Isla's POV
The broken figure arrived with a second message.
They found it on the back of the cloth wrapping, scratched in the same way as the wall, small and deliberate and unhurried, like whoever wrote it had all the time in the world and wanted Isla to know that.
A queen who cannot protect her child is no queen at all. The wedding changes nothing. We will be watching.
Cassian had taken the cloth from her hands, read it once, and handed it to Ezra without a word. Then he had looked at Isla with an expression she was learning to read, that specific stillness that meant he was making a decision about how much of his anger to show her and choosing to show very little of it.
"We move the wedding to today," he said.
Isla blinked. "It is in four days."
"It was in four days. Now it is today." He said it the way he said everything that was not negotiable. "They want us frightened and waiting. We will not give them waiting."
