Chapter 3 A VOICE IN THE DARK

Delphine's POV

The door swung open before I even finished pushing it.

Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me sideways so hard I stumbled into the wall, my shoulder hitting stone, my breath knocked clean out of me. For one wild second I thought the fire from the gate had followed me inside the house, that I was about to burn twice in one night. Then I heard Osric's voice, low and sharp, right next to my ear.

"Stay back."

I hadn't even seen him come up the stairs. One second I was alone with that pull dragging me toward the study, and the next he had his whole body between me and the open door, tense like a bowstring about to snap.

"There's someone in there," he said. Not a question. A warning.

"I know," I whispered. "I felt it."

He looked at me for half a second like that answer made no sense to him, and honestly, it made no sense to me either. How do you explain a pull in your chest to a man who thinks you're made of paperwork and treaty lines? I didn't try. I just watched his eyes go back to the dark doorway, and I watched him go very, very still.

Torin came pounding up the stairs behind us, two at a time, breathing hard. "Anything?" he asked Osric.

"Not yet."

That's when the voice came again. Quiet. Close. Right on the other side of the door, like whoever it belonged to hadn't moved an inch since it first said my name.

"Delphine."

My whole body went cold. Not from fear exactly. From something stranger, something that felt like recognition even though I couldn't place the voice at all. Osric's hand tightened on my arm without him seeming to notice he'd done it.

"Show yourself," Osric said into the dark room, his voice carrying none of the ease from earlier. This was a different version of him now, harder, sharper, like a blade pulled halfway from its sheath. "Last chance."

Nothing moved. No footsteps. No shifting cloth. Just silence pressing in so heavy I could hear my own heartbeat slamming in my ears.

Then a shape peeled itself away from the darkest corner of the room, tall, still mostly hidden by shadow, and stepped forward just enough that the hallway torchlight caught the edge of a boot, a sleeve, the outline of a shoulder. Not close enough to see a face. Close enough to know it was real.

The pull in my chest surged so hard I nearly gasped out loud.

"Who are you?" I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, which was the only thing keeping me upright at all.

The shape didn't answer right away. Torin had already drawn something from his belt, metal catching the light, and Osric shifted his weight like he meant to shove me fully behind him and deal with whatever this was on his own.

"You shouldn't be here," the voice said. Not to me. To the room. To Thornhollow itself, like the house was the last place on earth this person expected to end up standing. There was something in the way he said it, something tired and almost sad, that didn't match the danger radiating off Osric beside me.

"That makes two of us," I said, before I could stop myself.

For a second, I thought I heard something like a laugh, quiet and broken off before it finished.

Then everything happened at once.

A shout came from somewhere downstairs, one of the scouts, I think, calling for Osric by name, something about the south wall, something about more riders. Osric's head snapped toward the sound, torn for one terrible second between the threat in front of him and whatever was happening below, and in that one second of hesitation, the shape in the study moved.

Fast. Faster than I could track. A hand shot out of the dark and grabbed my wrist, not rough, not cruel, almost gentle, and for one heartbeat I felt the bond in my chest roar so loud it drowned out every other sound in the world.

"I'm sorry," the voice said, right against my ear this time, close enough that I felt breath on my skin. "You weren't supposed to feel it yet."

Then he was gone.

Not slowly. Not through a door. One second his hand was on my wrist and the warmth of him was the only thing I could feel in the whole world, and the next second the window at the far end of the study stood wide open, curtain snapping in the night wind, and the room was empty except for me, Osric, and Torin standing there with his blade still raised at nothing at all.

"Delphine." Osric's voice cut through the ringing in my ears. His hands were on my shoulders now, turning me to face him, his eyes searching my face like he was checking for wounds. "Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?"

I opened my mouth to answer and found I couldn't. Because the only thing filling my whole body right then wasn't fear. It was that pull, still humming under my skin exactly where his hand had been, exactly like it had latched onto something and had no intention of letting go.

"He knew my name," I finally managed. "He knew who I was before I even said it."

Osric's jaw went tight. Behind him, Torin was already moving toward the open window, shouting orders down into the yard, and somewhere far below I could hear boots pounding across dirt, torches being lit, the whole territory waking up to whatever had just happened in this one small room.

"Nobody outside this house knew you were coming tonight," Osric said slowly, like he was working through something that scared him more than he wanted to admit. "Nobody. We kept the arrival time secret on purpose."

"Then how?"

"That's what worries me," he said.

I looked down at my wrist, at the place where the stranger's hand had been, and felt my stomach drop straight through the floor.

Because right there, pressed into my skin like it had been branded into me the second he touched me, was a mark. Small. Circular. Glowing faintly gold in the dark, exactly the shape and color of the royal seal that belonged to only one family in the entire kingdom.

My own.