Death smells like old dust and cold stone. I breathe it in every single night while the rest of Veyrhold sleeps behind iron gates and heavy walls. My fingers skim across the smooth edge of a marble table where a forgotten soul lies waiting for the dawn. People in this city think the dead are completely silent. They believe that once a heart stops beating all the secrets vanish into the dirt. They are wrong. Every single bone in a dead body holds onto a final echo. If you have the right touch, you can hear what the world refused to listen to. I keep my hands steady and my mouth shut because sharing this gift means getting locked away forever.
The heavy oak door of the preparation room creaks open and breaks the quiet rhythm of the night. Master Vance stands in the doorway with a lantern in his hand and shadows dancing across his tired face. He looks older tonight with deep lines carved around his mouth and worry clouding his eyes. He tells me to wash my hands and get ready for a special arrival. He says the guards brought someone new from the upper district near the border of the Ashen Court. That district belongs to Alpha Dain Rourke. Everyone in Veyrhold knows that name. Dain rules his territory with an iron fist and a temper that can turn a grown man into a puddle of fear. When the guards from the Ashen Court demand help in the middle of the night, nobody asks questions. We just obey.
I follow Master Vance down the damp hallway where the torches flicker against the stone walls. Two royal guards stand beside a covered stretcher with silver crests gleaming on their dark tunics. Their faces are hard and expressionless like carved statues guarding a tomb. They do not look at me when I approach the table. They just step aside and pull the rough gray cloth back.
The woman lying on the steel table looks far too young to belong to the dead. Her hair is dark like wet soil and her skin is pale as winter snow. A silver ring sits loosely on her left hand bearing the mark of a royal investigator. My stomach tightens into a hard knot because investigators only die when they dig too close to truths buried by powerful people. Master Vance murmurs an apology to the guards and steps back into the shadows. He leaves me alone with the body and the armed men watching my every move.
The silence in the room presses down on my chest until breathing feels like swallowing glass. I reach out slowly and hover my fingertips just an inch above the cold skin of the woman's wrist. My heart hammers against my ribs like a trapped bird trying to break free. If the guards notice my hands shaking they might suspect something. I push the fear down deep into my stomach and press my bare skin directly against her arm bone.
The world around me instantly dissolves into total darkness.
A sharp gasp rips from my throat before I can stop it. The cold stone room vanishes and a violent rush of wind screams inside my ears. I am standing in a dark forest at midnight while rain lashes down against my face. The smell of burning pine and fresh blood fills the air. I see boots splashing through muddy puddles and hear the heavy panting of someone running for their life.
Then the voice echoes straight into my mind. It is raspy and breathless and thick with absolute terror.
“The Alpha did not kill me. He watched them do it.”
The memory shatters like fragile glass. I stumble backward against the heavy stone table and gasp for air. My hands fly away from the body as if the bone turned into red hot iron. The guards take a sharp step forward with their hands resting on the hilts of their swords. They demand to know what I heard and why I flinched. I force my breathing to slow down and stare at the floor to hide the panic shining in my eyes. I tell them I only slipped on the cold stone. They grumble under their breath and tell me to finish my work quickly before the sun rises over the city.
My pulse races while my mind spins out of control. The words echo over and over inside my head. The Alpha did not kill me. He watched them do it. Alpha Dain Rourke rules the Ashen Court with absolute authority. If he stood by and watched an investigator get murdered, the entire kingdom stands on a foundation of lies.
The memory of that terrifying night ten years ago flashes behind my eyelids uninvited. Flames roar through the wooden hallways of my childhood home and swallow the walls in hungry orange teeth. My mother screams my name over the crackling fire while my father tries to hold the burning roof beams back. Smoke chokes my lungs and burns my throat until I can barely cry out. Someone grabs my arm in the dark and drags me out into the freezing night air. When I look back, my house is gone and my older sister Yselle is nowhere to be found. Everyone told me rogues attacked our home and killed my parents. They told me Yselle burned alongside them in the inferno.
Standing here beside the dead investigator, the lie tastes like ash on my tongue.
The fire that stole my family and the murder of this woman share the exact same shadow. Powerful people caused both tragedies. They hid their crimes behind locked doors and silenced everyone who got in their way. The dead woman came from the Ashen Court. She carried a secret that someone was willing to kill for.
I look down at my hands where my fingers still tremble from the shock of the memory. The gift I hate the most, the curse I spent my entire life hiding in the dark, just handed me a weapon. This dead woman did not come to our funeral house by accident. Her broken bones delivered a message straight to the one person in Veyrhold who could hear it.
The guards watch me with cold suspicion while I pull the gray cloth back over the investigator's face. I know the risks. If I step forward and chase this mystery, I might end up on a steel table just like her. But I cannot walk away and pretend I heard nothing.
The truth about Alpha Dain Rourke waits behind the gates of the Ashen Court. And for the first time in ten years, I am not going to run away from the fire.