Chapter 8

Papers Nobody Was Supposed to Reread

Luna Mother Vivienne kept the old settlement records in a locked chest at the back of her study, lock so stiff she almost gave up on it twice, and she sat there with the papers spread across her desk long after the household had gone to bed. Candle burned down to almost nothing. Reading things she’d apparently never once actually read properly the first time around, which honestly embarrassed her a little, if she was being fair about it.

Told herself she was just being thorough. Just doing what any careful mother would do with a King poking through her son’s affairs. Didn’t let herself think too hard about why her hands weren’t quite steady turning the pages, or why some cold little part of her had already started building a case against her own son before she’d found one single line of actual proof.

Didn’t take long to find the first thing that didn’t sit right.

The original terms  drawn up back when Sera was still a minor, years off from any of this  had the eastern trade routes passing to Crimson Moon Pack only once a first child was born. Standard stuff, the kind of clause every settlement like this one carried, there to protect the bride’s family line in case a marriage never actually produced an heir at all. Except somewhere along the way somebody had gone back and filed a second document. A revision. Dated less than a year before the coronation, moving that whole clause up so it took effect the second the marriage happened instead. No heir required. Just the wedding, and the land was theirs.

Vivienne sat back and read it twice more. Just to be sure she wasn’t imagining it.

Somebody had rewritten the terms so Crimson Moon Pack got everything it wanted whether Sera ever carried a child to term or not.

She thought about Damian’s face these last few days. How he’d never once, not in all his years, asked her a single question about the family’s finances, content to let his father and the elders handle it while he focused on being liked, being watched, being exactly the kind of Alpha everyone already assumed he’d grow into. And she thought, with a coldness that actually surprised her a little, how convenient it’d be for a man in that position if his intended never survived long enough to matter, once the land was already locked down.

She didn’t let that thought finish itself out. Not yet. Not on an old document and a bad feeling.

Didn’t burn the papers either, though some old instinct told her that was probably exactly what she should’ve done. Folded them careful, locked them back in the chest, sat a long while in the dark after, turning over just how much she actually knew about her own son anymore. And how little of it she was sure was even true.

Down the hall, in a room a lot less official, Cassandra was having a considerably worse night for entirely different reasons.

She’d caught it at dinner. The way Sera talked to the King like she wasn’t even a little afraid of him, when everybody else at that table had spent the whole meal picking their words like they were walking on ice. The way Sera had gone quiet these past few weeks, quieter than Cassandra ever remembered her being  watching people instead of just trusting them the way she used to, laughing a half beat late at things that should’ve landed instantly.

Something was different. Cassandra had known Sera long enough, close enough, to feel it even without being able to name what exactly it was.

She brought it up to Damian the next morning, behind the stables, in the little stretch of quiet they usually got before the day properly started.

“She’s acting strange,” Cassandra said, arms crossed against the cold. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed too.”

“She’s stressed. King’s here tearing through everything. Anybody’d act strange.”

“Not that kind of strange.” Cassandra shook her head, frustrated she couldn’t quite land the thought right. “It’s like she’s  watching. All the time. Watching me, watching you, watching everybody, like she’s waiting on something.”

“Waiting on what.”

“I don’t know.” That was the part that actually scared her, if she let herself sit with it. She’d spent years being the smartest person in most rooms, comfortable in that, built her whole plan around knowing exactly how Sera thought and exactly how far ahead of her she’d always stay. The idea Sera might be catching up, might be seeing something Cassandra hadn’t accounted for, sat in her gut like something gone bad. “She used to tell me everything. Every little thing, the second it happened. Now half the time I don’t even know where she’s been half the day.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“Maybe.” Didn’t believe that, though. Not really. And something in her voice must’ve carried it, because Damian’s jaw went tight the way she recognized from years of watching him worry over things he’d rather not say out loud.

“King had her in for questioning yesterday,” he said finally. “About the settlement.”

Cassandra went very still. “About what, exactly.”

“Who arranged it. Where the coin went.” He kept his voice low, glancing back at the house like the walls themselves might be listening in. “She said she didn’t know anything. Doesn’t matter. If he keeps pulling at it”

“He’ll find the revision.”

“He’ll find the revision,” Damian agreed, and neither of them said anything for a second, the cold morning sitting heavy between them while the actual weight of what they’d built  years of careful lies stacked one on top of the other, load bearing at this point, the whole shape of both their futures resting on nobody ever looking too close  settled onto their shoulders all at once.

“We should’ve been more careful,” Cassandra said quietly.

“We were careful. Nobody was supposed to be looking. He wasn’t even supposed to be here.” Something raw crept into Damian’s voice for just a second, something close to actual fear, before he caught it and smoothed it back down into the easy confidence he wore for everybody else. “It’ll be fine. He’s got nothing yet. Old document and a bad feeling isn’t proof of anything.”

Cassandra wasn’t so sure a bad feeling didn’t eventually turn into proof, given enough time and the wrong King looking hard enough in the right direction, but she didn’t say that part out loud. Just nodded. Let Damian pull her into a quick, tense sort of embrace that felt more like two people bracing each other up than anything close to affection anymore. Watched him head back toward the house.

Stood there alone in the cold a while longer after he’d gone, thinking about Sera’s face at dinner. The way she’d looked at the King like she already understood something the rest of them hadn’t caught up to yet.

Cassandra had spent years certain she knew Sera better than anybody alive. Certain enough she’d built a whole second life on top of that certainty  an affair, a plan, a future, all of it resting on the simple fact that Sera trusted her completely and would never think to look twice at any of it.

Standing there in the cold, for the first time in longer than she wanted to admit out loud, Cassandra genuinely wasn’t sure that was true anymore.

She had no idea yet just how right she was to be worried.