The palace did not wake to screaming.
It woke to silence.
A silence so heavy, so absolute, it was louder than grief. It pressed against the arches of the golden halls, curled beneath silk tapestries, and echoed along corridors lined with crystal. Even the wind outside seemed to have forgotten how to whisper.
But silence never stays unbroken. Not here.
The first sound came from a stable boy—shouting as he stumbled into the outer courtyard, his skin pale as frost. The guards tried to hush him, to drag him away. But the word had already slipped through his trembling lips.
"Dead."
And like a crack running across glass, the word fractured everything.
---
Queen Myrienne was dead.
No one believed it at first. She had left for the fairgrounds only the evening before, slipping out of the palace in commoner garb under the guise of moonlight. It was a habit of hers, rumored, whispered. But never questioned. She liked to disappear into the crowds sometimes, unrecognized. Unthreatened.
Except this time… she hadn't come back.
Her body had been discovered near the edge of the village, tucked behind a slope of wild briar at the base of the mountain trail. Not torn apart. Not stabbed. Not poisoned.
No wounds.
No bruises.
Just… scorched.
Her flesh, blackened in places, looked more like stone than skin. Her dress had burned into lace. But her face was still. Untouched. Her eyes wide open, frozen in something not quite terror—but not peace either.
And beside her, nestled into the soil—
A black orchid.Unpicked. Unspoiled.
Deliberate.
---
The news passed through the palace like sickness. Whispers gave way to gasps. Gasps gave way to screaming.
By the time the sun rose fully, the King had already ordered the palace locked down. Nobles were recalled from the temples, soldiers were posted at every door, and every servant who had passed through the queen's wing in the last two days was brought in for questioning.
No one would leave.
No one would hide.
---
Asheryn, veiled and silent in the role of Selena Thorne, stood in the shadows of the rose-marble court as the whispers reached her ears.
She didn't move. She didn't blink.
But her stomach twisted in knots beneath her silk gown.
It wasn't fear.
It was control.
She had known this moment would come. Had calculated every breath of it. The witches had promised the death would be clean. Silent. No trace.
And yet… here it was. The second queen, dead in a blaze that didn't belong to nature or steel.
And now the whispers of witchcraft had come.
---
All around her, nobles shifted. Eyes darted. Even the servants had begun to murmur.
Asheryn tilted her head just enough to catch a glimpse of the gathered court. Queen Valeira stood tall, her crimson sleeves trailing the floor like blood. Her son—Crown Prince Rhael—looked unfazed. Amused, even.
The Third Queen remained seated behind the pillars, mostly hidden. Always quiet. Always watching.
But it was Kaizen Thorne—the Duke at her side, the man she'd stolen her name from—who caught her attention.
His expression was carved from stone. Grief, perfectly arranged.
But Asheryn saw the flaw in the marble.
A flicker. A twitch of the jaw. A too-fast glance toward the throne.
He was nervous.
He had played a dangerous game with Queen Myrienne. And now the woman he whispered to in locked gardens had died with a witch's mark beside her bones.
She watched his hands—clenched tightly in front of him. Not mourning. Not broken.
Guilty.
---
Kazimir entered last.
His boots echoed through the throne room like judgment. His armor was still partially strapped, as though he had come straight from training. His silver gaze swept across the room, quiet, measuring, and deadly.
He didn't bow. He didn't blink.
But the moment his eyes landed on the orchid placed at the Queen's sealed chamber door… he stopped.
His head tilted slightly.
Asheryn tensed.
From across the court, she saw him inhale—just faintly. And something in him… shifted.
It was subtle. A tightening of the shoulders. A flicker in his brow.
He recognized the scent.
It hit him like thunder.
That night. The moonlight. The curtain in his room rustling where there was no wind. The scent, soft and cold, like burning petals on snow.
Ghost orchid.
He had dismissed it then as memory. As dream. But now—
Now it stared back at him.Used in only one place. Found only in one cursed region:
Ildarune.
Witchlands.
Kazimir's jaw clenched. But he said nothing.
Asheryn looked away before he could see the flicker of panic beneath her veil.
"The Queen was killed by something… unnatural," said the priestess that morning, her voice thin and uncertain before the King.
"Fire with no source. Flesh that burned from within. And no mark of struggle." She paused. "There was no scream, Your Majesty. No one heard her die."
King Aldric stood above them all, still robed in night-colored velvet, his crown crooked slightly on his brow. The weight of grief had not softened him—it had sharpened him.
"If this is witchcraft," he said, each word measured, "then this kingdom will bleed to find it."
By midday, three servants had been arrested.
By dusk, the first soldier was accused.
By nightfall, the palace trust had fractured entirely.
Asheryn retreated to her chamber in silence. But her heart did not still.
That night, as the torches dimmed outside her windows, a soft knock sounded at her door.
She hesitated, then opened it just enough.
A single parchment envelope lay on the ground. No seal.
Inside—
A pressed black orchid. And beneath it, scrawled in ink the color of fresh blood:
"He remembers the scent.
Be ready."
Her hands trembled. Not from fear. But from understanding.
Kazimir was close.
And if he ever traced the flower to that night, to that curtain, to the ghost of a girl who had vanished like breath from his room...
Then he wouldn't stop.
He never did.And Asheryn was running out of places to hide.Three days passed.
Three days of quiet tension that strangled every hallway in the palace. No laughter echoed across the colonnades. No music drifted through the domed ceilings. The castle had become a mausoleum of silks and secrets.
The Second Queen was dead. And her ghost hadn't left.
Not truly.Because her scent remained.The scent of witchfire.
The black orchids had begun appearing in strange places. Folded into the hems of tapestries. Pressed between prayer books. Left beneath pillows of handmaids too afraid to speak. Most dismissed it as hysteria. A trick. A prank. But the fear... the fear was real.
Asheryn felt it in the walls.It was working.The palace was unraveling. Suspicion turned neighbor against neighbor, courtier against servant, wife against wife.
And someone was about to bleed.It started with a servant.
One of Queen Valeira's personal attendants—young, soft-voiced, too frightened to hold a secret—was caught burning something in the private incense brazier near the Queen's prayer alcove. When the guards forced it open, they found a scrap of a letter—partially burned, but still legible.
Asheryn heard the name whispered before sunset:
Queen Myrienne.The writing was hers.
A letter she'd once sent to Duke Kaizen Thorne. It spoke in vague poetry, cloaked in flirtation, but the intent was unmistakable.
A scandal. A betrayal. A threat.And now… motive.The court gathered again under torchlight.
Rain spat against the high arched windows, but the throne room was burning with something far more dangerous than fire.
The King sat high on the dais, flanked by his sons—Rhael lounging, Kazimir silent and coiled like a blade. The three queens remained in their rows. Queen Valeira's face was unreadable, but her eyes were sharp. Her mouth, frozen in regal dismissal.
But Asheryn—watching from behind the crowd as Selena Thorne—saw it.
A flicker of something beneath all that frost.A crack.
"The incense chamber," said High Seer Thelvar, his voice dry as paper, "had no business being lit without the Queen's permission."He held up the parchment. The half-burnt love letter. "This was no accident."
Whispers exploded across the court.
"She wanted her dead—"
"She found out about the affair—"
"She knew Kaizen was slipping—"
Queen Valeira stood slowly, her jaw clenched. "You dare accuse me based on the clumsy actions of a servant? A girl barely old enough to hold a pen?"
"It's not just the letter," someone else called out. "There was an orchid. In her prayer book."Asheryn blinked once.Perfect. Just as planned.
Valeira's head turned sharply. "You planted it," she said, not to the court, but to Kaizen.
Kaizen didn't flinch.
But the King did.
"Enough," King Aldric roared, rising to his feet. "My court will not devour itself like dogs."Still… he looked at Valeira longer than necessary.He saw the crack too.
Asheryn turned away before anyone saw her smile.Because now the palace would tear itself apart trying to decide what was real.And all she had to do… was let it.