He returned his attention to Morgana's notes, and I read over his shoulder. The information was extensive but also frustratingly incomplete. Morgana had suspected dozens of people but had proof against only a few. Some names I recognized from court, others were servants or minor officials I'd never heard of.
"There's a pattern here," Kael said, running his finger down a list. "Most of the suspected agents have one thing in common: they all have access to secure areas of the castle. The archives, the royal quarters, the guard stations. These aren't random servants. These are people positioned to gather intelligence and potentially act as assassins if needed."
"And several of them serve your father directly." I pointed to a name. "Lord Ashford. He's one of the King's chief advisors, isn't he?"
"Yes. He's also the one who's been pushing Father to restrict my access to resources, arguing that I'm too unstable to be trusted with sensitive information." Kael's jaw clenched. "If he's working for Daemon, he's been undermining me for years."
"Can we prove it?"
"Not yet. Suspicion isn't proof, and if we accuse him without evidence, he'll know we're onto him and warn the others." Kael closed the journal carefully. "We need to be strategic about this. We identify the agents we can prove are compromised, and we use them to draw out the others."
"How?"
"By feeding them false information and seeing where it goes. If we tell Lord Ashford something in confidence and Daemon somehow learns about it, we know Ashford is compromised. We do the same with other suspects until we've mapped the entire network."
It was dangerous, but I could see the logic. "And while we're doing that, we continue investigating your mother's death publicly. Make it seem like we're distracted by the past while we're actually dismantling their present operations."
"Exactly." He smiled, and I was relieved to see it was genuine. "You're getting good at this. Court intrigue and manipulation."
"I had good teachers. Eighteen years of watching nobles lie to each other's faces in Eldoria." I took his hand. "But Kael, there's something else we need to consider. If Daemon knows we're investigating, if he's been watching us closely enough to send that message, he might already know about Elena. He might know she's here."
"Then we use that too. Let him think Elena is our only source of information. Let him focus his attention on silencing her while we work from Morgana's journal to dismantle his network from the inside."
"You want to use Elena as bait." I didn't like it, but I understood the necessity. "Does she know that's what we're doing?"
"She's a survivor from the old families who've been living in hiding for decades. She knows exactly how dangerous this is and what she's risking by being here." Kael squeezed my hand. "But I'll make sure Captain Thorne and his most trusted men are protecting her. She won't be an easy target."
We spent the next hour going through the journal more carefully, making notes and formulating plans. Some of the names Morgana had documented were surprising. Others were people I'd suspected of being hostile but hadn't realized were part of something larger.
The most disturbing revelation was near the end of the journal. Morgana had written that she believed someone in the royal family itself was working with Daemon, someone with direct access to the King and influence over his decisions. She hadn't been able to determine who, but she'd narrowed it down to three possibilities: the twins Darian and Theron, or possibly even King Aldric himself.
"She thought my father might be in on it?" Kael's voice was strained.
"Or she thought Daemon might have fooled your father somehow. Made him believe something that wasn't true." I chose my words carefully. "Your father grieved your mother deeply. Daemon could have used that grief to manipulate him, to make him see threats where there weren't any and miss the real danger right in front of him."
"Or my father exiled his own brother and has been wracked with guilt ever since. Guilty enough that he might help him now, might see it as making amends." Kael set down the journal, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "I don't want to believe that. But I can't rule it out either."
"We investigate everyone. Even family. Especially family." I stood, stretching muscles that had gone stiff from sitting. "But right now, we both need rest. We've been going since before dawn, and you just experienced trauma through shared memory. You're exhausted."
"I am," he admitted. "But I'm not sure I can sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see my mother's face. Hear her trying to reason with Daemon. Feel Elena's helplessness."
I moved behind him, putting my hands on his shoulders and working at the knots of tension there. "Then let me help. Sometimes you need someone else to carry part of the weight."
He leaned back into my touch, some of the rigid control finally relaxing. We stayed like that for a while, neither of us speaking, just being present for each other in the way that had become natural despite knowing each other for such a short time.
"Elara," he said eventually, his voice quiet. "Thank you. For staying. For choosing to be my partner when you could have asked my father to protect you from me instead."
"I didn't stay because I had no other choice. I stayed because I wanted to." I moved around to face him. "You're not the monster you think you are. And I'm not the helpless princess I was trained to be. Together, we're something better than either of us could be alone."
He pulled me down into his lap, and I went willingly, curling against his chest and listening to his heartbeat steady and slow as the adrenaline from earlier finally began to fade.
"Stay with me tonight," he said. "Not because of duty or necessity. Just because I don't want to be alone."
"I'll stay," I promised. "Always."
We eventually made our way to bed, and though Kael did have nightmares, each time he woke up gasping, I was there to remind him where he was, who he was with, that the past couldn't hurt him anymore. And gradually, the nightmares became less intense, his sleep more peaceful.
I watched him for a while in the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains, this complicated man I'd married as a stranger and was slowly coming to understand. He wasn't easy to love. His curse made him dangerous, his past made him guarded, and his future was uncertain at best.
But I was learning that love wasn't about easy. It was about choosing someone despite the difficulties, about building something strong enough to weather storms together. And whatever storms were coming—and I knew they were coming—I wanted to face them with him.
Tomorrow we will begin dismantling Daemon's conspiracy. Tomorrow we would start the dangerous work of exposing traitors and hunting killers. Tomorrow the real fight will begin.
I finally drifted off to sleep with Kael's arms around me, feeling safer than I'd ever felt in my life despite knowing we were in more danger than ever.