Maybe there’s a chance.
Slim—with Kai unconscious, the odds were very slim—but I had to try something.
“Kai!”
I threw everything I had into my voice.
“Wake up!”
Please.
“Get up—and call the Creatures right now! They’re somewhere in this palace—they have to be!”
This was the royal palace of the central kingdom. Even the elite royal knights here had never trained against real Creatures the way northerners had.
If Kai could wake up long enough to call whatever was caged somewhere in these walls—
“Kai, please—call the Creatures loud, and make them—”
“Tsk. Aisha.” Duke Foss’s voice was almost paternal in its disappointment. “You’ve been spending too much time in the North. Your imagination has gotten rather wild.”
Bang.
The door closed.
________________________________________
________________________________________
The chaos Aisha had left behind settled the moment the door shut.
The silence that followed was absolute. As if the room had been cut loose from the world.
A boy crumpled in the corner. An empty vial rolling across the floor. Dark liquid smeared across the tiles like scattered evidence.
Find Aisha.
Kai lay utterly still.
Through the closed window came the muted sound of noble laughter—bright, distant, entirely ordinary.
Find Aisha.
The afternoon sun had begun its tilt toward evening. The light that had been slanting across the floor retreated steadily as shadows advanced.
And then—
Find Aisha!
Kai’s eyelids moved. Slowly. Unevenly.
Lavender eyes, once they opened, gleamed in the dimness with something that was not entirely human.
At last—
“—KREEEEEE!”
A sound like a building coming apart at the seams.
And then the voices beyond the window, which had been bright with laughter, dissolved into screaming.
“A Creature!”
Kai had called them. And the Creatures had answered—shattering their cages and pouring out into the palace grounds.
“…Aisha.”
He had, in fact, woken up a fraction before the door had closed on Aisha.
The drug had frozen his limbs—sealed his eyelids shut—but his hearing had remained intact. He had lain in the dark and listened, unable to do anything except understand.
And from everything he’d pieced together, one thing was certain.
There were Creatures nearby. And when Creatures were near, he could feel them—reach for them—and be answered.
The moment he could move his fingers, he had done exactly that.
I want out. I’m going.
The first responses had been tentative. Uncertain.
These Creatures had been born in cages. They had never once considered that beyond the iron bars, there was somewhere else to be.
There’s a place in the North that belongs to you, Kai had told them, steadily, in the language that needed no words. Don’t hurt anyone else. Just find Aisha—and then go home.
The effect of those last words was immediate.
Home.
A tremor moved through them—a resonance that Kai felt in his chest. The concept had never occurred to them. It struck them now like something enormous.
And one by one, they turned their faces toward the walls of their cages and decided, for the first time in their lives, to wonder what was on the other side.
“…”
He pushed himself upright. His arms shook, but they held.
The drug had worn off at last. But by the time his body had caught up with his mind, they had already taken Aisha.
Aisha.
My Aisha.
The one thing I cannot afford to lose. The one place that is home.
“I have to get her back.”
He crossed to the window and pushed it open.
The air outside was thick and humid—nothing like the clean cold of the North. The smell of it alone made him want to go home.
He swung himself over the sill.
________________________________________
________________________________________
Slightly before all of this.
When Calypse had finished telling her what he knew, Queen Grace said nothing for a long moment. And then—
“Find Princess Aisha. That is an order to every member of my personal guard.”
She had simply moved to a quieter corner of the corridor and issued her commands with the economy of someone who had already decided what mattered most.
“Simultaneously—seal every exit from the city. No one leaves the capital until further notice. Not one person.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
She understood the order of priorities. The revelation that Princess Aisha had once been a House Foss operative was staggering. But it was Calypse who had told her—and that mattered.
Calypse despised Duke Foss. That much, Grace had known for a long time. And so did she, for her own reasons.
She had never said so aloud, but through Knox she had learned the truth behind the Creature rampage last year—and who had been quietly behind it. She knew about King Arzen’s hand in it too.
That pitiful, petty man.
She pressed the thought down.
Not now. Arzen comes later. What matters is that Calypse loves that child—whatever the history between them.
She hadn’t needed to be told directly. She had watched him all evening. He had not once put Aisha down. And when the girl stretched her neck forward to get a better look at something in the crowd, the corners of Calypse’s mouth had lifted before he could stop them.
She looked every inch his own.
Whatever complications existed in their story—that was their story to tell. Grace didn’t need to hear it. She didn’t have time.
“Calypse.”
“Yes.”
“Whatever there is to say about Princess Aisha—we will revisit it after this is resolved.”
“…!”
He looked up at her. Something in his expression—usually so impenetrably controlled—loosened, just slightly.
“Thank you.”
The words came out quiet and entirely genuine. He dipped his head with real respect—
“Well, this is quite the scene to stumble upon!”
—and then a voice from around the corner undid it entirely.
“Goodness, Grace—you spend so much time studying creatures, and now you’re holding clandestine meetings with the man who kills them?”
Arzen. The king himself.
What is he doing in this wing? The banquet hall is in the opposite direction.
Grace filed the thought away and answered him evenly.
“Your Majesty. That remark is disrespectful to all three of us.”
“Disrespectful? My love, what I find disrespectful is finding my wife in a deserted corridor with another man. Forgive me if I take issue.”
But Calypse did not engage with the bait.
“Your Majesty. Have you seen Princess Aisha?”
He asked it quietly. Directly.
His suspicion of Arzen was not unique to Grace. He had been watching the king since the moment they had come face to face.
“The princess? Ah—the one with the golden hair and twin braids? No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”
Arzen lifted his shoulders in an easy shrug.
“Are you certain, Your Majesty?”
“Why would I know where your ward is? I told you, I haven’t seen her.”
“Then I wonder, Your Majesty, how you know her appearance.”
Arzen’s feet stilled.
“You have not attended any of the recent regular banquets. You would have had no occasion to see my daughter’s face until tonight.”
Arzen was a man who led with feeling rather than calculation. And that, as it always did, gave him away.
“…Ah, well—she’s been in all the papers, you know. Everyone’s been talking about what she looks like. I simply heard it from the people around me.”
The color drained from the king’s face before the sentence was even finished.
There it is.
Something in Calypse’s expression went cold—quietly, precisely, terribly cold. He had begun to move toward Arzen when—
BOOM.
A concussion that rattled the very corridor they were standing in. Followed immediately by—
“Creature!”
“There’s a Creature—it’s loose!”
Panicked shouting. Running boots. And then a royal guard, skidding around the corner and coming to a breathless halt before Arzen.
“Your Majesty! There’s been a breach—a Creature has appeared inside the palace grounds!”
“What? How did it get out of its—”
Arzen caught himself. Too late.
“A Creature in a—I beg your pardon, Your Majesty, did you say—”
The guard stared.
“How many?” Grace cut in cleanly, taking control before the silence could deepen. “What species?”
“Two, Your Majesty. Giant Orcs, it appears.”
“Twenty knights to the banquet hall—escort the guests and staff to the east wing annexe. If it came from the palace interior, there’s time enough.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“The remaining knights are to engage the Creatures directly. Giant Orcs are not ordinary opposition—full force. Kill them if you can, and if you cannot, contain them within the palace walls.”
“Yes!”
The knight came to attention and had begun to move when a large hand stepped firmly into his path.
“Your Majesty.”
It was Calypse.
“Cancel that order.”
