Nevan
I stared at the map spread across the war table in the King's private council chamber, tracing the border with my gloved finger.
The Ashenmoor Stretch was two hundred miles of dense forest, dead rivers, and land so blighted that nothing had grown there since before I was born. It was the Crown's blind spot because it was too barren to settle, too vast to patrol and very close to Wellspring for coincidence.
Because the blight hadn't always been there, it had started the same year the curse took root in my bloodline. Whatever had been done to my family, whatever dark covenant my grandfather had broken or bargain he had failed to honour, hadn't just poisoned the Wilder name. It had poisoned the land itself.
And now, according to the reports on the table, the Ashenmoor was waking up.
"Three scouting parties in six weeks," King Aldric said from behind his desk. He didn't look up from the letter in his hands. "The first two returned with stories my generals dismissed as superstition. The third didn't return at all."
I said nothing. I already knew what the scouts had reported. Livestock found drained at the border farms, trees blackened overnight as though burned from the inside, and a sound the surviving men described as breathing.
It didn't come from the wind or the animals. It had come from the forest itself.
"I need you to deal with it, Nevan," Aldric interrupted my thoughts.
"I intend to."
"You intend to?" Aldric huffed, setting down the letter and looking at me for the first time.
Aldric was a careful man, with greying hair already at his temples from all the stress of running the kingdom. He had inherited the throne at a young age and held it through patience and the people's love.
Although he was at least ten years older than I, we had known each other since boyhood, though the years had carved a distance between us that neither friendship nor loyalty could bridge.
He knew what I was and tolerated it because he needed me.
"You've been intending to for years," he said. "The Ashenmoor has been festering since your father's time, and every year you tell me you're close to a solution. Every year, the blight spreads another mile, and now I have ten missing soldiers and border villages petitioning for relocation." He leaned back in his chair. "I need more than intentions."
"The curse is weakening."
Aldric raised an eyebrow.
"I've found someone," I continued carefully. "The conditions the seer described have been met…"
"You mean a witch?" Aldric scoffed. "You know the kingdom's position on witchcraft, and for you, I keep making exceptions."
"It's a seer, not a witch," I reassured him. "And the girl I've found, if she's right—and I believe she is—then the source of the blight and the source of my…condition are the same. End one, and the other follows."
"The new fiancée," He said, studying me. "I heard it's a Baron's daughter this time around."
"She's different from the others."
"You've said that before."
"This time, I mean it," I insisted. "She was born on the Hollow night."
Aldric held my gaze for a long moment, then exhaled and reached for a second stack of documents on his desk. He placed them in front of me with a heaviness that told me we had arrived at the real reason I'd been summoned.
"Lord Whitmore has written to me again."
My jaw tightened. Whitmore. Lady Elowen's family.
"This is the ninth petition in eight months, Nevan," Aldric tapped the stack. "He wants a formal investigation into his daughter's disappearance. He wants access to Wellspring. He wants answers that, frankly, I cannot give him because you have never given them to me."
"Elowen left of her own accord."
"So you've said. And I have repeated that to Lord Whitmore faithfully for over six months," Aldric sighed. "But he has witnesses—servants from neighbouring estates—who say they saw her the night she vanished, and that she was not in a state to leave anywhere voluntarily."
"Aldric…"
"He has a sworn statement from a physician who examined a woman matching Lady Elowen's description at a roadside inn, disoriented and unable to recall her name. And now he has the ear of half the court, all of whom are asking why the Duke of Wellspring seems to go through fiancées the way other men go through hunting dogs."
I stood perfectly still. The mask suddenly felt heavier than usual.
"I have tried to protect you," Aldric continued, and his tone shifted wearily. "I have dismissed petitions, redirected inquiries, and personally assured Lord Whitmore that the Crown has no reason to suspect foul play. But I cannot keep doing this, Nevan. Not without something to stand on. His petition has gained support from Houses Merrick, Blackwood and Thorne. If I ignore a fourth noble house, it stops being a private matter and becomes a political crisis."
He paused, letting the weight of that settle.
"And then there is the matter of Lady Catherine."
My hands clenched beneath my gloves. "Catherine is alive."
"Catherine is in a sanatorium in Ashford, unable to feed herself or speak in coherent sentences. Her family has been quiet because they are ashamed, not because they are satisfied. If Lord Whitmore's investigation gains enough traction to open a formal inquiry, Catherine's family will join it. And then we are not discussing one missing woman, Nevan. We are discussing a pattern."
I flinched at the word pattern.
He wasn't wrong. I knew what the court whispered, what the servants murmured, what every household within a hundred miles of Wellspring believed. The masked Duke who destroys his brides. The monster of Wellspring.
I wanted to tell him everything. The curse, the transformation, the nights I spent locked in the east wing while my body turned against me. I wanted to tell him the truth about the ladies, but I couldn't explain any of it.
Not until the curse was broken and I had proof that the nightmare was over, because if the King learned the full extent of what lived inside me, if he understood what the Wilder bloodline truly carried, tolerance would become fear, and fear would become a kill order.
"I cannot explain everything to you, Aldric," I said quietly. "Not yet, at least, but I will fix this."
"Oh, Nevan," he ran his hand through his hair. I could see the war playing out behind his eyes. "You have until the end of the season," he said finally. "That is all I can give you. If Lord Whitmore petitions again after that, I will have no choice but to authorise a formal inquiry. And if that inquiry reaches Wellspring…" he didn't finish the sentence.
"I understand."
"Do you?" He leaned forward. "Because the next time we have this conversation, I won't be speaking to you as a friend."
I held his gaze. "There won't need to be a next time."
The King said nothing. He picked up his pen and returned to the letter on his desk, a clear sign of dismissal.
As I turned to leave the chamber, I knew if I wanted to beat time and the King's deadline, I had to marry Rosamund at the end of this week, which was two days from today. The real question is…
Do I—Nevan—have enough time?
~~~
I arrived at Wellspring a few minutes past two in the morning.
Clyde was waiting at the door when I climbed off the horse; he had a smile on his face.
"You didn't stay the night?"
"Not while Jennifer and my fiancée are still mad at me." I sighed, handing him my gloves. "Draw me a bath."
"Already prepared," he replied, falling into step beside me as I entered the hall. "I heard your horse from the east road."
"How is Jennifer?" I stopped at the bottom of the staircase to ask him.
"Retired early to her quarters and asked not to be disturbed," he replied.
That means she was still furious at me. Jennifer loves to spend the night in my room.
"And Rosamund? Did she settle in well?"
Clyde chuckled. "She did. Though I should warn you, she discovered the wine cellar, or rather, her maid did and brought a bottle to Lady Rosamund's chambers. Something about wanting to taste the wine of Wellspring." He paused. "She tasted quite a lot of it, Your Grace."
The corners of my mouth twitched. "Then I'll check on her first," I said, "then bath afterwards."
"Of course, Your Grace." Clyde nodded.
Minutes later, I stopped at Rosamund's door and knocked softly on it, twice.
There was no response.
I waited and knocked again, but nothing.
Carefully, I eased open the door and entered.
The outer chamber was lit by a single candle burning low on the writing desk. Rosamund's maid was on the floor beside the chaise, curled on her side with one arm tucked under her head and an empty wine glass tipped over near her hand.
She was snoring loudly.
I stepped past her and moved toward the inner chamber. The door was ajar, and beyond it, the room was dark except for the thin silver of moonlight spilling through the window.
I could make out the shape of a body on the bed.
I stood at the threshold, hesitating. Every instinct told me to leave, that she was asleep and would be safe. Besides, I had no reason to enter a woman's bedchamber at this hour, fiancée or not.
But something pulled me forward—a desperate urge to see her face again. I crossed the room quietly and stopped short when I reached the foot of her bed.
Rosamund was lying on her back, the sheets tangled at her feet, with her body completely naked.