Irina’s POV

My hand froze on the door handle.

There was a person on the floor.

Small frame. Dark uniform.

The air left my lungs.

*Sofia.*

The word hit me before I could stop it. Before I could think anything else. Before I could breathe.

*Sofia.*

I stepped forward. Couldn’t help it. My legs moved without permission, crossing the room, getting closer. Nicolas said something behind me—I didn’t hear it. The blood was too loud in my ears.

The person on the floor didn’t look up.

I got close enough to see her hands. Wrists bound behind her back with something dark and tight. Her feet too, tied at the ankles. A strip of cloth knotted around her mouth. Her shoulders were shaking.

I stopped.

Looked at her face.

Not Sofia.

The realization hit me like a bucket of cold water, sudden and total. The rush of it nearly buckled my knees.

Not Sofia.

This girl was older. Late twenties, maybe. Hair a different color, a different texture. I’d seen her before—in the hallways, carrying trays, disappearing around corners—but I didn’t know her name. Didn’t know anything about her.

My heart was still slamming.

I made myself breathe.

Made myself turn around.

Nicolas was watching me from behind his desk. His elbow on the armrest. His chin resting on his fist. That expression on his face that I could never quite read—not angry, not satisfied. Just *watching.* Like I was something interesting happening in front of him.

"Do you know her?" he asked.

His voice was calm. Conversational. Like he was asking if I’d had coffee yet.

I looked back at the girl on the floor.

She’d raised her head slightly. Her eyes found mine, wide and wet and desperate. Pleading.

My chest pulled.

"No," I said.

"Look properly."

I looked. I made myself really look. The shape of her face. Her eyes, her jaw, the specific way her nose turned at the end.

Nothing. No recognition. No flicker of memory from Iron Thorn or anywhere else.

"I’ve never seen her before," I said. "Not from the pack. I don’t know who she is."

Nicolas hummed.

He stood up.

He came around the desk slowly, the way he always moved—unhurried, deliberate, like every step was a decision. He stopped a few feet from the girl on the floor and looked down at her.

She flinched.

"Interesting," he said softly.

He crouched down. Not quickly. Just lowered himself to her level, easy and fluid, and put one hand under her chin.

She tried to pull away. Couldn’t.

He tilted her face up.

"So if you’re not a spy," he said, "then what exactly were you planning to do with the powder?"

Her eyes went wide. Wider. Tears spilled over, running down her cheeks, soaking into the cloth around her mouth.

"Mm." He studied her face for a moment. Then he stood back up. "Right."

I didn’t move.

I didn’t breathe.

*The powder.*

My hand had gone rigid at my side. I kept it there. Kept my face still.

Nicolas turned to face me. His eyes moved over my expression—quick, assessing.

"Someone’s been moving around the kitchen supply routes," he said. "Wrong doors. Wrong times." He glanced back down at the girl. "She made it through two checkpoints before my people stopped her."

He said it like he was describing a minor inconvenience. A routing problem. Something to file and forget.

"She wasn’t working alone," he added.

My heart stopped.

Just—stopped. For a full second.

"No," he continued, and his voice had gone a little quieter, "she wasn’t clever enough for that. Someone set this up. Someone gave her access." He tilted his head. "I’m going to find out who."

The room felt very cold.

The girl on the floor made a sound through the cloth. Muffled. High and desperate.

I made myself look at her. Made myself hold it. The shaking of her shoulders, the tears, the way her bound hands had gone white at the knuckles.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"Okay." Nicolas turned away from her. He walked back to the desk. Pressed the intercom on its surface, two short presses. Then he said, quietly and without any particular emphasis at all: "Take her down."

The door opened.

Two men. I hadn’t even seen where they’d come from.

"Make it count," Nicolas said, still not looking. "The usual isn’t enough this time."

I didn’t ask what *the usual* was.

I didn’t want to know.

The girl made another sound. Louder this time. Her whole body struggling, pulling against the restraints, her heels dragging against the floor as the men lifted her by her arms.

She looked at me.

Right at me.

Eyes wide and streaming and—

The door closed behind them.

Silence.

Nicolas looked up from whatever he was reading.

"Go eat breakfast," he said. Already turning back to the desk. Already back in his own world, whatever it was made of. "I have three meetings before noon and I haven’t looked at the Volkov numbers yet."

I stood there for one more second.

Then I turned and walked out.

---

The hallway outside was quiet.

My footsteps on the carpet. The pale morning light. Everything still and clean and ordinary.

I walked to my room.

My hand was in my pocket. Fingers wrapped around the vial.

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

Didn’t take off my shoes. Didn’t do anything. Just sat there and stared at the opposite wall and listened to the sound of the palace around me. The distant rattle of the kitchen. The low murmur of voices somewhere down the corridor.

*She was going to kill me.*

He’d said it so easily.

And I was sitting on the edge of a bed with shaking hands and a vial of poison I still hadn’t gotten rid of and the memory of a girl’s eyes right before a door shut between us.

The mate bond pulsed.

Warm. Quiet. Coming from somewhere in my chest, that steady, unasked-for warmth that had been building for days and that I still didn’t know what to do with.

I pressed my hand flat against my sternum.

Felt it.

Let myself feel it.

The shaking in my hands didn’t stop. But it slowed. Slightly. Enough.

Outside the window, the morning light had shifted. Brighter now. The kind of gold that meant the day had decided to be a day whether anyone was ready for it or not.

I sat there and breathed.

In. Out.

In.

Out.

I needed to find Sofia.

That was the next thing. The only thing that mattered right now. Before anything else, before breakfast, before I tried to think through any of the rest of it—I needed to find her and I needed to look her in the face and figure out what she knew and what she’d done and whether I was too late to—

"Miss."

The word hit me like a hand between the shoulder blades.

I spun around.