Chapter 100: Missing

He left the councilroom as if he had torn the sun from the sky.

The scrape of a chair hitting stone cracked the stunned silence like a gunshot. Heads turned. Hands stilled mid-gesture. Men who had argued like titans moments before now looked small and uncertain, clustered around maps and ink-stained ledgers as if the world had shifted beneath their feet.

Levan moved with the kind of speed that belonged to a different life, like the terrible swiftness of a man answering a summons only his heart could hear. Marion fell into step at his shoulder like a steady shadow to his storm and the two of them vanished down the obsidian corridor, boots striking the floor in a single, relentless rhythm.

“Are you certain she was missing?” Levan’s voice was low, almost strangled.

Marion nodded, eyes forward. “I wouldn’t have come to you otherwise, Your Highness.”

Levan’s hand twitched at his side, the weight of his chest threatening to drag him into panic.

The palace seemed to lean away from them. Torchlight shivered on the tapestries as doors opened and closed to make way; servants and sentries flinched at the sight of him. He did not look back. The weight of protocol and the heat of a hundred schemed plans all collapsed into a single order that needed no voice.

Every corridor blurred into the next. Levan’s cloak whipped behind him, catching on a brazier’s ironwork and tearing free like a flag left in a sudden storm. Marion kept pace, quiet and precise, passing commands to a pair of stunned guards with curt nods and a ripple of soldiers thrown into motion by a prince who had just shed the last of his composure.

Levan’s mind would not let him measure strategy or risk. Instead it catalogued the smallest domestic details of the way she folded a blanket, the sleep-smudge at the corner of her mouth, the sound of her breath when she slept. Each trivial memory struck him raw, a proof that she existed and was out of reach.

They reached his door and Marion’s hand hovered at the latch for no more than a second before driving it open. The chamber beyond was swathed in lamplight and the lingering sweetness of Hallowbloom. The bed was made with the care of someone who habitually tended another; the blanket smoothed, the pillows set to welcome.

A faint indentation marked the place where a head had recently lain, but the space itself was empty. Levan stopped on the threshold with the world contracted to that one absence. The room held its breath. Marion’s face, usually unreadable, registered the same impossible, sinking silence as every guard, every page, every distant voice seemed to fall away.

He had left a council in mid-argument for this. He had come running, every step a bare confession. And now, standing in the hush of his own bedchamber, he understood with a cold, sudden clarity the shape of the danger and the debt of dread that would force him to hunt it down.

The bed was empty.

Levan’s eyes darted to the side, scanning the faint moonlight spilling across the floor. Where…? His mind raced through every possibility. Had she risen to fetch water? Was she pacing the corridors in some restless dream?

He strode back to the door, gaze cutting down the hallway like a blade. Did she follow the maids? Did she slip outside? The gardens? The stables? The scent of Hallowbloom lingered, teasing him, mocking him with the proof of her absence.

At the far corner, a figure stepped from the shadows. Melyn’s eyes were calm, sharp, and unflinching, the same eyes that had once surveyed threats and executed missions without hesitation.

Levan’s gaze snapped to her. “What exactly happened?” His voice was clipped, rising slightly with each word, frustration and fear threading through it.

“I left her momentarily,” Melyn began, choosing her words with precision. “I had instructed the maids to prepare her body treatment. I stepped away to confirm the arrangements. But when I returned, the bed was already empty.”

Levan’s fists clenched at his sides. “Where could she have gone? The palace is vast and it’s already dead into the night, she wouldn’t— she can’t—” His words fractured with rising panic. “Have you searched outside?”

Melyn nodded. “I’ve personally overseen patrols of the main wings, the gardens and the courtyard. She’s not outside the palace grounds as far as we can tell.”

Levan closed his eyes briefly, exhaling through clenched teeth, one hand running through his hair in an unusual, almost frantic motion. The control he always carried felt hollow. The anguish at himself, at the palace, at the night itself, pressed down like armour too heavy to lift.

“Have you checked the other room? Her chamber?”

“Yes—”

“Are you certain

?”

Melyn stiffened. “I… yes.”

His eyes snapped to her, golden and thinning to a slit.

Melyn swallowed. “I’ll check again,” she said, already stepping back.

“Again,” Levan echoed under his breath, more to himself than to her as though repetition would undo the terror clawing up his spine.

He knew Ilaria would not have wandered outside the palace. She would not have left the safety of the wards. She would not risk a single step into the night after what happened in the Expanse.

But logic meant nothing right now.

He should have sensed this; should have felt it. He should have felt something from her but it was dead. His hand dropped from his hair to the frame of the door, fingers curling into the polished wood. The resonance was absent. He was certain it was working when he touched her back then.

Melyn could only watch him. Her trained instincts recognized the storm brewing in him, a rare, almost imperceptible shift in the man who always commanded presence and control. He was pacing the edge of restraint, words tumbling from his mind faster than his usual measured cadence could contain.

To see the crown prince unravel like this, even just slightly was… unprecedented. A shadow of something she had never witnessed before flickered across him, and it set her own nerves on edge.

Melyn forced herself to breathe evenly, to anchor the situation. She knew that beneath the storm of frustration, he would not act recklessly. She was confident the princess had not gone far either. And this was Levan, not a man given to blind panic.

But the silence from him was unnerving, dense and heavy as if the very air of the chamber had thickened around his presence. When he turned to look at her, it was with a feral intensity she had never seen before. The golden slits of his eyes was burning with frustration and raw, simmering tension, like he was demanding for answers.

Even someone as unflappable as Melyn felt the chill of it scrape against her nerves.

She straightened, steadying herself, careful not to break the fragile tether of his composure, “we’ll find her. I’m sure she hasn’t gone far. The maids and guards are currently searching every corridor and courtyard.”

Levan remained looking at her, and for a long moment, he said nothing. The room felt suspended between the storm of his thoughts and her attempts to anchor it. The golden glare softened ever so slightly as he took a measured breath, but the edge never left his stance.

The words seemed to reach him just barely, though the feral tension in his posture remained. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaled sharply, and finally moved toward the doorway. “Then proceed,” he said, almost as if testing his own control.

Melyn hesitated, her hand hovering near the doorframe. She had trained for danger, had faced threats that would make most men break but this… this was something else entirely. The storm in his eyes was unlike any battle she had witnessed; it was personal, intimate, and terrifying in its intensity.

Meanwhile…

Ilaria was moving silently through the pillars. She had left the warmth of the bed minutes ago, slipping past the maids’ quarters and through the quiet corridors, careful not to disturb a single lantern.

The palace seemed enormous in the night, each hallway stretching longer than she remembered, echoing with the faint sound of her own footsteps. Her sleeve was pulled tight over the mark on her arm, the faint pulse beneath her skin making her shiver. She paused at the edge of the main hall, listening.

The faintest murmur of voices reached her from the far side of the palace, but they were too distant to recognize. Somewhere, someone was moving. She ducked into the shadow of a tapestry, heart hammering.

Melyn must be looking for me… she thought, a pang of guilt threading through her chest. But the curiosity and the need to understand the mark and the strange pull she had felt ever since was stronger than her hesitation.

A flicker of movement drew her attention to the northern wing. Step by step, she followed the pull, guiding her deeper into the quiet halls. Shadows stretched long and unfamiliar, yet each twist and turn seemed almost predetermined, as if the palace itself bent to lead her onward.

Her breath caught when she recognized the familiar arched doorway ahead.

The Dawn Gallery.

The same gallery where she had first spoken with the Blithe. The same place where she got the mark in her veins now. She paused at the entrance, hand pressed lightly against the polished wood. The mark beneath her sleeve throbbed faintly, almost as if in recognition.

Somewhere in the shadows of the gallery, the air shimmered, not with light, but with the sense that she was not truly alone. If there was anything strange, though, it was that she does not feel as terrified as she thought she would be.

With a cautious step, she crossed the threshold. The door swung silently behind her. And then, with a soft, decisive click, it shut.

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