I broke the seal.
One sentence had been written across the parchment in hurried black ink.
Do not trust your fiancé. The priestess will come tonight.
I read it twice, memorized every stroke, then tore the message into pieces and burned them one by one over the candle flame.
If Obsidian searched my room, they would find ash.
The message changed the shape of the fortress around me. Until then, every corridor had belonged to Kael. Now I knew at least one Crescent loyalist could reach the east tower without being seen. That meant servants, passages, and divided loyalties. It also meant someone expected me to remember a priestess I could not picture.
I spent the afternoon turning the sentence over in my head. Do not trust your fiancé. It would have been more useful if the writer had explained whether anyone in Obsidian deserved trust at all.
At dinner, Kael made sure I sat where the entire court could see the iron collar around my throat.
"To peace," he announced, lifting his goblet.
No one looked particularly peaceful.
A scarred commander across the table laughed. "Crescent finally learned what happens when a weak pack confuses pride with strength."
Another wolf smirked. "They ran before the first gate fell."
"That is a lie," I said.
The commander leaned forward. "Careful, Princess."
"My people held the river crossing for nine hours against three times their number. If you need to rewrite the battle to feel brave, at least choose one no survivors remember."
The table went quiet.
Fallon sat beside me, rigid.
His hand closed over mine beneath the table before I could reach the silver knife beside my plate.
"Don't," he murmured.
"He is laughing about dead children."
"And you are holding a weapon in my father's hall."
"Maybe your father should invite better company."
Fallon removed the knife and placed it beyond my reach.
"Eat."
"I would rather starve."
"Then do it somewhere less theatrical."
I shoved my chair back.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Where are you going?"
"To breathe."
"Sit down."
Fallon spoke before I could. "Let her go."
Kael looked at his son for a long moment.
Then he smiled in a way that promised consequences later.
I left.
Two guards followed at a distance.
The corridor outside the great hall was colder and almost dark. I turned a corner, then another, putting a stone pillar between myself and the guards.
A hand pulled me into an alcove.
I opened my mouth.
"Quiet," a woman whispered.
She wore a gray hood. Her eyes were clouded white with blindness.
"Selene?"
The name came from somewhere I could not place.
Her fingers tightened around my arm. "You remember me."
"No. I remember the name."
"The spell left fragments. I warned you it might."
My throat went dry. "What spell?"
Selene leaned close. "Three years ago, you came to my sanctuary before the Moon Festival. You wanted the mate bond removed from your mind."
I stared at her.
"I didn't know I had a mate."
"You did then."
"Why would I ask you to erase him instead of rejecting him?"
Selene's mouth tightened. "Because a true rejection requires both wolves to survive the breaking. You had no awakened wolf then. The bond had taken root in human blood, and you feared severing it would kill you before your pack learned Obsidian was coming."
"So I chose forgetting."
"You chose time."
"Who?"
Her blind eyes seemed to focus directly on me.
"Fallon."
The corridor tilted.
I caught the stone wall.
"No."
"You were already marked. Not fully bonded, but claimed. You begged me to sever the recognition because you had learned who he was."
"Kael's son."
"The heir of the pack preparing to march on yours."
A second fragment flashed through me: Fallon pressing a folded map into my hands beneath festival lanterns, his voice urgent. North pass. Two days. Get Elian out. Then the image vanished before I could tell whether it was memory or something the spell had invented.
I gripped Selene's cloak. "Did he warn us?"
"Ask him why your brother ignored the warning."
I touched the burning scar.
"Did the spell work?"
"Not properly. He found us before I finished."
A flash hit me.
Sanctuary doors splintering inward.
Women screaming.
Blood across white stone.
Fallon's face above mine.
Not cold.
Terrified.
Then nothing.
"He killed your acolytes," I said.
Selene's mouth tightened. "Men wearing Obsidian colors did. Fallon came through the doors with them. I never learned whose order they followed."
That distinction mattered more than I wanted it to.
"Did he kill my brother?"
"I did not see Elian die."
"Kael says Fallon was there when the sanctuary fell."
"Kael says many useful things."
My heart beat harder.
"How do I break the bond now?"
"You cannot destroy it by forgetting. That was my mistake. Memory is not the bond."
"Then what is?"
"Blood. Choice. Recognition."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only one I have."
Boots sounded at the end of the corridor.
Selene pulled back.
"Wait."
"Do not trust the story either man gives you," she whispered. "Find what they were both willing to hide."
She disappeared through a narrow service passage just as the guards rounded the corner.
"Princess," one called. "Who was with you?"
"No one."
"I heard voices."
A colder voice came from behind them.
"Stand down."
Fallon approached from the direction of the hall.
The guards bowed and withdrew.
He stopped in front of me.
His gaze went to the dark alcove, then back to my face.
"Who were you talking to?"
"Myself."
"Your pulse says otherwise."
He stepped closer, one hand braced against the stone beside my head.
Pine and iron filled the space between us.
The scar under my collar began to burn.
Fallon's eyes dropped to it.
"What did she tell you?"
I forgot how to breathe.
He knew there had been a woman.
I thought of Selene's final warning: find what both men were willing to hide. Fallon had not asked who. He had asked what she told me. That was not suspicion. It was history.
And from the look on his face, he knew exactly which one.
