[Seraphine’s POV]
I sat propped against pillows, a shawl wrapped tight around my shoulders though the fire burned hot. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Every time my fingers drifted toward my stomach I forced them away, as if refusing to acknowledge the emptiness might change it.
Shouts rose from the courtyard below—short, clipped, purposeful. Aldric’s voice carried above them all, clear as a bell used to ring commands.
“Search the lower road. Question every gate-guard. Every groom, every scullery girl who’s seen the healer in the last day—”
I closed my eyes briefly. Each person he questioned would be one stone pried loose from the wall of lies I’d built around myself. Sooner or later, the whole thing would collapse.
My door opened without knocking. Two guards entered first, then stepped aside.
Aldric walked in. He dismissed the guards with a flick of his fingers but left the door open, as if to prove nothing improper was happening inside.
“You’re still shaking,” he said.
“I am cold,” I lied.
He frowned. “The fire is too strong for that.”
“Then perhaps I am frightened instead.” I held his stare. “Your castle sounds like it’s being torn apart.”
“It is being turned inside out,” he said. “There’s a difference. You know her habits. You might remember something she forgets.”
“Her?” I asked, heart stuttering. “You mean Elowen.”
“Who else?” Aldric’s eyes sharpened. “You have been under her care daily for months. When did you last see her?”
I forced my mind back through the tangled hours: the pain, the stables, the blood, the betrayal. My fingers dug into the blanket.
“Yesterday,” I said slowly. “In the early hours. She brought me herbs.”
“Where?”
“In my chambers.” The lies came easier now. That terrified me. “She said… she might visit the stillroom after.”
He watched me as if hoping to catch tremors in the words.
“And she behaved normally?” he asked. “No… odd questions? No sudden interest in routes out of the city, in troop positions?”
I almost laughed. Elowen had always listened very closely, no matter who and what discussed about the king. “She has never asked me about your war,” I said. “She asked about my appetite, my sleep, my headaches. Nothing more.”
He studied my face long enough that my skin crawled.
“Your hands,” he said abruptly. “They didn’t shake like that before I left.”
“I had more strength before you left,” I murmured.
Something flickered through his expression—guilt, sharp and unguarded. He glanced at my arm, where faint yellow shadows of his fingers still ringed the skin beneath my sleeve.
“I did this,” he said quietly.
“You bruised me,” I said.
His jaw locked. “I did not mean the bruises.”
I didn’t answer. I could not tell him that the choice to send away his children had been made in the long shadow of his cruelty. Not when I had ripped that choice apart and thrown the pieces into Blackharrow’s hands.
“Tell me the truth,” Aldric said suddenly. “Is this illness new, or did it grow while I was away?”
“It has been…” I searched for a word that wasn’t pregnancy or childbirth— “…worsening.”
“And you said nothing.” His mouth curved in something bitter. “Of course you didn’t.”
“What would you have done?” I asked. “Abandoned your campaign to hold my hand?”
“Perhaps,” he snapped. Then, softer. “Or at least ordered proper reports. Elowen has sent me nothing since I left. Not a single note.”
“She may have thought you had more pressing concerns,” I said.
“There is nothing more pressing to a king than betrayal in his own hall,” he replied. “If she’s run to Blackharrow with secrets, I will—”
He broke off as a shadow filled the doorway. One of the outer guards bowed quickly.
“Your Majesty. Forgive the interruption.”
Aldric turned, already annoyed. “What is it?”
“The search riders returned from the south road,” the guard said. “They found cart tracks beyond the lower gate. Fresh. The snow hasn’t covered them yet.”
My blood ran cold.
“The tracks turn toward the old quarry path,” the guard continued. “They bypass the village, heading southeast.”
“South-east,” Aldric repeated slowly. “Toward what?”
The guard swallowed. “Toward Blackharrow territory, sire.”
The room seemed to tilt. Blackharrow. The name alone felt like a curse. The rival lord whose banners had shadowed Aldric’s campaigns, whose envoys always smiled too politely at feasts, whose rumors seemed to grow teeth.
Blackharrow’s land. Elowen’s chosen direction. I felt the world constrict around those two facts.
“Was there any sign of who took the cart?” Aldric asked.
“Some straw. An old crate. No seals.”
“And no Elowen.”
“No, sire.”
Silence fell. Heavy. I watched Aldric’s back as he stood at the foot of my bed, every line of him rigid. I saw the exact moment he put the pieces together—not the right pieces, not the twins, but enough to form another, uglier picture.
He had a missing healer. A queen who suddenly fell ill. Tracks leading to his greatest rival’s border.
His hands curled into fists.
“If she has gone to Blackharrow,” he said slowly, “she goes with knowledge. My campaigns. My supplies. My household, and perhaps more.”
I forced my face to remain blank. Inside, panic clawed at me. If he guessed even a fraction of the truth—
“She would not betray you,” I said. “She is timid and loyal. She has been with me since—”
“Since before I took your city,” he finished, eyes narrowing. “Her loyalty is not proven, only assumed. She cared enough to vanish without a word and leave my queen half-dead in a stable.” His nostrils flared. “This is treachery.”
I almost laughed at the irony. He had no idea how right—and how wrong—he was.
He turned back to the guard. “Send riders after that cart. Discreetly. I want confirmation of where it crossed the border, who received it, and whether it returns.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“And if you see Blackharrow colors,” Aldric added, his voice dropping to something cold and terrible, “you shadow them. You do not engage. You bring me word.”
The guard bowed and disappeared.
Aldric remained where he was, staring at nothing, jaw tight. Then he looked at me.
There was a darkness in his gaze I had seen on the battlefield once, from the palace balcony in Eryndale, as his men breached the outer gate. It was the look of a man deciding whose blood would be spilled to make a point.
“If someone has taken what is mine,” he said softly, “I will burn their lands to ash.”
My breath caught.
He could not have known that he spoke of our children. He meant his healer, his secrets, his authority. But the words struck me like a thrown stone anyway.
My hands shook harder.
The king turned toward the door, shoulders squared, already half in another war. I watched him go, with my heart a tangled knot of hatred and something far more dangerous. Because whatever else Aldric of Blackthorn was… he was a man who did exactly what he threatened.
And Blackharrow now held the only things in this world I could not bear to lose.