I should've known silence could be a lie too.
It started just before dawn, a knock too soft for any soldier, too gentle for a maid. I was at my desk, poring over a cipher one of my spies had smuggled in under a tray of sweetened bread. The code was riddled with contradictions. Names that shouldn't exist, meetings that had never been scheduled, and a time that didn't match any on the official palace clocks. A test message, maybe. Or a trap. I hadn't decided.
The knock came again. Three times. Then once more.
"Enter," I called.
It wasn't a soldier. It wasn't even one of my spies.
It was a girl—no more than ten—filthy, barefoot, with a black ribbon tied to her wrist. My blood ran cold. That ribbon… it belonged to the Thorns, a low-tier intelligence ring we were absorbing under my command. It was also only used when one of their spies had been compromised.
She didn't speak. Just opened her hand, revealing a crushed piece of parchment. She placed it on the edge of my desk and stepped back.
I unfolded it carefully.
> *"He knows about the roots under the garden. Tell no one. They watched you burn the letter. Trust no ink, only silence."*
I looked up. But the girl was already gone.
---
The roots under the garden… That was a reference to the emergency tunnel my spies had excavated behind the queen-mother's garden to get her out of the palace if needed. No one but three of us knew.
Unless there was a leak.
My stomach turned.
I summoned Veyra immediately—my lead covert operative. She didn't come.
Neither did the guards stationed outside my door.
That was when I noticed the air in the room had shifted. Thicker. Smothering. Like something unnatural was pressing against the walls.
I stood slowly, blade already in hand. My shadow flickered against the mirror… but then did something strange—it moved left when I moved right.
I stared at it.
And it stared back.
I spun—and the mirror shattered.
Glass exploded across the room as a masked figure burst through the frame. Not from behind it. From within it.
I barely parried the blade before it met my throat.
He moved like oil and smoke. Fast. Silent. Trained. But I was trained too—more than trained. I was bred for this. My blade met his again and again, and we danced the death-dance across my chambers, cracking pillars, shattering lanterns, slicing drapes until my breath grew shallow.
He didn't speak. That terrified me more than anything. Assassins talk. They gloat. They reveal. But this one… this one was there to finish something.
I forced him back with a low sweep and slammed the hilt of my dagger into his ribs. He stumbled—but didn't fall.
That's when I saw it.
A symbol tattooed beneath his collarbone.
The mark of the *Silent Circle*.
A ghost faction. Not affiliated with nobles. Not spies. Killers raised in no-named camps to serve no one but themselves. They didn't do politics. They did extinction.
Why would the Silent Circle come for me?
I knew why.
Because someone had paid more than gold. Someone wanted me *erased*—not just killed, *unmade.*
That was bigger than politics. That was war within the walls.
With a final snarl, I shoved him back toward the broken mirror and unleashed the blade hidden in my left boot—piercing his thigh. He groaned—first sound I'd heard from him—and vanished in a cloud of red smoke.
Gone.
The guards came seconds later. Too late.
I stared at them.
"Find Veyra," I snapped. "Now."
---
Veyra had been poisoned.
She was still alive—barely—but it was meant to be a message. They'd gotten to one of my best.
They wanted me surrounded by silence. Disarmed. Alone.
But I was never truly alone.
By nightfall, I sent every spare Thorn agent into the catacombs beneath the city. I issued a covert directive: Find the source. Follow the rumors. Disappear if they had to—but return with names.
And while they ran in shadows, I walked straight into the heart of the flame.
To the king.
---
"You were attacked," he said, voice too calm.
"Yes," I replied. "By someone from the Silent Circle."
He blinked once.
"Curious."
"No," I said. "Calculated. That's what it was."
His silence wasn't agreement—but it wasn't denial, either.
He sipped wine.
And in that moment, I realized something chilling.
He *knew*.
Maybe not the name. Maybe not the face. But he'd known someone would come. And he let it happen.
The feast. The praise. The dresses. All distractions. His wife's gifts, her gestures—they weren't out of goodwill. They were out of fear. They thought they could twist me. When they couldn't, they sent killers.
But I don't die that easy.
I left his chamber with a blade hidden in my sleeve and a message hidden in my pocket—from one of the spies returned from the catacombs.
It was a sketch. Of a meeting.
In the sketch: one masked figure, and the woman who'd gifted me the embroidered gown.
She wasn't just trying to befriend me.
She was directing my execution.