The Royal Citadel was a brutal assault on Elara's senses. The Archive had been dim, cool, and silent; the Citadel was blindingly bright, suffocatingly warm, and perpetually loud. Marble floors reflected crystal chandeliers, gilded statues crowded every corner, and the air was thick with the cloying scent of lilies and expensive perfume. It was a gilded cage, and the bars were made of wealth and deceit.
Kaelen led her through service corridors, avoiding the main thoroughfares, until they reached a small suite in the scholars' wing.
"You are now Lady Elara Verris, my newly appointed Assistant Scholar on the King's Historical Restoration Project," Kaelen instructed, pushing her gently into a lavish sitting room. "Your background is from a minor noble house in the Southern March. You are to speak of nothing else. Do you understand?"
Elara, overwhelmed by the silk drapes and velvet furniture, nodded mutely.
Within the hour, she was subjected to a forceful transformation. A tailor and two maids, grimly efficient, stripped her of her worn gray clothes. They bathed her in water scented with jasmine, styled her dark brown hair into an elegant, complicated braid, and dressed her in a gown of deep sapphire velvet—a color that starkly contrasted with her pale skin and made her unremarkable eyes seem darker and more intense.
When she looked in the mirror, she didn't recognize the woman staring back. The clothes gave her authority, but the terror in her eyes was all her own.
Kaelen waited outside. When she emerged, he regarded her with the clinical assessment of a master inspecting a freshly polished weapon. A subtle shift occurred in his emerald eyes—not admiration, but perhaps a grudging approval.
"Suitable," he decided, adjusting the fall of the sapphire sleeve over her shoulder. His hand lingered briefly, and Elara's breath hitched.
"Why am I a noble?" she whispered.
"So you can be close to the King without suspicion. The truth is too messy for court. Your job starts now." He led her down a wide, sunny hall lined with portraits of the ruling House.
They paused before a full-length portrait of the current Queen Mother, her face serene and deceptively kind. Kaelen was mid-sentence, explaining the Citadel's security failure, when Elara reached out. She couldn't stop herself. Her gloved fingers brushed the edge of the gilded frame.
The world dissolved.
Instead of the Queen Mother, she saw the room transformed. It was midnight, and a shadow knelt before the painted image, holding a needle-like silver object. The shadow wasn't large, but the movement was precise, intimate. The figure leaned in, whispering a chant of betrayal, and plunging the silver object into the Queen Mother's painted heart. A slow, agonizing poison, the vision screamed.
Elara gasped, stumbling back.
Kaelen caught her arm, his grip hard and instantly possessive. "What did you see?"
"Betrayal," Elara choked out, gripping his gauntlet. "From within. Someone here. They are whispering death into the very walls."