POV: Seraphine Vale
Lord Pelham is arrested before midnight.
Seraphine knows this because the guards tell her when they come to escort her to breakfast the following morning. She sits in the great hall and watches Darian eat with the same controlled precision he brings to everything else. He does not look at her. Does not acknowledge that she was the one who gave him the name. Does not show any sign that her information has proven valuable.
But his jaw is slightly looser than it was yesterday. His shoulders carry a marginally lighter weight. And when he dismisses the morning council, there is something in his movements that suggests satisfaction.
She gave him that. With her intelligence. With her observation of a lord's nervous habit at dinner.
Seraphine finishes her breakfast and stands to leave, but instead of returning to her suite, she turns down a corridor she has never explored before. It branches off from the main palace toward what seems to be the oldest section of the building. The stone walls are older here. The tapestries are faded. The light from the windows is dimmer, as if the sun does not shine as brightly in this part of Darian's home.
She walks slowly, letting instinct guide her. Letting her feet carry her toward something she cannot name. The hallway turns. Then turns again. She passes locked doors without thinking much of them. Locked doors are common in a palace. Privacy is currency when power is involved.
Then she finds it.
The door is heavier than all the others. Iron hinges — not gold, not silver, but plain black iron. There is no handle on the outside. No lock visible. Just smooth stone and metal and absolute finality. This is not a door that is meant to be opened by accident. This is not a door someone might pass through casually.
This is a door designed to keep something in.
A guard steps out of the shadows before Seraphine can get close enough to touch it.
"No entry, my lady," he says. His voice is polite. But his stance is absolute. "King's orders."
Seraphine does not argue. Does not fight. She simply nods and walks away as if she was never actually interested in the door. As if she did not just feel something in her chest tighten at the sight of it. As if the image of it will not burn itself into her mind for the rest of the day.
She spends the afternoon in the library, reading books about the history of the palace. She learns that this section was built during the reign of King Ashvael's grandfather. That it was designed during a time of war, when the royal family feared assassination from within their own ranks. That there are passages and hidden rooms and places designed specifically to keep enemies — or family members deemed dangerous — contained.
By evening, she has convinced herself that she does not care what is behind that door.
By midnight, she is lying awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling, unable to stop thinking about it.
She hears it around two in the morning.
A sound from somewhere far down the hall. Past two locked corridors. Past the section of the palace she is not supposed to venture into. The sound is very faint. Muffled by distance and stone and whatever magic seems to exist in the spaces between these walls.
It is not quite crying. Not quite screaming. It is something in between. It is the sound of a person in deep, agonized pain. But not the sharp pain of something freshly broken. The deep pain of something that has been broken for a very long time.
It is the sound of someone who has been crying for so long that they forgot how to stop. Who has been suffering for so long that the suffering has become the only language they know.
Seraphine sits up in bed.
Every sensible instinct tells her to close the shutters. To cover her ears. To pretend she did not hear it. This is not her burden. This is not her responsibility. Whatever is locked behind that door, the king has chosen not to tell her about it. Which means it is not her business to understand.
But she cannot unhear it.
She gets out of bed and walks to her window. The palace gardens are dark below her, moonlit and still. She can see the guards on patrol. Can see Captain Renn standing near the main gate, looking out at the city beyond the walls. Can see Darian's light still burning in what must be his study — a window far across the courtyard where the king sits awake at this hour, perhaps for the same reason she cannot sleep.
The sound comes again. Fainter this time. Sadder. Like it is fading not because it is ending, but because the person making it is running out of energy to continue.
Seraphine wraps a robe around herself and walks to her door. The guards are still posted outside — they nod at her but do not stop her as she moves into the corridor. She walks toward the sound, following it like it is a beacon calling her through the darkness. The palace is different at night. Emptier. More honest somehow. As if the shadows strip away the performance and leave only truth.
She reaches the locked corridor. She does not try the door. But she presses her palm against the cold stone beside it, and she closes her eyes.
"I do not know who you are," she whispers into the darkness. "But I hear you. And you are not alone."
The sound stops.
For just a moment, the entire palace seems to hold its breath. And Seraphine understands with absolute certainty that whoever is behind that door heard her. That her words reached them. That she has just acknowledged something the king has spent years trying to keep hidden.
Then there is movement — fast, urgent movement from somewhere deep inside. Footsteps. Shouting. Guards responding to some kind of alarm. And Seraphine realizes with horror that her presence here has triggered something. That she has disrupted whatever careful routine has been established for managing whatever exists behind that door.
She turns and runs back to her room.
She does not stop running until she is back beneath her covers, her heart hammering against her ribs. She lies on her back, staring at the ceiling, understanding that she has crossed another line. That she has moved from simply gathering intelligence to actively investigating the king's most closely guarded secret.
And as the night stretches on in silence, Seraphine cannot escape one terrible thought:
If the king finds out that she went to that door. If he discovers that she heard the sound and acknowledged it. If he realizes that she is beginning to understand that whatever is locked away in his palace has broken him in a way that fear and power and all his control cannot fix.
Then she will become a threat.
And Darian does not tolerate threats.
The thirty days suddenly feel very short.
And the palace — the beautiful, golden cage — suddenly feels very dark indeed.