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“Please,” I begged the inner castle. “Is she right? Am I Princess Isolde? Is that why you let me back here?”

Across the room, the doors to the glass cabinet in which the queen held her crowns flew open. One crown glowed a silvery purple.

Welcome home, Princess Isolde.Many voices spoke as one, stealing my breath.

Tears filled my eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me before? Why not when I read the diary?”

We were not sure. Not until you bloodied the walls.

Bloodied the walls. The way I’d entered the hidden castle today.

“So you just let me in before because you felt bad for me?”

You were in need of sanctuary.

We. Not the single female voice, and yet so familiar. Like when I touched the Drassil tree of Traliska, many spoke. An image of a Drassil filled my mind. The last time I’d touched one had been during my wedding to Vale. When the Drassil, or more specifically the Faetia, had blessed our union.

I bristled. Why would the voices of the Faetia do sucha thing? If I was a Falk, and he an Aaberg, then we were enemies.

My hands slapped over my mouth.

Oh stars. But Vale was only an Aaberg in name. His father had been born a bastard by blood. AFalkbastard. My cousin.

And Vale is his son.

Chapter 30

VALE

My band of soldiers returned to Frostveil Castle with the rebels in tow, and I led them down to the western dungeons. Though I should have been proud that we’d captured so many rebels, my mind wasn’t in the moment but consumed by the memory of the vampire.

Right after seeing him, before searching the city high and low for more of his magical order, I’d sent a missive to the Clawsguard watching the door to my suite. The reply had come quickly, and the guard had assured me that all was quiet in the palace.

Neve was safe.

For now.

I needed to speak with Father about increasing her guard, and of the drained bodies we’d found in the city.

First, though, the rebels.

I descended the stone steps into the dank dungeon. Behind me, footsteps echoed in the low-ceiling tunnel.Some rebels fought—probably the mouthy young male among them—but mostly they appeared resigned to their fate.

When I reached the bottom of the steps, I discovered we weren’t the first troop of soldiers to return. A dozen other rebels glared at me from behind bars, but they weren’t alone in the dungeon cells.

From behind bars, actors from the Royal Theater stared back at me. Avalina Truso, the best-known actress in the kingdom, being one of them.

Someone had thrown her in one of the first cells closest to the stairs. From the moment we locked eyes, she looked daggers at me, her fine-boned hands clenched at her sides, trembling from the cold of the dungeons, which was even worse than outside.

Saga and Mother would be disappointed to learn she was down here, but perhaps Avalina deserved this fate. Her song indicated rebel proclivities, but the others?

I walked down the aisle, my heart sinking deeper with each step. The rebels were being held on the right, the actors on the left. A quick count told me that thirty other actors were imprisoned. I didn’t believe for a second that they’d all known the theater was going to be used for a rebel attack.

“Why are they here?” I asked the guard on duty, gesturing to the cell of actors and actresses.

“King Magnus said to bring ’em here, I guess?” the guard replied. “That’s what the soldiers who brought ’em in said.”

Why didn’t he mention this to me?