Chapter 64 65
MARIGOLD POV
Rain hammered the castle tiles like a million tiny fists, and the windows of my suite blurred the world into a smeared watercolor of gray and silver. The sound should have felt comforting — steady, predictable — except everything in me trembled with an edge of panic that no downpour could wash away.
Sugar was at the vanity, trying—halfheartedly—to pin a ridiculous bow into my hair. She gave up on the bow after the third failed attempt and tossed it aside with a sigh that was actually close to a sob. For once her usual sparkle had dulled to a hard, worried glint.
“You smell like wolf and regret,” she said, folding her arms and then glancing at me with a small, disbelieving smile. “Also like smoke. Do you two wrestle over the fireplace or something?”
I managed a sour laugh that tasted like iron. “Very funny. He’s alive, Sugar. I know he is.” My voice was brittle. I’d practiced saying those words until they didn’t make me sound hysterical, but the truth was raw and pulsing — a live wire under my ribs. The videos, the banners flaring across every screen, the council’s verdicts: all of it tried to tell me otherwise.
Sugar’s jaw tightened. “The pantry’s full of maids whispering like tea kettles. Rumors are worse than the wolves.” Her voice dropped, conspiratorial. “They say—God help them—they say Gregor ripped through half the Black Fang and walked out like a god.”
“That’s not a rumor I mind,” I said, and the lie tasted tiny and bitter. I could picture him exact: blood-smeared and magnificent, a thing of terror and salvation. I had to hold the image because the other picture — of him in chains, humiliated in the council — wanted to replace it.
Sugar rifled through the little drawer of my vanity and whipped out a folded slip of paper. She handed it across the bed like contraband. “From Zach. He says it’s coordinates. Northern cliffs safehouse. He says ‘bring nothing and no one you love.’ Charming, right?”
My fingers closed over the paper. The letters looked too small, too official. My pulse pounded so hard I thought it would bruise the skin. I pressed the paper to my chest for a beat, letting the coolness anchor me. Bring nothing and no one you love. He meant me. He meant Gregor.
“Why would he risk sending this?” I whispered.
“Because he’s a genius,” Sugar said bluntly, because she was the sort of person who calls a thing by its face or else she explodes. “And because Xander finally woke the right people. Also because he likes chaos and thinks it’s pretty.”
She tried to laugh and the sound caught. The door creaked; a maid shuffled in. My stomach tightened. Servants in this castle had faces like curtains — always part of the room, and you never saw them move unless the play demanded it. This one’s hands trembled; her eyes flicked to Sugar, to me, and then to the little paper in Sugar’s hand as if it were a flame that might burn them.
“We should hide it,” Sugar hissed, folding the coordinates back up and tucking them under a loose seam in the mattress. “For now. If the Queen’s eyes catch that, we’re both dead.”
The maid’s mouth was a tiny line. “My Lady—” she said, voice thin.
I felt a flash of impatience sharp enough to sting. Margaux would have stormed this woman with haughty dismissal and a poisoned quip. Instead I softened my voice, because being loud or cruel would be stupid; subtlety was survival. “Yes?”
The maid’s eyes darted away. “There are rumors in the pantry. They say the King has issued proclamations. They say the Black Fang were ordered to recover the traitor, and other houses are watching for favors to call in—” She swallowed. “And, my Lady, the Queen asked me to speak to you. She said… she said to tell you if anything in the castle changes, report it to Her Majesty immediately.”
Sugar’s hand tightened on my wrist like a vice. My heart tried to rocket out through my throat. “The Queen asked you to warn me?” I said, too bright. “How benevolent of her.”
The maid shook her head once, a brittle movement. “Not a warning. A… condition.” Her voice dropped to a whisper that only we could hear. The room felt suddenly very small, like the air had been folded in on us. “Her Majesty says: if the King learns that you are not the real Margaux, she will order the Black Fang to annihilate Alpha Gregor's pack. She will haunt him for the rest of his days. She will have him dragged and hanged in the royal hall. She said she would be merciful and spare you if you obey, but if you speak—”
The maid’s lip trembled and she refused to finish the sentence. I didn’t need her to. The Queen’s words — Do not reveal yourself — arced in my mind like a blade.
Sugar’s face went transparently white and she swallowed the retort she’d clearly wanted to throw at the woman. Her hands, which had been clamping around the paper moments ago, slid to cup mine, fingers burning with urgency. “Listen to me,” she said fiercely. “You do not say a word. You do not shift. You do not do anything that looks off. The Queen will be watching. The maids—half the staff is already under her thumb.”
“And Marigold?” I heard my own voice, small and thin, ask the question I couldn’t stop from quivering. “What if—what if the King or the council finds out and they—”
“Then they do what the King does best,” Sugar said with bitter humor. “They make laws and write trials and parade men like trophies. And the Queen gets what she wants. Which is—power. Always power.” Her eyes were blazing now, the old Sugar-light flaring into something sharper and darker. “But we are not helpless. Zach sent those coordinates. Xander’s men are loyal. We have a thread.”
I stared at the seam where Zach’s paper was tucked. My wolf thudded at the edges of my mind like a caged animal. I’d felt him — Gregor — out in the northern wilds when the mist took him. I had felt the tremor in the bond, a low, angry growl that tasted of blood and promise. Sheer thought of him—alive, fighting, murdering Black Fang wolves in my name—both steadied and shredded me.
The maid coughed, nervous. “My Lady,” she said softly, “the Queen made me promise she wouldn’t harm you if I did this. But she also—” The words stumbled on their way. She straightened as if she’d braced herself against being scalded by truth. “She said if the King found out you were not Margaux, she would—”
“—have us both killed,” Sugar finished darkly, as if the words were already ritual. She crushed the maid’s gloved hand between both of her palms in a foolish, trembling sort of affection and made the girl look at her. “You will keep your mouth shut. Understand?”
The maid blinked twice and nodded. Then she backed away and seemed to recede into the castle’s paneled walls like she’d slipped behind a curtain.
The rain roared, and we listened to the silence that came after the maid left. For a long moment neither of us spoke. The truth had landed: the Queen had reached deeper than rumor. Not only a smear campaign, not only a theft of dignity — but a threat to everything and everyone I loved. She’d weaponized fear and used our lives as bargaining chips.
I slid Zach’s note back into my hand and read the coordinates again like a prayer. Northern cliffs—safehouse. Xander’s men. A chance.
“But if the maid took that paper to the Queen,” I whispered, each syllable an ember, “then the Queen knows too. She’ll track the message and hunt the safehouse like a hawk.”
Sugar’s nostrils flared. Her usual grin would have sliced the tension like a blade, but there was no humor left to slice with. “Then we make a noise somewhere else,” she said. “Create a diversion. Make them chase ghosts.” She paced a small circle in the room. “We get one shot at this, Goldie. One clean pull. If the Queen’s pawns know where to look, we have to move them. We have to be smarter.”
My wolf was a hot drumbeat beneath my ribs. Go. Go. Go. He wanted to race north, sink fangs into the enemy, drag blood across the snow and show the world that Gregor was more than the Queen’s puppet story. But the Queen’s voice in my head — Do not speak, do not reveal yourself — echoed, cold and real. The price had been set in marble and gold.
I thought of Gregor’s hands, the way his fingers had curled over my waist, the way he’d promised to come back. He had been ripped from our rooms. Branded. Shamed. Hunted. The thought of him out there, bleeding and alone and hunted for a crime he didn’t commit, twisted me into something I barely recognized.
“You’re terrified,” Sugar said flatly, seeing through the mask I’d tried to hold. “Good. Be terrified. Use it. It will make you careful and fierce. Do not let it make you weak.”
“I don’t know that I can play Margaux,” I admitted, voice raw. “She’s… a performance. It’s ugly. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that Margaux is a weapon, not a costume.”
Sugar snorted, a ragged little sound. “She’s a ridiculous weapon. She’s also the only disguise that keeps you breathing. So play it. Play the diva until you can tear the curtains down.” She leaned in, the old mischief returning in a whisper. “And when you step out—when you walk into the council and give that Queen the stare of a small goddess—do it with your mouth full of scandal and your hands empty of surrender. We’ll get him back.”
I folded the coordinates again, pushing them into the mattress seam like an ember into coal. Rain stole at the windows. The kingdom outside crooned its own lullaby of unrest and fervor. I sat on the bed and let the weight of everything press down: the Queen’s threat, the videos, the hunted faces, Gregor’s hands, Sugar’s breath on the back of my neck.
My wolf pressed forward, hot and begging. He wanted out. He wanted teeth and fury. He wanted to be unleashed and rightful and final. I stroked the seam with a thumb, feeling paper against skin, and the paper felt like the only lifeline I had left.
“Tomorrow,” I said, quiet as a threat.
“Tomorrow,” Sugar agreed. Her hand found mine. “Tonight, we pretend. Tomorrow, we begin to burn.”
The rain kept falling. The castle held its breath. My wolf howled somewhere under the ribs of the world, and I—Marigold, pretending to be someone else’s gilded mistake—learned how to be patient enough to plan a war.