Page 145 of A Court Bright and Broken

It had only taken me moments to realize Raewyn and Lady Wyn were one and the same person. Which meant the suspected assassin was still with us.

But she’d had unlimited access to my brother for weeks, and he was still alive. Did that mean shewasn’tthe person who’d brought the poison into our midst?

Was she just biding her time? Or had she, like every other woman in the palace, fallen in love with the “charming Crown Prince” and now found it impossible to take his life?

I wasn’t sure what was going on… but I intended to find out.

Immediately after leaving my brother’s chambers, I paid a visit to the dungeon. The jailer bolted to his feet when he saw me, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Your Highness.”

I gave him a brief nod. “I want to see the older woman taken into custody the night of the ball. The human.”

His eyes darted off to one side, and he kept them averted as he lied to me. “I’m not sure who you mean, Your Highness.”

“Yes you are. Why are you lying to me? That’s a hanging offense, you know.”

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” he blurted. “I don’t mean to lie. I just… I’m not sure what to say.”

He was a large man and fortunately not a very smart one.

“Someone told you to lie about her?” I guessed. “To conceal her location? Someone of great importance and authority, I’m guessing.”

He kept his eyes directed at the floor as he nodded wordlessly.

Stellon. It had to have been my brother. And if he’d gone to the trouble of hiding the old woman, she must be important somehow.

“I’ll tell you what… I won’t report you for the crime of lying to a royal,” I said to the dullard in front of me. “And you won’t have to break your vow—ifyou simply point the way toward her cell.”

After a long moment, the man raised his right arm straight out to the side, pointing down a row of solitary confinement chambers. I grabbed a ring of keys from a nail on the wall behind him and held it out to him.

“Which one?”

He took the ring and sorted through it, selecting a key and handing it to me.

“Good man,” I said, and then I left him to find the “secret” prisoner—and hopefully some answers to all my burning questions about Wyn/Raewyn.

Walking down the dark corridor he’d indicated, I reached the section where the doors began. Each was nearly ceiling height, solid steel except for a sliding panel through which food—or conversation—could pass.

The openings were high on the door, but at six-foot-six, I had no trouble seeing through them.

All of them were open, all the cells visible through the small openings empty. Except one.

This was it. I stood outside, nerves cramping my stomach, wondering how to begin unraveling the mystery of the human woman who’d troubled my thoughts from the moment I’d first laid eyes on her standing outside the ballroom doors.

“Who’s there?” a voice called from inside the cell.

Either the old woman had remarkable hearing or she had some other senses that alerted her to my presence. I doubted she could see through solid steel.

I turned the bolt and slid open the small rectangular window. A white-haired woman glared at me from inside.

“You,” she snarled. “You’re supposed to be dead by now.”

I quirked an eyebrow at her. “According to whose timetable? Mine has me living for another three thousand years or so.”

“Are you the sole survivor in your family?” she asked.

What a strange question.

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