The secret burned in her veins, a cold fire that gave her a strange and terrible clarity.
Aelina was murdered.
The words were an anchor in the chaotic sea of her own life. For days, Arin's world had been a dizzying storm of Caldan's impossible survival and her own impending doom. She was adrift. But now, she had a piece of solid ground beneath her feet. A truth. A mission that went beyond her own survival.
She had to get out of this tower. Not just to save herself. Not just to find Caldan.
She had to uncover a secret that had been buried for years. She had to find the ghost in the machine of the Kaerythene court.
She spent her days pacing, her limp a steady, rhythmic beat against the stone floor. Her mind was a whirlwind, re-examining every piece of gossip, every whispered story she had ever heard about the court. Aelina's tragic drowning had always been a sad footnote in Caldan's history, a story of young love cut short.
