Chapter 90: Chapter 91: The rat

Eara’s POV

Several days passed.

The investigation continued. Lena stayed in her room. I went to council meetings and signed papers and made decisions and did not visit her. The days blurred together, one after another, the same routine, the same weight, the same ache I would not name.

Then they told me my chambers were secure.

The guards had finished their search. The corridors had been checked and rechecked. The locks had been changed. Everything was as it should be. I could return.

I walked back into my rooms that evening and felt nothing. The walls were the same. The furniture was the same. The bed was made, the windows closed, the fire laid but not lit. Everything in its place. Everything ordinary.

But it was not my room anymore. Not really. Someone had been in here. Someone had left blood on my pillow and a threat on my bed. The space itself felt different now, smaller somehow, the walls closer, the shadows deeper.

I pushed the feeling down. I had work to do.

The day had been long. A council session that went on for hours, Lord Petrov arguing about the grain distribution, about the corrupt lords, about the security failures that had allowed someone to walk into my chambers. He did not say Lena’s name. He did not need to. Everyone knew who he was talking about.

I had sat at the head of the table and listened and said nothing. There was nothing to say. The evidence pointed at her. Corvus had made that clear. My belief meant nothing against the facts.

By the time the session ended, my head was pounding. I had correspondence to review, reports to sign, the endless work of a queen who was supposed to be in control of everything and controlled nothing.

I did it. I signed the papers. I read the reports. I nodded at the right moments and said the right words and kept my face still and my voice steady.

And then, finally, it was over. The day was done. The servants had gone. The corridors were quiet. I was alone.

All I wanted was a bath. Hot water. Silence. A few minutes to let the mask slip before I put it back on tomorrow.

The bath was ready when I walked into my bathing room. My ladies had prepared it, the way they always did. Steam rose from the water. The scent of lavender hung in the air. Candles flickered on the edges of the tub. Everything was as it should be.

They had stepped out when I arrived. That was normal too. I liked to undress alone, to have a few minutes of quiet before I sank into the water. They knew that. They always left when they heard my footsteps in the corridor.

I closed the door behind me. I was already reaching for the ties of my dress, my mind already drifting, already letting go of the day.

Then I saw the rat.

It was in the water. Dead. Floating on the surface, its body bloated, its fur dark against the pale tiles. It had been placed there deliberately, not fallen in, not accidental. It was positioned in the center of the tub, facing me, like someone had wanted me to see it the moment I walked in.

Around its neck, tied with a thin cord, was a small piece of folded parchment. Wet at the edges but still legible.

I walked closer. The water was still warm. The steam rose around the rat, around the note, around the thing that had been left for me to find.

I read the words.

The water will run red before this is done.

I stood in the doorway of my bathing room and looked at it for a long moment. The steam curled up around my face. The candles flickered. The rat floated in the water, its dead eyes staring at nothing.

Something in me went very cold. Very quiet. The kind of quiet that lives on the other side of fear when fear has been happening long enough to become something else entirely.

I did not scream this time.

I turned. Walked out of the bathing room. Walked through my chambers to the door. Opened it.

The guard outside straightened immediately. “Your Majesty?”

“Get Lord Corvus,” I said. My voice was calm. I did not raise it. “Tell him to come here. Now.”

Corvus arrived within minutes. He had been in his office, working late, the way he always did. His coat was rumpled, his face tired, his eyes sharp with concern.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

I did not answer. I turned and walked back toward the bathing room. He followed.

He stopped in the doorway. I watched his face as he saw it. The rat. The water. The note. His expression did something I had never seen it do before, a flicker of something raw, something uncontrolled. Just briefly. Then it was gone, smoothed back into the careful mask he wore for moments like this.

He stepped forward, examining the room. The windows were closed. The door had been shut. The bath had been prepared by my ladies minutes before I arrived.

“The rat was not there when they left,” I said. “They would have seen it. They would have said something.”

Corvus nodded slowly. He was already thinking, already working through the implications. “Someone entered after they left. In the window between their departure and your arrival.”

“Someone who knew the schedule. Someone who knew the window.” I met his eyes. “Someone who was already inside the palace. Already in my wing. Already close enough to my private rooms to move through them undetected.”

He did not say what he was thinking.

I said it for him.

“It wasn’t her. It was never her.”

He was quiet for a long moment. His face was still, unreadable, but I could see him working through it, fitting the pieces together. Lena was in a locked waiting room with guards on her door. She had been there for days. She could not have done this.

“Release her tonight,” I said.

He looked at me. Something moved across his face, relief, maybe, or acknowledgment, or the particular weight of a man who had been carrying something he did not want to carry.

“I’ll see to it personally,” he said.

I nodded. I did not say anything else. There was nothing else to say.

He left to arrange it. I stood alone in my bathing room, looking at the rat, the water, the note that had been left for me.

The steam had stopped rising. The water was cooling. The candles were burning low.

I turned and walked out. I closed the door behind me and did not look back.

Lena would be free tonight. That was what mattered. Everything else could wait.

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