Arin did not go to bed. She sat at her writing desk with the grain document open beside her and a separate sheet of parchment in front of her, pulled from memory. Names from the Beta clan councils her father had attended when she was young. Men she had watched shake hands and argue over territory and share meals with her father like they trusted him. She matched those names against the authorization stamps in the ledger, one by one, moving through the night without stopping.
Her maid, Lena, sat in the corner pretending to sew. The needle had not moved in an hour.
Arin noticed, and she had noticed an hour ago. But she kept writing, letting the girl think she was unaware.
Then she stopped, she set down the pen, straightened the parchment in front of her, and looked directly at Lena across the room.
"How long have you been passing my words to someone outside these walls?"
The needle dropped from Lena's hands. The color left her face so fast it was almost strange to watch.
Arin did not raise her voice. She did not stand up or move at all, she simply looked at the girl and waited.
Lena opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
"Leave before I call the guards," Arin said.
Lena was on her feet before the sentence finished. She did not bow, did not gather anything, did not look back. The door opened and closed, and then she was gone.
Arin sat still for a moment, then she sealed the grain document again, pressed her ring into the fresh wax, and stood up. She would deliver it herself, no one else would touch it, and no one else would know what was inside until Adrian read it with his own eyes.
She picked up the document and walked out into the dark corridor.
Adrian had not slept well.
He did not know what had woken him. There was no sound, no reason, he had just been lying in the dark at some point past midnight with his eyes open and his thoughts loud and unpleasant, and sleep had simply refused to come back.
He splashed cold water on his face from the basin and stood in front of the bronze mirror. The face looking back at him was still strange. Silver eyes, a jaw that was harder than the one he remembered. Shoulders that were broader. He had stopped being surprised by it, mostly. But some mornings it still caught him off guard.
He pressed both palms flat against the basin's edge and looked at his own reflection directly.
"Caelan," he said quietly. "Whoever you are. I'm sorry I keep trying to tear your body apart. But I need to go home." The silver eyes in the mirror said nothing back.
Then something shifted at the edge of his thoughts, not quite a dream, or a memory, but something that felt borrowed. A small boy standing outside a large door in the rain, pressing his ear against the wood, listening to voices he was not supposed to hear. The image was sharp for half a second and then it dissolved, like breath on cold glass.
Adrian blinked, then he straightened up, dried his face, and got dressed.
He pulled open the chamber door, and saw that Arin was standing on the other side, her hand raised in the air, about to knock.
They both froze for a moment. "Oh," Adrian said.
Arin lowered her hand slowly. "Your Majesty."
She came in and stood near the table rather than sitting down. She held the sealed document at her side like she was deciding something about it. Adrian waited, reading the room.
"I found something," she said. She set the document on the table and pushed it toward him.
He picked it up and broke the seal, unfolded the parchment, and stared at the contents. His expression stayed neutral just long enough to be transparent.
He held it back out. "Walk me through it."
Something moved briefly across Arin's face, not mockery. More like she had been expecting this and had already decided it was not worth commenting on. She took the document back.
"Six months ago the grain shipments began arriving short," she said. She moved through each point without rushing, each redirected route, each date, each authorization stamp that appeared consistently in the weeks before a shortage. Her voice was steady and exact, like someone who had rehearsed nothing but understood everything.
Adrian listened, his mind was already doing what it did when someone walked him through a bad supply chain report at work: pulling the pattern apart, looking for the logic underneath it.
"So someone has been draining the supply for at least six months," he said when she finished. "That is not opportunistic. That is planned."
Arin nodded.
"Planned means they had access from the inside," he said. "They knew which routes to hit and how much to take each time to stay below the threshold anyone would flag."
"Yes," she said.
"And the name on the authorization stamps?"
She told him.
Adrian was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Cassian told me yesterday the trail leads to Iron Fang territory. Your document just proved it."
"I know," Arin said. "Cassian found where the grain was going. I found who was signing the orders to move it."
Adrian looked at her properly for the first time since she had walked in. She was still wearing the same robe from the night before, which means, she hadn't slept. That much was obvious. And still she came here first, standing in front of him at dawn with a sealed document she had clearly spent the whole night building.
"I had a spy inside my own chamber," she said. "My maid, but don't worry. I removed her this morning."
Adrian said nothing for a moment. "Just like that? No questioning?" He asked.
"A lot is going on in this palace, so I don't want to draw attention yet. Since you don't have the memory of me for now." She was calm, saying this.
"Thank you," he said simply.
It was not a long sentence, but Arin seemed to understand the weight he put into it, because she gave a small nod, the kind that meant she had received it.
She picked up the document from the table, folded it once, and held it out again. "You should keep this," she said. "Give it to Cassian, he will know what to do with it."
Adrian took it, and she moved toward the door.
The corridor outside was beginning to lighten as dawn crept through the high windows at the far end. Arin pulled the chamber door shut behind her and turned to walk back toward her own wing.
Vaelor was standing at the far end of the corridor.
Two men flanked him, large and armored in a style she recognized without needing to think about it. Iron Fang guards. Inside the royal wing. They had no business being in this part of the palace at any hour, let alone this one.
Vaelor looked at her leaving Adrian's chamber, and he smiled. Slow and deliberate.
"A private meeting so early," he said, loud enough that the two servants carrying water buckets nearby could not have missed it. "How sweet that the king finally lets his wife inside."
Arin's shoulders stiffened but she did not stop walking.
Vaelor moved closer. When he spoke again, his voice dropped to something only she could hear.
"Give him my message," he said. "Tell him the Beta clan leaders are meeting tonight. And tell him that if he does not show his face before them soon, they will not wait for him to recover." He paused. "They will choose a new king themselves, who can stand.."
He stepped back and walked away before she could say a word, the two Iron Fang guards falling into step behind him.
Arin stood still in the corridor, watching him go.