Chapter 185 — What If We Chose Wrong?

Chapter 185: Chapter 185 — What If We Chose Wrong?

~ Cassian ~

"Showtime."

Cassian remained on the branch after the word left him, watching the patrol below finish another pass along the eastern wall before disappearing around the corner.

Two wolves crossed that section together. Once they were gone, nearly four minutes passed before anyone else came through.

The western side was slightly better guarded, though not by much. One patrol crossed near the main courtyard while another remained closer to the family wing, but neither route properly covered the servants’ side of the estate.

There were stretches where nobody watched the upper windows at all, and the servants’ entrance remained unattended long enough for Cassian to wonder whether House Blackthorn had another layer of security hidden beneath what he could see.

He watched another complete rotation.

Apparently, it did not.

His mouth twisted faintly.

House Blackthorn carried itself loudly enough whenever its name came up around Valerius. The family had money, territory, old alliances and enough influence to make people treat the name with considerably more respect than Cassian thought it deserved.

Apparently, none of that had taught them how to guard a wall.

Cassian drew the Lattice inward until every line of Air settled tightly around his body. His weight eased beneath him, and when he dropped from the branch, his boots touched the ground with barely enough force to disturb the grass.

The nearest patrol had not reached the far end of the wall before Cassian crossed the first open stretch and slipped beneath a covered walkway.

Nothing reacted.

He continued without hurrying. Speed was useful only until it made someone careless, and getting caught inside another Alpha family’s estate because he had rushed through an easy opening would be embarrassing enough that he might actually have to kill everyone who witnessed it.

A servant crossed the courtyard ahead carrying folded linen. Cassian waited beneath an archway until the door closed behind her, then moved toward the narrow passage beside the kitchens.

Raven’s directions remained clear in his head.

Third-floor servants’ quarters, directly above the kitchens. The loose floorboard sat beside the wall where her old crate had been.

The smell of old smoke and food reached him before the staircase did, mixed with soap and damp stone from the servants’ passages. Cassian climbed the first flight quietly and slowed near the turn when footsteps approached from above.

A maid appeared carrying another stack of linen against her chest.

Cassian stepped into the recessed space beside a storage door and pulled the Lattice closer until even the faint movement of air around his clothes settled.

She passed within several feet of him without looking over.

He waited until her footsteps faded below before returning to the corridor.

This was becoming insultingly easy.

The third floor was quieter. Most of the doors were shut, and the few lights still burning beneath them were dim enough to suggest the servants inside were either asleep or close to it.

Cassian counted the doors as Raven had instructed.

Then he found hers.

For a moment, he simply stood outside it.

There was nothing remarkable about the door. Plain wood, an old handle and scratches near the bottom where years of use had worn through the finish.

Cassian opened it carefully and slipped inside.

The room stopped him.

It was smaller than he had expected. A narrow bed sat against one wall with a small table beside it, and there was little else apart from the remains of an old crate near the opposite side.

His gaze moved slowly across the space.

This was where Raven had lived.

Not for a few weeks or a season, but for years.

Cassian had seen servants’ rooms before. House Blade had enough of them. He had simply never connected one to Raven in any meaningful way because she had a remarkable habit of describing the worst parts of her life as though they were inconveniences she had already decided no longer mattered.

A cramped room had only been a room when she described it. A servant’s uniform had simply been something she wore. Even the coins she had hidden beneath the floor had become another detail in a story she told without asking anyone to pity her.

Cassian’s expression cooled.

He crossed toward the wall.

The crate was no longer exactly where Raven remembered it, but a darker mark remained across the floorboards where something had clearly sat for years. Cassian crouched and ran his fingers along the edges until one corner shifted beneath the pressure.

There.

He worked the board loose carefully and lifted it just enough to reach beneath.

His fingers touched oilcloth.

Cassian paused before pulling the bundle free.

It was thicker than he expected. Dust had gathered over the wrapping, but the material underneath remained dry, and when he opened it just far enough to confirm what he had found, Raven’s handwriting covered the first sheet.

He stared at it.

Beyond the Chains.

The rest of it.

The manuscript Raven had believed she might never see again.

Cassian closed the wrapping immediately rather than reading farther and set it carefully beside him before reaching beneath the floor once more.

Several folded letters followed, their publisher seals still visible. After them came a small cloth pouch that gave a faint clink when he lifted it.

Cassian weighed it once in his palm.

There was barely anything inside.

His jaw tightened.

Other belongings remained beneath the board as well, little things that meant nothing to him and therefore probably meant enough to Raven that she had hidden them beside everything else she considered important.

He did not examine any of them.

Cassian gathered everything into the dark satchel beneath his vest, taking particular care with the manuscript and letters so neither would bend while he moved. Once the compartment was empty, he replaced the floorboard exactly as he had found it and rose.

He should have left immediately.

Instead, his gaze travelled across the room once more.

Raven had slept here, written here and somehow built an entire world on paper while living in a space barely large enough to hold the bed beside her.

Half of Valerius had read that book.

House Blackthorn had lived comfortably above her without noticing that the servant they treated as though she possessed nothing had created something people across the kingdom were apparently fighting to get their hands on.

Cassian drew a slow breath through his nose and realized one hand had closed tightly at his side.

He loosened it.

There were already enough reasons to dislike House Blackthorn.

He had just acquired another.

Cassian slipped back into the corridor and retraced his route toward the stairs, adjusting the Lattice around himself as he moved. The estate remained as unimpressive on the way out as it had been coming in, and he had nearly reached the passage leading toward the servants’ courtyard when voices carried up from the floor below.

He ignored them.

Whatever argument House Blackthorn was having tonight had nothing to do with him.

Then an older male voice sharpened, and Cassian slowed.

He knew that voice.

Aldric Blackthorn had attended enough formal gatherings over the years for Cassian to recognize the controlled way he spoke even when anger slipped beneath it.

Cassian continued toward the stairs.

Then another word reached him.

"...yes, Raven."

His next step stopped.

His wolf stirred almost immediately.

Cassian stared toward the end of the corridor for a moment before quietly turning back.

The voices came from one of the family sitting rooms below the servants’ level. An open gallery overlooked part of the corridor, and Cassian positioned himself behind the carved stonework where he could listen without exposing more than a fraction of his body.

Aldric stood near one of the windows while Sharon Blackthorn sat farther inside, a glass resting beside her hand. From where Cassian was positioned, he could see only part of the room.

"You keep dismissing it."

"I’m not dismissing it." Sharon leaned back slightly, already sounding tired of the conversation. "I’m saying you’ve spent six days going over the same reports as though the answer will change if you read them enough times."

Aldric glanced back at her. "Something changed."

"Rivers changed. We know that."

His gaze stayed on her. "That isn’t what I mean."

Sharon’s expression tightened.

Aldric turned farther from the window. "Her classification should not have happened the way it did. Then the Hunt happened. Now she has a wolf, she’s climbing the Court and every report out of Valerius seems to put her in the middle of something that should be beyond her."

"So she awakened late."

"You don’t believe that."

"I believe wolves awaken strangely every year."

"Not like this."

Sharon reached for the glass but stopped before lifting it. "And now we’re back here again."

Aldric said nothing.

She looked at him more directly. "Her classification. The Hunt. Her rank. The Cardinal heirs. You’ve listed all of it enough times that I could repeat it for you."

"Then stop looking at them separately." Aldric’s voice hardened slightly. "Four Cardinal heirs keep ending up around the same girl."

That made her pause.

Aldric caught it immediately.

"Blade before he apparently disappeared. Prymont. Hale. Ashbourne. One of them, perhaps. Two, if you enjoy coincidence. But all four?"

"I think powerful boys becoming interested in the same girl is hardly proof of what you want it to be."

"You know that isn’t what I mean."

Sharon’s fingers tightened faintly around the glass before she released it. "You watched her for years, Aldric."

"I know."

"Because you were afraid you might have missed something."

Something shifted in his expression.

"And there was nothing," Sharon continued. "No wolf. No presence worth mentioning. Nothing that ever gave us a reason to question the decision."

Aldric remained silent.

Sharon shook her head. "You were the one who finally stopped looking. You decided there was nothing left to question."

Cassian watched Aldric more carefully.

Something was wrong with the conversation.

Not the contempt. He had expected that much from Blackthorn.

It was the uncertainty underneath it.

Aldric did not sound like a man whose former servant had unexpectedly become powerful after leaving his House.

He sounded like a man watching an old conclusion come apart.

The silence stretched between husband and wife.

Cassian waited.

Then Aldric spoke.

"What if we really chose wrong?"

Everything inside Cassian went still.

Sharon stared at him for a long moment before answering. When she finally did, her voice dropped until the words were barely more than breath.

They reached Cassian anyway.

His fingers locked against the stone.

A breath caught in his throat, and the Lattice faltered with it. Air shifted around his body and brushed softly against the wall beside him.

Below, Aldric’s head snapped toward the gallery.

"Who’s there?"