••{RHIANNON'S POV}••
The palace hasn't slept ever since the attack.
Even as the sky lightens outside the tall windows, even as dawn bleeds slowly into the night, there's movement everywhere.
Boots echo through the corridors. Voices murmur behind closed doors. Guards rotate in shifts so tight it feels like the walls themselves are breathing with suspicion.
Every servant is being questioned, every guard interrogated, every shadow watched.
And it still isn't enough because it doesn't change the truth sitting heavy in my chest.
The royal palace is no longer safe.
There are traitors inside these walls.
I sit in Azrael's chambers, my hands folded so tightly in my lap that my fingers ache. The room smells faintly of iron and smoke, and something sharp and bitter that clings to the back of my throat no matter how hard I try to breathe through it.
