The banquet didn’t end.
It released.
Like a room full of predators deciding they’d eaten enough for now.
Jina left with the taste of candle smoke in her throat and too many eyes on her back. Conversation followed her like a thin mist—whispers that stopped when she turned her head, laughter that restarted the moment she looked away.
She didn’t touch the wine. She didn’t eat more than a few bites she could control. She watched hands. Watched sleeves. Watched the way servants moved around her like she was a blade left on the table.
At the dais, Cassian’s smile lingered in her mind like a bruise. Virella’s honeyed gaze lingered worse.
And somewhere between the columns, the black-and-gold mark had flashed once, then disappeared.
Diadem didn’t clap.
They measured.
A steward guided her from the hall with stiff courtesy.
“This way, Your Highness. The Council chambers are being prepared. His Majesty requests you rest before dusk.”
Rest.
Another polite word that meant be contained.
Jina nodded without smiling and followed.
The route wasn’t the grand corridor. Of course not.
They took a narrower passage that smelled of wax and stone damp—less traffic, more control. Two guards walked behind her. One in front. The steward hovered at her shoulder like he belonged there.
Lysander wasn’t allowed close in the hall.
He wasn’t allowed close in the corridor either.
But Jina could feel him the way you felt a shadow in sunlight—present, angled just out of sight. A pressure behind the walls, moving with her.
It should have made her calmer.
It made her angrier.
Because the palace could put him ten steps away with rules, and call it respect.
They reached a stairwell.
Not the marble ceremonial stairs. This one was functional—stone steps worn smooth, iron sconces, a narrow window slit high above that let in gray light and nothing else.
The stairwell echoed. Every footfall sounded too loud.
Jina’s pulse picked up for no good reason.
No—there was a reason.
Her body still remembered almost dying.
Her mind remembered being hunted.
And her ribs remembered the word that wanted to live on her tongue.
Stop.
She swallowed and kept walking.
Down one flight. Then another.
The steward kept talking, voice smooth and empty.
“Your chambers have been—refreshed—”
“Your physician will be pleased to hear you cooperated—”
“His Majesty is grateful you conducted yourself with restraint—”
Restrained.
Cooperative.
Grateful.
Three different ways to say obedient.
Jina’s jaw tightened. She kept her face neutral.
She placed her foot on the next step.
And felt it.
Not with her eyes.
With the part of her that had spent years in exam rooms watching for the second thing that kills you—shock, collapse, a hidden complication.
The step felt… wrong.
Too slick.
Too smooth.
She paused mid-motion, weight hovering.
The guard behind her barked, impatient. “Move.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Jina didn’t.
Her gaze dropped.
A thin sheen of something glistened across the stone edge—barely visible in the dim sconce light.
Oil.
Or wax.
Fresh.
Her stomach turned cold.
The words rose in her throat again, sharp and easy—
Stop.
She clamped down on it.
Not because she didn’t want to.
Because if she used it here, in a stairwell full of witnesses, she’d hand Diadem exactly what they needed.
Proof.
The guard behind her stepped closer, spear butt tapping stone.
“Your Highness,” the steward said gently, “is something wrong?”
His tone was too careful.
His eyes were too calm.
Jina’s skin prickled.
They want me to fall.
A fall was an accident. A fall was convenient. A fall didn’t need a trial.
A fall was also the kind of death that looked “unfortunate” and made the palace sigh and move on.
Jina shifted her weight back—
The step beneath her boot moved.
Not cracked. Not crumbled.
It tilted.
A fraction of a second where her body understood before her mind did:
This wasn’t oil.
This was sabotage.
The stone slab was loose.
It was designed to slide when she committed her weight.
And she had just committed it.
Gravity grabbed her like a fist.
Her foot went out.
Her center of balance tipped forward.
The stairwell dropped away beneath her.
Jina’s breath ripped out.
Her hands flailed toward the railing—iron, cold—
A thin wire flashed at wrist height.
She saw it too late.
A trip line.
If she caught the railing, the wire would take her hands—slice, snag, pull her forward harder.
A trap inside a trap.
Her mind went blank-white for one heartbeat.
The splinter-word surged up her throat like a scream.
Stop—
A shadow moved.
Fast.
A body hit her from the side—not a shove, a catch.
Strong arms wrapped around her waist and shoulders and ripped her off the falling trajectory like she weighed nothing.
Jina crashed into a chest.
Leather. Heat. Wolf.
Lysander.
He didn’t catch her gently.
He caught her like he was stealing her from death.
The loose step slid fully out beneath them with a scraping grind. Stone clattered down the flight below and shattered.
Jina’s heart hammered in her ribs.
Her mouth was open.
The word was still there, burning behind her teeth.
Lysander’s voice snapped low at her ear.
“Don’t.”
Not an order.
A plea that sounded like pain.
Jina swallowed the word so hard it hurt.
Her breath came in ugly gasps.
The guards shouted.
“Shadow—!”
“You’re not permitted—!”
The steward’s voice rose too, sharp now, stripped of smoothness.
“Seize him!”
Lysander didn’t look at them.
He didn’t argue.
He twisted his body, putting himself between Jina and the stairwell, one arm still locked around her.
His other hand—gloved—clamped the railing.
And he hissed.
A sound that made Jina’s stomach drop.
Because she felt it through his body.
Pain, sudden and clean.
She looked down.
His glove was torn at the palm.
A thin line of red bloomed across black leather, bright and startling in the dim stairwell.
Blood.
The wire.
It hadn’t been there to trip her.
It had been there to slice whoever tried to save her.
To punish the shadow for being a shadow.
Jina’s throat tightened violently.
Lysander flexed his hand once, like he was testing whether fingers still worked.
Blood dripped from the glove and spattered the stone step.
One drop.
Two.
The guards surged forward.
Lysander moved before they reached him.
He pulled Jina backward, away from the loose step, away from the wire, away from the edge where “accident” waited with open arms.
His voice stayed low, tight.
“Walk,” he said. “Now.”
Jina stumbled because her knees were shaking.
Not from weakness.
From shock.
The steward stepped in front of them, face pale with anger he couldn’t fully show.
“This is an outrage,” he snapped. “His Majesty’s orders—”
Lysander’s eyes lifted.
Cold.
Not cruel.
Just empty of patience.
He didn’t draw his knife.
He didn’t need to.
The way he looked at the steward made the man take a half-step back without realizing it.
Jina’s mind finally caught up enough to notice the details.
The oil sheen.
The loosened stone.
The wire at wrist height.
The guards positioned behind her, not beside.
The steward too close, steering her exactly where the trap was.
Not an accident.
A staged fall with witnesses.
And now the palace had what it wanted: a “reason” to punish Lysander for crossing protocol.
To separate her from him cleanly.
Jina’s chest tightened.
The threads in her sternum pulsed hard, reacting to her spike of emotion—hot anger, cold control, amused sharpness, restless fire.
She tasted metal.
She forced her voice out, steadying it with sheer will.
“Who ordered this,” she asked, quiet.
The steward’s eyes flicked to her mouth—watching for the tyrant, watching for a Command.
Jina smiled without warmth.
“I slipped,” she said, louder now, for the stairwell to hear. “How unfortunate.”
The steward blinked, thrown off balance.
Jina continued, calm as a blade.
“And my Shadow Guard caught me,” she said. “How loyal.”
The guards hesitated.
Protocol didn’t cover a princess publicly framing an assassination as clumsiness.
Protocol didn’t cover her sounding… composed.
The myth was supposed to rage.
She didn’t.
Lysander’s grip around her tightened a fraction, like he understood what she was doing.
Buying seconds.
Buying space.
Buying survival.
Jina’s gaze dropped again to his glove.
Blood kept seeping, darkening the leather.
She didn’t know what was on that wire.
She didn’t know if it was just sharp metal or something worse.
Her stomach turned.
“Lysander,” she whispered, barely moving her lips. “Your hand.”
His answer was a breath in her ear.
“Later.”
A lie.
They both knew it.
They moved as one—Jina stepping carefully now, avoiding the slick sheen and the missing stone, Lysander guiding her with his body between her and the men behind.
The steward recovered enough to speak again, voice too smooth.
“Your Highness should return to her chambers,” he said. “Immediately.”
Jina met his gaze.
“I will,” she said.
Then, still calm, she added the knife:
“And my Shadow Guard will escort me.”
The steward’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“You are in no condition to make demands.”
Jina’s pulse hammered.
The splinter-word rose again, furious and ready.
Stop.
She swallowed it.
Not because she was weak.
Because she could see the audience in the periphery now—two servants at the landing, heads bowed but ears open; a guard at the upper corridor pretending not to watch; the possibility of Diadem eyes behind any door.
If she used Command here, she’d win the moment and lose the war.
So she did what Cassian hadn’t managed to force out of her.
She stayed calm.
“I’m in perfect condition,” Jina said softly, “to remember who tried to make me fall.”
For the first time, the steward’s mask cracked.
Just a hair.
Fear.
Not of her power.
Of her attention.
Jina filed it away.
Then Lysander’s blood hit the floor again—one thicker drop, trailing toward the edge of the stair.
Jina’s stomach tightened.
Because blood was proof.
And proof, in this palace, always got collected.
Somewhere behind them, a door creaked open.
A quiet sound.
Too quiet.
Jina’s skin prickled as a voice—pleasant, familiar, honeyed—drifted into the stairwell.
“Oh dear,” Virella said, as if she’d just stumbled upon an unfortunate spill. “Did something happen?”
[Assassination]
