Chapter 10: Attempt
The silence after the dungeon wasn’t peaceful. It was tactical. For weeks, Solas Castle became a locked box. Every servant with blond hair was discreetly questioned. The Silent Judge tavern was placed under permanent surveillance. The manifests from the Silver Deep mine were cross-referenced with every northern trade ledger until Sloane’s eyes burned. They found nothing. The woman had vanished. The ‘northern window’ remained a cryptic phrase, scrawled on a map in Ronan’s war room, taunting them.
The investigation hit a wall of perfect, polished stone.
Sloane’s fear, that cold stone in her gut, didn’t vanish, but it calcified. It became a part of her skeleton, a load-bearing truth: someone wanted the peace to fail. The work was the only answer. She buried herself in the dry arithmetic of statecraft—tax codes, irrigation reports, the grinding minutiae of rule. It was a different kind of armor.
Ronan watched her. He didn’t comment on the long hours she kept, or the way she now instinctively positioned herself in a room with her back to a solid wall, a practice he recognized in himself. He simply made space for it. Their morning sparring sessions continued, the clash of practice blades a more honest conversation than any council meeting. He pushed her harder. She demanded it.
Months bled together. The sharp terror of the crossbow receded, blurred by routine. The kingdom, blissfully unaware of the shadowy woman and the closed window, saw only stability. A strong king. A resilient princess. A marriage that had weathered an attempt on its life. The public narrative hardened into myth, and myth was a powerful binder.
Their first anniversary of the treaty signing—the official start of the peace, not the wedding—loomed on the calendar. The courtiers seized on it. A celebration was necessary, they insisted. A show of unity and strength. A rebuke to the shadows.
Sloane agreed, her political mind seeing the value. Privately, she dreaded the pageantry. The masks. The endless smiling.
The night before the anniversary, a summer storm lashed the mountains. Sloane lay in her own bed, listening to the rain rage against the stained glass. The nightmare didn’t come. Instead, she thought of the utter quiet of Ronan’s room that one night. The scratch of his quill. The solid weight of his existence across the darkness. The safety had not been in the location, but in the witness. He had seen her tremble. He had not thought less of her for it.
An idea, reckless and unbidden, took root.
She waited until the first grey light of dawn split the storm clouds. She rose, padded to her wardrobe, and bypassed her riding leathers and court dresses. She chose a simple linen shift, so thin it was almost sheer in the pale light. She didn’t braid her hair. She let it fall, a dark cascade against her shoulders.
The corridors were empty, the castle still holding its breath. The guards at Ronan’s door—Leyna and a new man, Joric—snapped to attention. Their eyes widened slightly, but their training held. Leyna simply gave a sharp, approving nod and opened the door without a word.
His room was as she remembered: the map table, the ledgers, the severe simplicity. He was asleep in the bed, one arm flung over his eyes, as if to block out the world even in sleep. The blankets were tangled low around his hips, his bare chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. He looked less like a king and more like a worn-out soldier finally granted a reprieve.
She moved silently to the side of the bed. The storm’s aftermath dripped from the eaves outside, a peaceful, rhythmic tap-tap-tap. She watched him for a long moment. Then she reached out and gently pulled his arm away from his face.
His reaction was instantaneous. His other hand shot up, catching her wrist in a vice-grip before his eyes even flew open. Grey eyes, clouded with sleep and immediate, lethal violence, locked onto hers.
The intensity of it should have frightened her. It didn’t. It thrilled her.
He blinked. The violence evaporated, replaced by pure, unguarded shock. His grip loosened, but he didn’t let go. His gaze traveled from her eyes, down the line of her throat, over the thin linen, and back up. A muscle in his jaw feathered.
“Sloane.” Her name was a rasp, rough with sleep.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” she whispered, throwing his own words from the battlements back at him. A faint, challenging smile touched her lips.
He stared, his brain visibly scrambling to catch up. The strategic king was gone. In his place was just a man, confronted with an utterly unforeseen variable at dawn. “The guards—”
“Are terribly discreet. It’s a good quality in a guard.”
He finally released her wrist, his hand falling back to the sheet. He pushed himself up on one elbow, the blankets pulling further. “Is there a crisis?” he asked, the king trying to reassert himself through the haze.
“A dire one,” she said, her tone light, airy. She perched on the edge of the mattress. “It’s our anniversary. The kingdom expects us to be… harmonious. I thought we might practice.”
His eyes darkened. The shock was melting away, burned off by a slower, hotter understanding. A smirk, lazy and entirely new, tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Practice,” he repeated, his voice dropping.
“We rehearse everything else. Speeches. Walkways. Swordplay.” She leaned forward, just an inch. “Seems a glaring oversight.”
He moved then. Fast. His hand came up not to grab, but to cup the nape of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair. He pulled her in, not with brute force, but with a deliberate, undeniable pressure. Their faces were inches apart. She could feel the heat radiating from his skin, see the flecks of silver in his grey eyes.
“Your practice is flawed,” he murmured, his breath warm against her lips.
“Oh?”
“You talk too much.”
He closed the distance.
The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming and an answer, a release of months of coiled tension, of unspoken fears, of strategic calculations. It was the opposite of a crossbow’s crack—it was a low, building hum in the blood. Her hands found his shoulders, the muscles hard and corded under her palms. He shifted, pulling her fully onto the bed, rolling so she was beneath him, the weight of him a solid, thrilling anchor.
The linen shift was a negligible barrier. He broke the kiss, his lips tracing a path down her jaw to her throat. She arched against him, a soft sound escaping her that had nothing to do with fear.
A loud, deliberate cough came from the direction of the door.
They froze.
Ronan’s head lifted, his expression transforming from desire to incendiary fury in a heartbeat. “I gave orders,” he growled toward the door without looking.
“Which I am blatantly ignoring,” came Kael’s voice, strained with apology and urgency. “Because there’s a contingent of Eldorian royal guards at the main gate. With a diplomatic coach. And your father-in-law, Sloane, is reportedly inside it.”
The words landed like a bucket of ice water.
Sloane’s eyes widened. “My father? He wouldn’t… he never leaves Eldoria. Not without word.”
Ronan was already moving, rolling off her and swinging his legs out of bed. He snatched a tunic from a chair, his movements efficient, the king fully restored. The intimate space of a moment ago shattered under the weight of a new, imminent crisis.
He looked back at her as he pulled the tunic on. The smirk was gone, replaced by a sharp, assessing focus. But his eyes held hers for a second longer than necessary. “Practice is adjourned,” he said, his voice gravelly. “The performance, it seems, begins early.”
He tossed her a heavier robe from a peg on the wall. She caught it, the thick wool a stark contrast to the thin shift.
As she wrapped it around herself, the earlier warmth was gone. A different kind of chill took its place. Her father, here, unannounced. It wasn’t a social visit. The timing, the day before the anniversary celebration, was no accident.
The quiet months were over. The northern window, whatever it was, had just been flung violently open.
The northern window, whatever it was, had just been flung violently open.
Sloane dressed in a fury, fingers fumbling with the laces of a formal gown. The intimate warmth of Ronan’s skin was now just a ghost under the heavy velvet, a taunting memory. “This is a deliberately timed disruption,” she muttered to the empty air of her chamber, selecting a severe silver circlet instead of the softer tiara she’d planned.
In the corridor, Ronan was waiting, already in full regalia. “Kael’s confirming it’s definitely him,” he said, falling into step beside her. His stride was all business, but his gaze flicked to her, a quick, searing glance. “Your thoughts?”
“He hates travel. He hates Solas air. This isn’t a congratulatory visit.” She smoothed the dress, a pointless gesture. “It’s a declaration. Something’s happened.”
The throne room felt different. The usual morning calm was gone, replaced by a buzzing current of startled courtiers and hastily assembled guards. The stained-glass saints seemed to leer down. Sloane took her seat beside the monstrous throne, the weight of the circlet a dull pressure. Ronan settled beside her, the very picture of impenetrable calm.
The great doors groaned open.
Her father, King Aldric of Eldoria, did not procession. He invaded. He was a storm of travel-worn leather and grim purpose, his own guards—men with the lean, hungry look of the northern mountains—forming a wedge behind him. He looked older. The lines around his eyes were canyons carved by a new, sharp worry.
Sloane’s heart did a complicated, painful twist. Irritation at the interruption warred with a daughter’s deep-seated alarm.
SLOANE IS IRRITATED, FLUSTERED PRACTICALLY, THAT HER MORNING HAD BEEN RUINED AS SHE SITS ON THE THRONE BESIDES RONAN, HER EYES FLASHING THEIR SIGNATURE GLARE AT THE COMPANY THAT FILLED THE THRONE ROOM, RONAN QUIETLY CHUCKLING BESIDES HER. The sound was a low, private rumble she felt in her own bones. Her glare intensified, taking in the dusty entourage, the grim set of her father’s jaw, the entire inconvenient spectacle. She could still taste Ronan on her lips, a secret buried under public scrutiny.
“Father,” she said, her voice cool as the castle stones. “You grace us with unexpected urgency.”
Aldric didn’t bow. He stopped a dozen paces from the dais, his eyes scanning her, then Ronan, with the tactical assessment of a general on a crumbling battlefield. “Dispense with the court manners, Sloane. We’re past that.” His voice was gravel grinding, raw from the road. “There’s been an incident. A massacre. At the Irengate Pass garrison.”
The words dropped into the silent room like stones into a deep well.
Ronan went perfectly still beside her. The quiet chuckle was gone, extinguished. “Explain,” he commanded, the single word cutting through the air.
“Five nights ago,” Aldric said, his gaze locking onto Ronan, bypassing her entirely. “Every Solas soldier stationed on your side of the border. Their throats were cut. Not in a fight. In their beds.” He paused, letting the horror settle. “My scouts found them. And left your banner, dipped in their blood, nailed above the gatehouse.”
A cold, sick understanding washed over Sloane. This was the move. Not a crossbow in a gallery. An axe to the treaty’s root.
“Eldorian banner?” Ronan’s question was deadly soft.
“No,” Aldric spat. “Yours. The Silver Phoenix. It was a performance. A sloppy one. Meant to be discovered by my men.” He finally looked at his daughter, his eyes holding a terrible, apologetic anguish. “The timeline moved up, Sloane. Someone is painting a target on this peace and handing my army the brush. They’re screaming for me to mobilize. To retaliate.”
The northern window was closing. With blood.
Ronan stood, the movement fluid and controlled. “You came here instead.”
“I came,” Aldric said, his voice dropping, “because my daughter sits beside you. And because the man who taught me siegecraft thirty years ago didn’t leave calling cards.” He took a step closer, ignoring the twitch of Solas guards. “This wasn’t Solas. This wasn’t Eldoria. This is a third player. And they are in your house, Ronan. They have been for months.”
The throne room seemed to contract, the air growing thin. Sloane’s mind raced, scrambling over the evidence—the blond woman, the mercenary’s phrases, the mining guild’s secrets. A frame job. A big, brutal, undeniable one.
Ronan looked down at her. His grey eyes were no longer just calculating. They were furious. A clean, focused fury that matched the cold dread coiling in her stomach. He saw the same connections flashing behind her eyes.
“Your garrison is dead,” Ronan stated, turning back to Aldric. “My banner is desecrated. The provocation is perfect.”
“It is,” Aldric agreed, grim. “And if I ride back with only words of caution, my war commanders will call me a coward. A fool. They’ll say your pretty treaty was just a blade held to our throat all along.” He looked desperately at Sloane. “I need something. A name. A body. Something to prove this isn’t you.”
Sloane rose to her feet, the heavy folds of her gown suddenly feeling like armor. The frustration of the ruined morning was gone, burned away by a clearer, sharper fire. Her father wasn’t here as a king disrupting her peace. He was here as an ally, risking his own crown to warn them.
“We have a name,” she said, her voice clear and carrying. Every eye snapped to her. “Well. A description. A woman. Blond. She hired the man who tried to kill me. She mentioned your ‘northern window closing.’” She ignored the shocked murmur that rippled through the court. “We find her. We find who she answers to. You take them back to Eldoria.”
Aldric stared, a flicker of brutal pride breaking through the worry on his face. “You have her?”
“Not yet.” Ronan’s hand came to rest on the pommel of his sword, a habit, a promise. “But we just learned what she’s truly after. That changes the hunt.” He looked from Aldric to Sloane, a new, brutal alliance solidifying in his gaze. “They’re not hiding in shadows anymore. They’ve stepped onto the field and drawn a line in blood.”
He stepped down from the dais, closing the distance to Aldric. Two kings, a foot apart, with a chasm of dead men between them.
“Rest your men,” Ronan said, his voice low, for Aldric alone but Sloane heard it. “Then join me in the war room. Bring your best hunter. We have a fox in the henhouse. And it’s time to stop closing windows.” He glanced back at Sloane, a single, shared beat. “It’s time to rip the roof off.”