1. The Last Word
Garrick forced the words out with his remaining breath. “Why are you standing there? Look at her!”
“Don’t talk,” Ronan said, pressing both palms harder against the wound. “Save your strength.”
The words hung in the quiet room. Ronan stared at the blood welling between his fingers and spreading across the grey masonry, and for a long moment his mind refused to move past that simple, undeniable fact. Then he lifted his head and looked at her.
Sephira stood a few paces away, rooted in place, her bloodstained hands hanging open at her sides. Under the torchlight, the bruises on her wrists had darkened almost to black. Her lips parted and closed again, as if she were reaching for an explanation that would not come.
“I didn’t do this,” she said, her voice thin. “You have to listen to me.”
“Not now.”
Beneath his hands, his father’s breathing hitched, grew faint, and stopped. Ronan felt the chest go still under his palms, yet he kept his eyes on Sephira, as though looking away from her would make it real.
It was real anyway. When he finally looked down, Garrick’s right arm had fallen back against the stone, and his eyes were open, fixed on nothing. The blood had spread far enough to soak through the knees of Ronan’s trousers. He stayed crouched beside the body, not because he hoped to find a breath, but because he needed to see.
Garrick’s forearms were badly marked. The skin along the outer edge of his left arm was torn and scraped raw, the kind of damage that came from throwing an arm up fast against an incoming blow, not from a fall. Ronan turned the limb gently and studied the bruising that ran from elbow to wrist. Defensive wounds. His father had died trying to block.
He rose and traced the violence backward through the room: a chair knocked onto its side, objects scattered across the floor, and near the far wall, a patch of scorched stone that nothing in the room could explain. Then his gaze returned to Sephira’s wrists. The bruises there formed deep, symmetrical bands shaped by fingers—the marks of someone held down by both arms, not of someone swinging a blade. She hadn’t moved. She simply watched him take it all in, her hands loose at her sides.
“Ronan,” she began. “What you’re seeing here—”
“Don’t.” He raised a hand without looking at her.
“You have to let me explain what happened.”
He turned on her then, and whatever she saw in his face stopped her mid-sentence. His jaw was clenched so tight it ached, and his eyes burned red-rimmed. “He told me what you did before he stopped breathing. Those were his last words. And you expect me to stand here and listen to your version?”
Sephira met his gaze without flinching and said nothing. Her silence grated on him worse than any argument could have.
“Why aren’t you defending yourself? Are you going to tell me he lied, or are you just going to stand there?”
“Would my words change what you found on him?” she asked quietly. “Look at the marks on his arms. Then look at mine. Do you really believe his story fits this room?”
Before he could answer, boots struck the stone corridor outside. Several sets, moving fast.
Ronan glanced at his father’s body, then at Sephira, then at the door. The footsteps were barely twenty feet away and closing, and his hand had drifted to the hilt of his sword before he was even aware of it. Sephira didn’t stir. She only watched him, steady and silent, as if waiting to see what he would choose.
He let his hand fall away from the weapon.
The footsteps stopped just outside. The door swung open, and three guards filled the frame. Their eyes went to Garrick’s body, then snapped to Sephira, taking in the blood on the floor, the dark stains on her skin, the Alpha lying motionless on the flagstones. The youngest of the three went from confusion to cold fury in a single heartbeat.
“Step away from him,” he snapped, his hand dropping to his weapon.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” Sephira said evenly. “You don’t know what happened here.”
“I can see what happened.”
Ronan squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, and the guards turned to him without a word.
“Secure the corridor and double the sentries at the outer gates,” he said, his voice flat and controlled. “Tell the council elders the Alpha is indisposed. If word reaches the southern clans that Garrick has fallen before the succession is secured, we’ll have a siege in the courtyard by dawn. No one enters or leaves this wing without my direct order.”
“Understood, sir,” the eldest guard said.
Two of them left to carry out the order. The youngest stayed behind, his eyes fixed on Sephira.
Ronan looked at her. His gaze dropped once more to the bruised bands around her wrists, then to his father’s ruined forearms. He knew what they meant. He had known since the moment he knelt over the body.
“Ronan,” she said quietly. “Look at me. You saw what’s in this room.”
“I was here when he died. He spoke to me at the end. Those were his last words.”
“His last words don’t explain the marks on his arms. You know how he fought.”
“He named you,” Ronan said, though his eyes slid past her toward the doorway, unable to hold hers. “Seize her.”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but the order landed with the weight of a verdict. The young guard crossed the room without hesitation, and another returned from the corridor to help him.
“Ronan, wait—”
“Take her into custody. Now.”
Sephira didn’t fight them. Her eyes stayed on his face a moment longer, searching it, and Ronan held still beneath that look, knowing exactly what she would find there: doubt, and a choice made in spite of it.
The guards gripped her arms, their fingers digging into her skin. For an instant the air around her seemed to heat, and the torch flames along the wall leaned toward her as if caught in a draft, then settled again. If the guards noticed, they gave no sign.
Ronan turned his back on her and knelt once more beside his father. He didn’t look up as they took her away.
