But something gnawed at Linus’s mind. The timing. The bst. The body.

  It was too clean. Too perfect.

  He sank beside the charred corpse, eyes sharp, searching. The fmes had done their damage—scorching skin, bckening bone—but not everywhere. A patch near the chest had escaped the worst of it. Maybe the angle, maybe a fallen beam had shielded it. Either way, it snagged his attention.

  He swept aside the ash with slow, deliberate care.

  There it was.

  A nipple—dull in color, misshapen, slightly too rge. Not hers.

  Eliza’s were delicate. Pale rose, small and firm. He remembered them vividly, too vividly to mistake them. He had studied her, molded her, used her for his pleasure. He knew her body better than she ever had.

  This one wasn’t her.

  He pushed himself up, heart pounding, heat roaring around him—but all he felt was cold.

  A decoy. A pnt.

  The realization struck fast and hard, his thoughts fracturing in all directions. The fire, the timing, the body pced just convincingly enough to fool him. The locket. The silk. The location. It was all arranged. Crafted like a story someone wanted him to believe.

  But Eliza was a puppet. She didn’t have the skill—or the nerve—for something like this. Not alone. So the question sliced deeper. Was she helped? Or was she taken?

  His mind raced through possibilities. Had someone broken her free? A rebel faction? One of Mara’s people? Or had Eliza made a deal in the shadows—traded her strings for a different master? Or worse… had someone come for her, used her as leverage, and orchestrated the entire scene to trick him?

  Kidnapping. Rescue. Betrayal.

  He didn’t know. And that made it worse.

  Linus straightened, his eyes locked on the body. “This isn’t Eliza,” he said, voice cold and certain.

  Marcus turned around. “Sir?”

  “It’s a pnt. Someone wanted us to think she died here.” His gaze didn’t flinch. “I want to know who this body belongs to—and how it ended up in her pce.”

  Marcus nodded once, already striding away, calling out for the medics and signal runners.

  Linus’s jaw clenched as he stared back at the burnt corpse. He’d almost believed it. Almost grieved. That was the most dangerous part. Someone wanted him shaken. Off-bance. It had nearly worked. He withdrew from the wreckage, smoke curling around his coat.

  “Eliza’s alive,” he murmured to himself. “Or she was when this started.” And someone, somewhere, knew exactly where she’d gone.

  A slow smile coiled across Linus’s face. Then, a ugh.

  It began as a dry chuckle, almost too soft to hear over the crackle of burning debris. But it grew. Louder. Sharper. A brittle, jagged sound that fractured the heavy air like shattered gss. His shoulders shuddered as he ughed, his breath catching on each gasp, until it was no longer amusement—just something raw and splintering loose.

  His chest heaved, and the sound turned manic, almost joyful. Almost. But not quite.

  Then—silence. He stopped as suddenly as he’d started.

  Linus stood there in the ruined garden, breathing heavily, a twisted grin still clinging to his lips. But now there was nothing amusing about it. The expression had curdled into something darker. Colder. Dangerous.

  Marcus hovered a few steps away, stiff as stone, saying nothing. He knew better than to speak in moments like these. He’d seen it before—the sudden shift in Linus, the moment when calm strategy gave way to something more feral. Less human. He simply waited, watching.

  “Walk with me,” Linus ordered, voice steadier now, but tight with energy. He turned from the wreckage and moved toward a quieter section of the garden where only smoke drifted, and the air no longer burned.

  Marcus fell into step beside him.

  “Someone,” Linus began, his tone ft, “is trying to make things difficult for us.”

  His gaze raked over the remains of the estate—the half-colpsed walls, the bodies being covered, the guards scrambling to secure a lie. “Someone is pying us. Carefully. Boldly.” He gave a faint shake of his head, almost impressed. “For a moment… I let it get to me.”

  He let out another short ugh, sharp and bitter. “You know, I’ve never been nearly killed before. Not really. Not close enough to taste it.” He gnced at Marcus, eyes alight with something unhinged. “It does something to your mind. Unpeels you.”

  His gaze snapped to a tall oak at the edge of the garden, its branches bckened but still standing. “I forgot,” he said quietly, “that this is exactly what we used to do to others. Make them question reality. Turn the world sideways until they lost track of what was true and what was pnted.”

  Another ugh. This one cold. Hollow.

  “When my ambition is as big as to—” He cut off, then resumed, voice lower. “To fuck the Royal Princess, to own wealth enough to drown in, and hold power so wide and deep that men think twice before even looking at me wrong…”

  He pivoted, his smile crooked and strange. “I forget that someone out there might want to fuck me back.” He ughed again—dry, humorless—and it echoed off the scorched walls like the st sound before a storm.

  Just then, a blur of motion sliced through the smoke. A messenger hurtled toward them, his face pale and drawn, the hem of his coat soaked in ash. He stumbled, caught himself, and skidded to a halt in front of Marcus.

  “Sir! Urgent!” he gasped, nearly tripping over his own words. He thrust out a sealed scroll, his hand shaking. “From Princess Mara. Immediate attention required.”

  Marcus took it without a word, breaking the seal with practiced fingers. Linus didn’t move. His eyes had locked onto the messenger—not the scroll—and something behind them flickered. Calcuting. Icy.

  “Read it aloud,” Linus snapped, tone sharp enough to cut.

  Marcus cleared his throat, eyes scanning the parchment. His expression shifted. “The mayor,” he said slowly, “Vancourt. He’s dead. Found in his cell this morning.” He paused, brow tightening. “They’re calling it suicide.”

  Linus didn’t speak.

  “There’s more,” Marcus added, voice quiet. “Princess Mara requests your presence immediately. She wants you at the prison. Personally.”

  Silence fell. The fire still crackled in the ruins behind them, but Linus stood frozen, his face unreadable. His hands clenched slowly at his sides.

  First, the assassination attempt.

  A bde meant for his throat, delivered by someone wearing Marcus’s face. Someone who had studied him. Known his habits. Gotten close.

  That had been the first crack.

  Just when he’d begun digging—when the questions about the shapeshifters had started forming into something sharper than doubt—it all began to spiral.

  Then came Eliza.

  Dead, supposedly. Burned in her own chambers, reduced to ash and memory.

  And now the mayor.

  His st thread to Thornfield. The man who owned the estate where they found what could have been the first crude ritual site. The man who might have known something—anything—about who the shapeshifters were working for. What they were building toward.

  Dead in his cell. Suicide, they said. How convenient.

  Linus’s jaw tightened as the weight of it pressed down. One, two, three—each incident timed just as he started pulling on the thread.

  Someone was watching him. Anticipating his moves.

  This wasn’t panic. It was precision.