” I manage. My voice sounds like it tripped on itself and kept walking. “You sound like a goat being insulted.”
She gasps. “Rude. True. But rude.” Her theatrical outrage puts a thin crack in the fear pressing against my ribs, lets a little air in.
I huff a laugh. I eat. Halfway through, a runner bursts into the hall, breathless. “Message,” he gasps. “For the Regent.”
His cheeks are flushed, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat; his satchel swings wildly at his hip. He bends over, hands on knees, trying to catch his breath, eyes wide with the importance of whatever is tied to the little tube on his chest.
“What message?” Silvie asks from the door.
She appears like she always does in a crisis—quietly, as if she were always already there. Her hands are dusted with flour; her expression is clean steel. The kitchen stills around her.
The runner swallows. “Seris Vale is here. With papers.”
My spoon clinks against the bowl. The room tilts.