Page 78 of The Shadow Orc's Bride

Eliza rose. “Brenna,” she said, and the maid was already at her elbow, eyes red but dry.

“Bring my writing desk,” Eliza said. “Wax. Ink. Parchment. Quickly.”

Brenna’s throat worked. “My lady…?”

“Now.”

They set the small desk on the bed where the light was strongest. Brenna fetched the seal set from the back of the wardrobe—silver plates Eliza had been allowed to keep as a courtesy, useless trinkets for a queen told to sleep. The official seals had been removed from her keeping the first week. Eliza had not asked for them back. She had decided to keep her questions for when they would serve her.

“Open the ink,” she said. “Light the stick. We will need a clear impression.”

Brenna worked swiftly, hands steadier with each task. Eliza took a fresh sheet and began to write in a neat, assertive hand.By command of the Queen.The letters looked like someone else’s at first, the habit of power foreign after weeks of enforced smallness. She reined her breath and wrote the rest: that the Queen—frail but dutiful—required access to the lower vaults to witness the necessary ritual for the safety of the realm. That no guard was to impede her. That any resistance would be accounted treason before the regent’s own council.

“Will they believe it?” Brenna whispered.

“They will want to,” Eliza said. “Tired men love an order that spares them decisions.”

She blotted the wet script and held out a hand. “The seal.”

Brenna passed her the counterfeit—a passable replica fashioned years ago for training scribes, kept as a curiosity in Eliza’s desk. It was not perfect. But under poor light and haste…

Eliza heated the wax and let it puddle on the parchment, then pressed the seal with the crisp, practiced motion of a woman who had done this a thousand times. When she lifted it, the impression shone red and clean. Not perfect. Enough.

Brenna exhaled shakily. “What if they check with?—”

“They won’t,” Eliza said, more certain than she felt. “Thalorin has taught them to wait for instruction. Let them.”

She set the parchment aside to cool and only then realized how loud her own heartbeat had grown. The room felt smaller, the air crowded. The tower’s hum had crept higher again, thin as a knife’s edge.

Night dragged itself across the window. The fire settled to a low glow. When Eliza finally lay down, sleep found her like a hand over the mouth.

He stood before her again.

No chains now—only the suggestion of them, shadow-metal draped like jewelry. His skin was sheened with sweat, or shadowlight, she could not tell. His eyes had gone wholly black; in their depths floated points of dim light like stars drowned in a well. He lifted his hand and, through the dark, reached for her.

She did not move away.

His palm cupped her throat with infinite care, as if she were a thing that would break. Heat and cold ran beneath his touch in equal measure, the paradox of his magic and his body—breath against frost, warmth winding through a shiver. The shadows coiled around his wrist and slid along her collarbone like curious serpents and then, at a single sharp breath, stilled—as if waiting for instruction from something older than either of them.

“Eliza,” he said, though she did not see his mouth shape the word, and the syllables stroked across her skin like a vow. The ache that answered in her chest was not fear.

She woke gasping, the room dim, the candle guttering in its cup. Her throat tingled exactly where his hand had rested. She touched the place with her own fingers and felt the echo hum beneath her skin. For a long time she lay very still and listened to the castle breathe.

At last she rose and crossed to the desk. The forged document lay waiting, the ink gone dull. She heated the wax one more time and pressed a second seal—the small signet she had hidden in the hem of a pillow years ago on Azra’s adviceand never thought to need. The impression glowed, fresh and defiant.

Eliza flattened her palm over the parchment. The wax was still warm beneath her thumb.

She lifted her gaze to the corners where shadow pooled, to the places where the candlelight should have softened and did not. The darkness seemed to flicker—not controlled, not tame, but seething, menacing, wild. It shifted when she breathed, answering a rhythm she recognized now as her own.

“Soon,” she whispered into the silence, though no one was there to hear it.

The shadows shivered, as if they had.

Chapter

Thirty-Nine

The castle had begun to whisper.