The body lay cold on the floor of the private archive chamber.
The palace had not yet finished shaking from the alarms, and yet the stillness inside the room felt far more suffocating than the battle outside. The dead infiltrator remained half-curled on the marble, servant coat stained dark with blood seeping beneath his ribs. His face had already begun to lose the strange feverish certainty that had twisted it only moments ago.
Selene stood a few steps away, staring at the black-feathered seal in Kael's hand.
The chamber felt smaller now.
Tighter.
As though the walls themselves were listening.
Kael turned the seal over once beneath the firelight, his expression unreadable. The emblem was simple at first glance, a crescent moon split by a fang, but the longer Selene looked at it, the more it seemed to carry something old and buried beneath its polished surface.
Not a noble crest.
Not a clan banner.
A memory.
Or perhaps a warning.
