Sylra's POV
Dawn light crept through my chamber windows, and I had made my choice.
I stood before the mirror, dressed in formal black, the weight of the decision settling into my bones. Not execution. Exile. I would strip Lady Vela, Neressa, and Elene of everything—titles, lands, wealth, status. I would send them beyond the borders with nothing but the clothes on their backs, to survive or perish by their own devices.
It wasn't weakness. It was a choice. A different kind of strength.
Caelen would call it foolish. The council would call it soft. But I refused to become a butcher to prove I could rule. There had to be another way—a path between mercy and murder that didn't require me to drown in blood.
I fastened the Thorne crest at my throat and turned toward the door. The announcement would be made within the hour. Let the realm see that their future queen could be just without being cruel.
The door burst open before I reached it.
A servant stumbled into my chambers, face white as bone, chest heaving with panicked breaths. His uniform was disheveled, his eyes wild with a terror that froze me where I stood.
"Your Highness." He could barely form the words. "The dungeons. You need to come. Now."
I was running before he finished speaking.
The palace corridors blurred past. Guards fell into step behind me, their armor clanking, their questions unanswered. I took the stairs to the lower levels two at a time, the servant's ragged breathing echoing at my back.
The smell hit me first. Copper and iron, thick enough to taste.
I rounded the final corner and stopped.
Blood. Everywhere. Pooled on the stone floor, splattered across the walls, seeping between the cracks of ancient mortar. The dungeon corridor looked like a slaughterhouse, torchlight catching the crimson gleam of what had once been three living women.
Lady Vela lay crumpled against the far wall of her cell. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear, the wound gaping like a second mouth. Her silver hair was matted with blood, her eyes fixed on the ceiling in an expression of eternal surprise.
Neressa slumped over a bench in the adjacent cell. Her hands still clutched the edge, as if she'd tried to rise when her killer entered. Her eyes stared at nothing, glassy and vacant, and the front of her gown was soaked dark with the blood that had poured from the wound in her chest.
Elene lay face-down in a pool of crimson, her flame-red hair fanned out around her head. The back of her neck bore a single, precise puncture—a killing blow delivered by someone who knew exactly where to strike.
"WHO DID THIS?"
My voice tore through the dungeon, echoing off stone walls that offered no answers. Guards flinched. The servant cowered against the corridor wall.
"Your Highness, we don't know." The captain of the dungeon guard stepped forward, his face ashen. "The night watch saw nothing. Heard nothing. We found them like this at the morning shift change."
"Three women murdered in their cells and no one saw anything?" I grabbed him by the collar, dragging him close. "There are guards posted at every entrance. Every stairwell. How did someone get past all of them?"
"I don't know, Your Highness." His voice shook. "The doors were still locked when we arrived. The bars weren't tampered with. It's as if the killer was a ghost."
A ghost.
Or a warrior trained to move through shadows. Trained to kill without sound, without trace, without mercy.
My blood ran cold.
I released the guard and stepped back, my mind racing through the evidence. Clean kills. Professional. No struggle, no defensive wounds that I could see. Whoever had done this was skilled beyond ordinary measure—skilled enough to bypass palace security, enter three separate cells, and execute three women without raising a single alarm.
Caelen's voice echoed in my memory, cold and certain in the moonlit training yard.
You need to execute them.
Every enemy you spare comes back stronger.
Then you won't rule at all.
I remembered the way he'd walked away after I'd questioned him. The way he'd disappeared into the darkness without another word. The hurt that had flickered across his face when I'd said I wasn't like him.
And something else surfaced—words from weeks ago, spoken in a moment I hadn't fully understood at the time.
I made an oath. And I intend to keep it.
"Find Lord Rhys," I ordered, my voice flat. "Bring him to me immediately."
The guards scattered. Minutes passed. The blood continued to spread across the dungeon floor, pooling around my boots, staining the hem of my gown.
A soldier returned, breathless. "Your Highness, Lord Rhys isn't in his quarters. He's not in the training yard. We've searched the armory, the stables, the barracks."
"Then search harder."
"We have, Your Highness." The soldier's face was grim. "His horse is gone. His weapons are gone. The gate watch says no one matching his description passed through, but—"
"But what?"
"But Lord Rhys knows passages in this palace that the gate watch doesn't. He's been mapping security vulnerabilities since he arrived."
Of course he had. That was his job. Protect the princess by knowing every weakness in her defenses.
Or exploit those weaknesses when she refused to listen.
I stared at the bodies. Three women who had tried to kill me, now dead by someone else's hand. The execution I'd refused to order, carried out anyway in the dark hours before dawn.
By a man who had sworn to protect me.
By a man who had told me, again and again, that mercy was weakness.
By a man who had looked at me with something raw and desperate in his eyes and admitted he couldn't tell if he was jealous or concerned—and now I wondered if there had been a third option he hadn't mentioned.
Obsession. The kind that made people do terrible things in the name of protection.
"Seal the palace," I commanded. "No one enters or leaves without my personal authorization. And send riders to every border checkpoint. I want Caelen Rhys found."
"On what charge, Your Highness?"
I looked at the carnage surrounding me. Lady Vela's dead eyes. Neressa's frozen grip. Elene's blood spreading slowly toward my feet.
"Murder," I said. "Three counts."
The guards rushed to obey. I stood alone in the blood-soaked dungeon, the copper taste thick in my throat, Caelen's voice still echoing in my mind.
You need to learn. Or everything your father built dies with you.
He had taught me to fight. He had taught me to stand my ground. He had taught me to see through manipulation and recognize enemies wearing friendly faces.
He had never taught me how to recognize when the enemy was him.
Caelen was gone. And I had no idea if he'd run because he was guilty—or because someone wanted me to believe he was.