I slipped through the mansion's back gate, wincing as the iron groaned enough to give me away. The journal sat tucked inside my jacket, Raelin's rough stitches pressing against my ribs like a second heartbeat — better than any silk-bound thing the court scribes turned out.
The dagger weighed on me more than it would ever weigh on her belt. Smart move, giving it to her — West was rough, and she'd use it if cornered. Just not on me. We'd never get that far. Treaty or no treaty, Raelin was mine.
The halls stretched dark and empty, torches burned down to their last inch in the sconces. The servants had cleared out hours ago; they knew better than to be caught wandering when Ruslan was in one of his moods.
His study door hung cracked at the end of the corridor, light spilling out onto the marble. Voices leaked through it, low and edged — and Ruslan never talked business this late unless it was the bad kind. Border skirmishes. Noble complaints. I slowed, kept to the wall's shadow, and told myself I was only stopping to listen for a second.
Then I heard the second voice, and every plan I had about a second changed.
Tsvetan. Smooth, unhurried, the kind of voice that made you lean in before you'd decided to. He never came to Ruslan's wing without a full court escort — never showed up unannounced at all. That alone was enough to set my teeth on edge.
I crept closer and pressed my spine flat to the cold stone. Eavesdropping wasn't exactly noble behavior, but sneaking across the border to see a fae orphan already had me beat on the disgrace scale. Fair trade.
Ruslan was pacing — I could hear it in the thud of his boots on the rug, hard enough that I pictured his jaw already clenched.
"Take this seriously, brother. Lord Varyn crossed into the West on some bloodlust bender and killed an aristocrat's daughter. They're not calling it a hunt gone wrong. They're calling it murder."
A pause. When Tsvetan didn't answer fast enough, Ruslan's voice climbed. "The Western council is already mobilizing. This is war, Tsvetan. Full declaration by dawn."
My breath caught and didn't come back for a second. West. Raelin. The words landed like a fist, and I stumbled back half a step, my shoulder catching a side table hard enough to send a candlestick rocking. I caught it before it hit the floor.
No. The treaty had held for centuries — strained, patched, but standing, held together by blood oaths and elite pairings nobody wanted to break first. One dead girl couldn't unravel that.
Could it?
Raelin's face flashed behind my eyes — the dry smirk she wore over stolen pastries, that orphanage sitting right on the West edge of the line. If the border locked down—
Tsvetan hadn't moved from the window. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the dark like it might answer him if he waited long enough.
When he finally spoke, his voice carried that same terrible calm. "Learn to rule the world, Ruslan. There's only one rule that matters: bend every choice until it favors you. Wars aren't started with blades. They're started with whispers."
Ruslan went still. "You did this. Started a war over one noble's mistake."
"I started nothing." Tsvetan turned his head just enough for the moonlight to catch the line of his jaw. "The pieces fell where I'd already arranged for them to fall. Lord Varyn needed... encouragement. A word here. A rumor there. The West was primed to snap. Now they have their excuse."
Ruslan dragged both hands through his hair and started pacing again, faster. "And what do you gain? North can't fight a war on every side at once. East will stay neutral — fine — but the South's barriers are already thinning. You want to open that door too?"
Tsvetan glanced at him over one shoulder, eyes dark and giving nothing back. "Something you're not ready to understand yet."
I was right there, pinned against the wall, heart lurching, the journal's outline plainly visible under my jacket to anyone who bothered to look.
"Maeve." He said my name careful, soft, like he was talking down a spooked horse, one hand half-raised toward me.
"Don't." I backed up until the marble chilled my spine. My heart was loud enough I was sure they could both hear it. "Don't come near me. You're monsters, both of you. What happened to the treaty — to keeping disputes between the elites instead of—"
"The treaty died the second Tsvetan decided a murder was worth the trouble," Ruslan cut in, voice climbing again.
"Ruslan." Tsvetan's tone dropped, flat and absolute, quiet but filling the whole corridor without needing to be loud. "Return to your chambers. We'll speak later."
"You don't get to just—"
"I do. Chambers. Now."
Ruslan's jaw worked like he was chewing on everything he wanted to say back. He looked at me once — something guilty flickering under the anger, close to a warning, maybe closer to pity — then turned and walked off, boots echoing until a door slammed somewhere out of sight.
The silence after was worse than the shouting.
Tsvetan tilted his head toward me from the study threshold. Whatever had been in his face a moment ago was gone now, smoothed over into something patient and unhurried, like I was a problem he'd already decided how to solve.
"Sit, cousin. We have a great deal to discuss about your little visits."
My stomach dropped straight through the floor. He knew. The borders, Raelin, all of it — and I could feel every bit of color draining out of me to prove it.
ns216.73.216.95da2
and then Add to home screen.