Chapter 40: Deception unfolds
Enzo body, is as limp as a discarded rag doll, drifted against the bank.
The sight of his pale face and open eyes clouded with death made her step back, her pulse thrumming so hard it echoed in her ears.
"Elara" she called for her lady-in-waiting, her voice sharp enough to pierce the fog.
But the one who came running was not Elara...
It was Captain Rathos, her father’s personal guard, his steel-plated boots thudding against the stone path.
"Your Highness?" Rathos froze when his gaze followed hers.
In a single motion, he removed his cloak, wading into the shallow stream.
He lifted Enzo with the care one might give a wounded soldier, though there was no life left to preserve.
"Take him to the east infirmary.... Now." Her tone was steady, but her fingers trembled as they clenched the folds of her gown.
*****
The infirmary’s nurse, an older woman with a face lined like weathered parchment, examined the body.
She pressed fingers to Enzo’s throat, his chest, his wrist. Each time shaking her head.
When she peeled back his tunic, the wound was there. A single, clean shot between his ribs. No stray arrows, no jagged blade cuts.
"Dead by a weapon not of Virenkai," the nurse said, dabbing the wound with a cloth that came away crimson. "No hesitation in the hand that fired. This was done by someone who knew exactly where to strike."
Elowen’s mind spun.
Who shot him? Why here? And most of all....
"What about Donato?" The question slipped out before she could stop it, though it was not meant for the nurse.
She stepped back into the cool air, breathing hard.
Enzo’s death left too many holes in her thoughts just as same as his body, too many shadows that all seemed to point in one direction . The man and hiss boss who had left her only days ago with promises of returning again.
"Then I must go and find him." Her whisper felt like an oath.
****
When she told her father, she expected resistance. He was a man who measured danger in the weight of kingdoms and rarely risked his only daughter.
But as he looked at her, his gray eyes seemed to read her determination before she even spoke.
"You will not go alone," he said, rising from his obsidian throne.
His voice carried the same deep timbre as the storm bells that warned Virenkai’s walls of oncoming war. "Take five of my finest men. And take Navor."
At the name, her breath caught.
From the shadows behind the throne stepped the beast.
Navor was no ordinary animal . it’s a hulking, sleek-furred predator with the long snout of a hound and the powerful build of a snow panther.
His coat shimmered silver in the torchlight, and his amber eyes glowed with intelligence that unsettled most men.
Navor was a Scentsworn, a creature bred for one purpose to follow the scent of its target until it was found or the beast drew its last breath.
Elowen pulled a folded square of cloth from her sleeve .
One of Donato’s handkerchief.
She had kept it without thinking, the faint trace of his cologne a reminder she wasn’t ready to lose.
Navor padded forward, lowering his head to sniff it.
A low rumble left his throat, as if he recognized not only the scent, but the urgency behind it.
"He will take you the same route Donato took when he left," her father said. "Stay hidden. The lands beyond the silverwood are not ruled by us."
****
At dawn, the gates of Virenkai opened with a groan.
Elowen sat astride her ivory mare, Navor prowling ahead with his nose close to the ground, his tail slicing the air. The five men her father had chosen rode behind each silent, their armor muted under dark cloaks.
The air was thick with pine and frost, the kind that clung to your lungs until each breath burned. Birds wheeled high above the canopy, their cries fading as the group entered deeper into the silverwood.
They passed through the moss-hung arches of ancient trees, the same path Donato had taken days earlier. She imagined him here, his dark eyes narrowing at every sound, his boots crunching the frostbitten leaves. Had Enzo followed him? Or had someone else been tracking him long before?
Navor stopped suddenly, his ears twitching. He let out a deep growl and veered off the path toward a shallow ridge.
"What is it?" Elowen asked.
The beast lowered his head, sniffing the ground before letting out a sharp bark. Rathos dismounted, crouching over the disturbed soil. "Tracks. Two sets. One is heavy, booted. The other... lighter, dragged."
Dragged. The word settled in her stomach like ice.
Her mind painted the image of Donato injured, maybe resisting, pulled along by someone with the intent of disappearing into the wilderness.
"We follow," she said, her voice firmer than she felt.
The deeper they went, the stranger the land became.
The silverwood thinned into a moor dotted with black stone spires, each one humming faintly as if alive.
The wind shifted, carrying with it the faint scent of smoke and something metallic , blood.
Navor picked up pace, his muscles coiling as he bounded over rocks, pausing only to sniff the air again before pressing forward. The men tightened formation around Elowen, their hands resting on the hilts of their blades.
They reached a clearing by late afternoon. Here, the grass was trampled, branches snapped, as though a struggle had taken place.
And there near the base of a boulder, lay something that made Elowen’s throat tighten.
A broken chain.
Not just any chain . The silver link with the Morano crest she had seen hanging from Donato’s neck when they first met.
Her hand closed around it. It was still warm from the sun, but the weight in her palm felt heavier than steel.
"Donato..." her voice was low.
Rathos stepped closer. "Your Highness, if he was here, it was recent. But there are signs of more than two men. This was an ambush."
An ambush. And Enzo dead in the stream. The threads in her mind began to tangle. If Enzo had been with Donato, had he been killed trying to protect him or to silence him? And who else was after the man carrying the cursed book?
The questions burned, but Elowen knew one thing, stopping now was not an option.
"Mark this place," she ordered. "We keep going. Wherever Donato is, he may not have gone far"...
*******
The rain had stopped hours ago, but the sound of it still lingered in Luca Morano’s mind. A slow, steady drip like the tick of a clock that wouldn’t let him rest.
He sat in the leather armchair of his study, the lamplight casting sharp angles across his face, phone in hand.
For the twelfth time that evening, he dialed Donato’s number.
The ring tone never came.
It was only silence.
His face tightened as he leaned back, eyes fixed on nothing in particular.
It’s been months. It had been months since he last heard his brother’s voice. No messages. No men sent back with word. No trace.
What the hell happened to you, Donato?
The thought spun tighter until it bled into another. Alessia.
Her name came to him like a bruise tender to touch, painful to press.
He closed his eyes.
He could still see her, the way she had stood in the hall that day, her voice trembling but strong: "Luca, I can explain. Please..."
For a fleeting second, warmth slipped through the steel in his chest.
Was he too harsh? Was he wrong?
His mind shoved the doubt away. Explain. That’s what they always said when they were caught , As if words could wipe away the image of her standing with her ex.
The muscles in his forearm flexed around the phone. He knew what it felt like to be played, to be emotionally bent until you didn’t know where the truth ended and the lie began.
He had vowed never to give anyone that power over him again.
And yet...
A memory hit him .
Her hand resting over his heart one night, whispering, I would never betray you.
His grip loosened. For a heartbeat, the air in the room felt lighter.
Then his thoughts darkened again. They all say that... until they don’t.....
The faintest creak at the door broke the tension.
Bianca’s head appeared in the gap, her eyes narrowing as she studied him from the shadows.
She recognized that expression, Luca was balancing on the knife-edge between regret and certainty.
And she couldn’t allow him to fall toward regret.
If he doubted sending Alessia away, he might go looking for her. And if he went looking for her, Bianca’s carefully laid plans would unravel.
She needed to tip him back toward hate.
Slipping away without a sound, she hurried to her room, digging through the locked chest at the foot of her bed. Inside, under folded silks and scented scarves, lay the weapon she had been saving.
A forged medical file bearing Alessia’s name.
The paper crinkled under her manicured fingers. Now is the right time.
When she returned, she didn’t walk straight to him. She paused in the doorway, clutching the document as though she had stumbled upon something devastating and didn’t know how to deliver it.
"Luca..." Her voice was soft, the kind that invited trust. "Look what I... found."
He glanced up, eyes shadowed.
Bianca stepped closer, holding the papers out like a reluctant truth. "It was in her things. Carelessly dropped, I suppose."
He took it, scanning the neat rows of type until his eyes caught the words she wanted him to see: Permanent infertility. Uterine absence.
The study’s silence deepened.
When he looked up, there was no outburst, no questioning — only a flicker of surprise before his gaze shuttered again.
"Where?" His voice was flat.
"I told you," she said smoothly, lowering her lashes in practiced innocence. "Carelessly dropped. I... thought you should know."
Luca didn’t answer. He folded the paper once, set it on his desk, and stood.
As he walked past her, she caught the faintest whiff of his cologne and behind it, the satisfaction she felt growing like a hidden flame.
By the time the door closed, Bianca was smiling to herself. The seed had been planted. And seeds, if fed with just enough poison, grew into unshakable truths.
******
Far from the Morano estate, Alessia sat in her room, knees pulled up, staring at the quiet moonlight spilling through the window.
"Luca..... "
The name was a wound that wouldn’t heal.
Why had he been so quick to throw her away? Why hadn’t he waited to hear her out?
She knew she had been framed. She knew the scene with Lorenzo had been set like a snare waiting for her to step in. But by whom?
Her mind traced the likely culprits: Seraphina, with her calculating eyes; Bianca, with her venom disguised as silk; the Atlans, with their hunger for anything that weakened the Moranos.
But suspicion was not proof.
Her jaw set. If Luca wouldn’t listen, then she would find the truth herself.
And she knew exactly who to call....
"Daisy"... Daisy had ways of digging where others couldn’t.
she could drag secrets from the dirt and hold them to the light.
She was reaching for her phone when her gaze shifted to the small, iron-bound door in the corner of the hallway.
Her mother had locked it years ago, telling her it was only a storage room for her late father’s things — things best left untouched.
But tonight, that lock felt less like protection and more like an invitation.
She crossed the hall, the cool key in her palm. The lock gave with a sharp click, and the door swung inward.
A wave of cold air rushed out — so cold it prickled her skin and drew a shiver from her spine. The room smelled faintly of cedar and dust, with a strange undercurrent of something metallic.
She stepped inside. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with boxes, ledgers, and objects she couldn’t name — some gleaming faintly in the dim light, others wrapped in worn cloth.
Her eyes caught on a leather-bound book wedged between two stacks of papers. She pulled it free.
It was a diary... Her father’s diary.
Her heart thudded as she flipped it open at random, her eyes landing on a passage written in his familiar, slanted hand.
The reason why I took a loan from Morano Alessandro...
Alessia’s pulse quickened.
She had never known why her father owed the Moranos.
She had been forced to pay the debt with her own life, her freedom, but the reason had died with him or so she’d thought.
She turned the page, breath catching.
The next line began: The reason why is because.....