Chapter 9: Nightmares
The silence after Lord Miren’s confession was a deafening thing. It filled the castle like a fog, thick and unnerving. For three days, there were no council meetings. No public appearances. The only sounds in the corridors were the doubled patrols and the low murmur of gossip sealed behind closed doors.
Sloane’s sleep, always light, became impossible.
It wasn’t the nightmare of the bolt. It was the sound. The high, dry crack of the triggering mechanism. It spliced itself into the ordinary noises of the castle. The settling of old stones became the creak of a wire tensing. A servant dropping a copper pot in the distant kitchens was the snap of the release. She’d jolt awake, heart slamming against her ribs, hand already under her pillow for the dagger.
She’d lie there, staring at the intricate ceiling beams, tracing the paths an assassin might take. The balcony. The servant’s entrance behind the tapestry. The air duct—too small, surely. But was it?
Her days became a structured kind of paranoia. Morning training with Ronan in the armory was the only time her mind quieted. There was no space for fear when his fist was arcing toward her jaw. She learned to block, to redirect, to use the wall as a weapon. He taught her how to break a man’s knee with the side of her boot. “Don’t aim to disable,” he’d grunt, pulling her to her feet after she’d hesitantly pulled the blow. “Aim to shatter. A disabled man can still stab you. A man with pulverized cartilage cannot chase you.”
She’d nod, sweat stinging her eyes, and they’d go again. The physical exhaustion was a gift. It was the only thing that promised a few hours of numb oblivion.
But the nights always won.
On the fourth night, the sound was a door closing somewhere down the hall. It was just a door. She knew it was a door. But her body didn’t. It threw her from the bed, back against the cold stone wall, dagger held low and ready, her breath coming in shallow gasps. She stood there for ten minutes, listening to the empty dark. The two guards outside her room—Corbin and Leyna, shadows with faces—hadn’t moved. It was nothing.
The humiliation was a burn in her throat. This was what they wanted. Miren, the faceless mercenary, whoever was next. They didn’t need to kill her. They just needed to turn her into this: a frightened animal jumping at shadows in her own cage.
She couldn’t stay in the room. The four walls were pressing in. Slipping on a heavy dressing robe over her nightclothes, she eased her door open. Corbin turned, his expression neutral. “Your Grace?”
“I need air. The west battlements. Don’t hover.”
They followed at a respectful distance, a fact she was too tired to fight. The castle at midnight was a different creature. The opulence looked like a prop, the gilding cheap in the torchlight. She climbed the spiral stairs to the high western wall, the night air biting through the wool robe. It was clear, the stars sharp as splintered ice. Below, the capital slept, a pattern of darkened roofs and the occasional faint glow of a watchman’s brazier.
She leaned on the cold crenellation, letting the wind pull at her hair. The vastness helped. It made her fear seem small, pathetic.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
His voice came from behind her, not from the stairs, but from the shadow of the guard tower. He was a silhouette against the deeper dark, then he stepped into the starlight. Ronan. No crown, no regalia. Just a dark tunic and boots, like he’d been prowling the castle himself.
“I could say the same to you,” she replied, not turning.
He came to stand beside her, resting his forearms on the stone. “I sleep less than you think.” He was quiet for a moment. “The guards report you’re not sleeping at all.”
“Their reports are thorough.”
“They’re concerned.”
“Are you?” The question slipped out, edged with a bitterness she hadn’t intended.
He didn’t answer directly. “Miren’s execution is set for tomorrow noon. It will be public. It will be loud. It will not make you feel safer.”
“I know.” She watched her own white-knuckled grip on the stone. “He was a sad, old man who loved his son. I understand his why. It doesn’t make me hate him less.”
“Understanding an enemy is a luxury,” Ronan said, his voice low. “Sometimes it’s a poison. You start seeing pieces of yourself in their reasoning. It blurs the lines you need to be sharp.”
She glanced at him. His profile was hard against the sky. “Is that what you do? Never try to understand?”
“I understand enough. They want something I have. Or they want me gone. The details are just scenery.” He finally looked at her. The intensity of his gaze was a physical weight. “You’re trembling.”
She was. A fine, constant shake from deep inside her bones, the kind no amount of will could stop. The admission felt like a defeat. She clenched her jaw, trying to force stillness into her limbs. It only made it worse.
Without a word, he straightened. He moved behind her, not touching her at first. Then his hands came down, heavy and warm, on her shoulders. She flinched—a full-body spasm—before she could stop herself.
His hands froze. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The obviousness of it, after everything, was what cracked her. A hot, sharp pressure built behind her eyes. She nodded, a stiff, pathetic motion, unable to speak.
His touch returned, slower this time. He began to knead the rigid muscles of her shoulders and neck. There was nothing intimate about it. It was clinical, a strategic manipulation of tension. His thumbs found a knot near her spine and pressed. Pain, bright and cleansing, flared, then melted into a wave of relief so profound her knees nearly buckled.
A sound escaped her—a half-sob, half-sigh—swallowed by the wind.
His hands stilled again for a heartbeat before continuing, the pressure gentler now. “You’re holding the entire attack in your neck. You need to let it go.”
“I don’t know how.” The words were a raw whisper.
“Then stop trying.” His voice was closer, his breath warm near her ear. “Just stand here. The wall is solid. I am here. Nothing is coming for you tonight.”
He said it with the absolute certainty of a man who controlled a kingdom. A man who would, she realized in that moment, physically stand between her and any threat in that darkness. The truth of it seeped through her, warmer than the robe.
Slowly, incrementally, the tremors began to subside. The vast, star-strewn night ceased to be a canvas for threats and became just sky. The sounds from the city below were just life.
His hands slid from her shoulders, down her arms, and back up, a steady, grounding rhythm. When he finally stepped back, the cold rushed in to replace the warmth of his touch. She felt its absence immediately.
“Come on,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “You need actual rest, not just exhaustion.”
He didn’t lead her back to her rooms. He took her to his.
It wasn’t what she expected. It was sparser, dominated by a massive map table and shelves of ledgers. A warrior’s study with a bed in the corner. The bed itself was wide, plain, and looked untouched.
“The one place in this castle no one would dare enter uninvited,” he said simply, gesturing to it. “You’ll sleep here. I’ll be at the table. There are reports to review.”
It was practical. A tactical solution to a security problem. That’s all it was. She knew that. But the offer, the sheer unvarnished safety of it, undid her completely.
She didn’t argue. She walked to the bed, shed her robe, and slid under the heavy wool blankets in her nightdress. They smelled like him—soap, leather, that faint, sharp scent of ink. She turned her face into the pillow.
Across the room, she heard the scrape of a chair, the rustle of parchment. A quill scratching. The sounds were mundane, human. Not a trap being set. Just a man working.
Her eyes grew heavy. The phantom crack didn’t come. The only tension left was the awareness of him, a quiet, solid presence in the dark. She was asleep before she could question it.
She woke to grey dawn light. For one disoriented moment, she didn’t know where she was. Then she saw him. Ronan was asleep, slumped in the chair at the map table, his head pillowed on his arms amid the scattered papers. He looked younger, the harsh lines of his face softened. Weary.
She watched the steady rise and fall of his shoulders. He’d stayed. He’d worked until he’d passed out, just to ensure she wasn’t alone. A knot, different from the one in her neck, tightened in her chest.
She slipped from the bed, moving silently. She took the wool throw from the foot of the bed and draped it over his shoulders. He didn’t stir.
Back in her own chambers, with her guards giving her curiously neutral looks, she prepared for the day. The fear was still there, a dormant cold stone in her gut. But it wasn’t screaming. She had slept. Really slept.
The execution at noon was a brutal, efficient affair. Sloane watched from the royal balcony, her face a mask of placid observance. Ronan stood beside her, a statue of judgement. When the axe fell, the crowd’s roar was a animal thing. Miren’s legacy was now that sound.
As they turned to go inside, Ronan’s hand found the small of her back, just for a second. A guide. An anchor. She didn’t flinch.
Vette was waiting in the antechamber, her usual cool demeanor fractured by a spark of urgency. She didn’t wait for formalities.
“We found the mercenary. Or rather, he found us. A tavern brawl in the river district last night. He got drunk, started boasting about a ‘castle job’ gone wrong. Someone recognized the description of the scar. He’s in the lower dungeons.”
Ronan’s gaze sharpened. “Alone?”
“He was with two others. They’re all downstairs. They’re… professional. Not talking.”
“They’ll talk,” Ronan said, the words dropping like stones. He looked at Sloane. “This is the ugly work. You don’t have to come down there.”
She met his eyes, remembering the feel of his hands on her shoulders, the solid silence of his presence in the night. The fear was there, but beneath it was that new, iron core.
“Yes,” she said, her voice clear in the stone room. “I do.”
The lower dungeons smelled of wet stone, slow decay, and a metallic hint that had nothing to do with the iron bars. It was the cold that struck Sloane first, a damp chill that seeped through her boots and climbed her spine. Torchlight guttered, throwing frantic shadows that made every corner seem alive.
Ronan led, his steps echoing with purpose. Kael and Vette flanked them, a silent, lethal escort. They passed empty cells, their doors yawning open like rotten mouths, descending deeper into the mountain’s gut.
“He’s in the last chamber,” Kael murmured, his hand resting on his sword hilt. “The other two are separated. They’ve been quiet.”
“They’ll stay that way,” Ronan said, his voice absorbing the gloom. He paused before a heavy oak door banded with iron. He didn’t look at Sloane, but his question was for her. “Ready?”
She breathed in the foul air, let it out. The fear was a silent hum in her veins, familiar now. She thought of the armory, of his instruction. The ground is where you die. “Open it.”
The room beyond was not a cell. It was an interrogation chamber, sparingly equipped. A solid table. Two chairs. A brazier with a single coal glowing orange. The man tied to the chair in the center was the sculpture of a professional. He was medium everything—height, build, hair color—except for the livid, ropey burn scar that twisted across the knuckles of his right hand.
His eyes, flat and assessing, flicked over them as they entered. They lingered on Sloane longer, a flicker of something—recognition, surprise—before going blank again.
Ronan didn’t sit. He circled the table, a predator sizing up terrain. “You have a name your mother gave you. We don’t need that. We need the name of the person who hired you for the castle job.”
The man smiled, showing a chipped tooth. “I was drinking. Making stories. You know how it is.”
“I know how a timed crossbow works,” Ronan said, his tone conversational. He stopped behind the man’s chair. “I know you sourced it in Lareth. I know you paid the Ferrin consortium to move the payment from a dummy account linked to Lord Miren.” He leaned down, his voice dropping. “We have the financial spine of it. What I want from you is the face. Who gave you the order?”
Silence. The man stared at the glowing coal.
Sloane pulled the other chair out with a screech of wood on stone and sat, facing him. She crossed her legs, smoothing her trousers. An echo of Ronan’s cool detachment. “He’s not going to tell you,” she said, not to the mercenary, but to Ronan.
Ronan’s gaze shifted to her, a question in his eyes.
“You’re asking him to betray a client. That’s against his code. It’s bad for business.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “But you’re not just a businessman, are you? You’re the man who sets the trap and isn’t there to watch it spring. That’s a specific kind of cowardice.”
The man’s eyes snapped to hers, the flatness igniting into malice. “Watch your mouth, princess.”
“Or what?” A small, cold smile touched her lips. “You’ll rig a pulley system in my ceiling? I’m not impressed by your machinery. I’m curious about your disappointment. It must grate. All that clever planning, and the only thing you hit was furniture.”
She saw it—a tiny tic in his jaw. Pride, pricked.
Ronan watched her, arms folded. He gave her the room.
“Miren was a grieving old fool,” Sloane continued, her voice dropping to a confidential murmur. “He paid you, but he didn’t think of a tripwire and a counterweight. That’s a soldier’s trick. A besieger’s trick. You learned that somewhere. Who taught you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do.” She held his gaze. “And the man who hired you isn’t some lord playing at treason. He’s not Miren. Miren wanted a message. The man you work for wanted a corpse. There’s a difference. Which one paid you more?”
The mercenary blinked. It was the first crack.
Ronan moved then. He came around the table, slow, and crouched in front of the man, putting himself at eye level. He didn’t touch him. His proximity was threat enough. “The princess is correct. Miren’s money is forfeit. His name is ashes. Your professional reputation is currently hanging from a crossbow bolt in my throne room.” His voice was ice-wrapped steel. “But you have something to sell. The name. Sell it to me, and you walk out of this dungeon to a cell with a window. You’ll live.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you are useless to me.” Ronan stood, looking down at him. “And I hand you to her. Eldorian justice for an attempt on their crown princess. They’re less sentimental about prolonged trials than we are.”
The mercenary looked between them—the king’s implacable cold promise, the princess’s sharp, probing curiosity. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. The silence stretched, broken only by the hiss of the coal.
“There was a go-between,” he finally said, the words dragged out of him. “A woman. Curtain of blond hair, always covered. Good Solas accent, but too perfect. Like she’d practiced.”
Vette, from the shadows, made a note.
“The money came from Miren’s steward, yeah. But the instructions, the schematics of the gallery… they came from her. She met me at the Silent Judge tavern. Back room.” He licked his lips. “She wasn’t nobility. She moved like… like one of you.” He nodded at Kael and Vette.
“An agent,” Ronan stated.
“Maybe. She was scared. Not of me. Of something else. She kept saying ‘the timeline is moved up.’ That the ‘northern window’ was closing.” He shrugged, a defeated gesture. “That’s all I got. A scared woman and phrases that meant nothing.”
“Northern window,” Sloane repeated. The words echoed in the cold room, attaching to nothing. Yet.
Ronan straightened. “Put him in the east tower cell. The one with the view.” He turned to leave, then glanced back. “If any of this proves creative, your view becomes a wall.”
Outside in the passage, the slightly fresher air felt like a reprieve. Sloane leaned against the damp wall, her mind racing. “A northern window closing. A timeline moved up.”
“It could be nonsense,” Vette offered. “A attempt to seem valuable.”
“No,” Ronan said, his eyes distant, calculating. “It’s operational language. An objective with a deadline.” He looked at Sloane, a new tension in his frame. “Your audit of the mining guild. When did you first subpoena the manifests from the Silver Deep?”
“Three weeks before the attempt,” she said, the connection dawning. “I moved the timeline up.”
“By exposing Bray, you forced their hand.” He began walking, faster now, back toward the stairs. “They weren’t ready. They had to improvise with Miren and a mercenary. It was rushed. Sloppy.”
“But who are they?” she asked, hurrying to keep up. “If it’s not just the guild, if it’s not just Solas nobility…”
Ronan stopped on the stairs, turning to face her. The torchlight carved deep shadows under his eyes. “The northern window. The only thing north of here worth mentioning is the Irengate Pass.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the dungeon gripped her. The Irengate Pass was the heavily fortified mountain border between Solas and Eldoria. Her home.
“The marriage,” she whispered, the pieces locking into a horrible, clear picture. “The peace treaty. It opens the pass to regulated trade. It’s a ‘window.’ But if the peace collapses…”
“The window slams shut,” Ronan finished, his voice grim. “And someone is on a timeline to make sure it does before it ever really opens.” He looked at her, and in his gaze, she saw the same staggering realization. The target was never just her, or just him.
It was the fragile bridge between their kingdoms. And they were standing right in the middle of it.