As they walked down the hall, King Wonek appeared from a side corridor, giving Nick a friendly nod before heading the opposite way. They were close, closer than Solace had realized. A small, uneasy thought crawled up her spine.
Did Isabella mean him too?
Solace pushed the thought aside as they stepped back into the dining room.
Thiago looked up instantly. "Where'd you go?"
Solace held up the bowl. "Got more fruit."
Arlenna raised a brow. "You couldn't have waited for someone to bring it to you?"
Solace shrugged as she sat back in her seat. "I'm not patient."
Arlenna let out a quiet exhale, something close to a laugh but more restrained. Thiago shook his head, amused.
Nick moved to the head of the table, hands resting lightly behind him. "If I may," he said in a warm voice. "Will you all be staying for a few days?"
Arlenna and Thiago exchanged a look.
Nick continued, gentle and reassuring. "You don't have to, of course. But you just came from a long trip. We have plenty of room prepared. Rest is not something you should have to earn."
His tone held no pressure, only consideration.
Thiago nodded first. "A few days wouldn't hurt."
Arlenna followed with a small, thoughtful nod. "We could use the rest."
Solace hesitated, then agreed. "Yeah. A couple of days."
She didn't want to assume Isabella was right. She wanted proof, patterns, information. And this was the only way to get it.
The moment passed easily for the crew. But Solace's thoughts did not. Not at all.
After Isabella's warning, Solace did not immediately assume Nick was evil. It was not her nature to jump to conclusions. Instead, she fell back into what she did best. She watched, tracked patterns, and let her senses gather the quiet pieces other people missed.
The first things she noticed were small. Nick would say something kind, something warm, something perfectly shaped for the situation, yet the expression never fully matched. Sometimes his jaw tightened after he smiled. Sometimes his eyelid flickered with irritation before smoothing out again. Once he held his breath a moment too long before answering her, an echo of annoyance crossing his features before it slipped beneath the calm facade he always wore. More often she realized his smile never reached his eyes.
She kept hearing Isabella's warning in the back of her mind. Watch for the slips.
Next she noticed the speed of his adjustments. Nick always changed tone quickly, but now it felt almost rehearsed, as if he were stepping into roles rather than reacting naturally. Before, Solace appreciated how he adapted to her needs. Now she saw how fast it happened, how strategically it shifted, how it felt more like a performance than genuine sensitivity.
He avoided certain topics too. Whenever she asked about the children he supposedly rescued, he deflected with a gentle comment about safety or trust. When she asked about his travel routes, he changed the subject with perfect politeness. When she asked why he needed a cook or why so many Eastern goods arrived in his halls, he pivoted smoothly, offering something charming but hollow.
There was a pattern to the avoidance.
There were also rooms that felt wrong. The castle was vast, and most areas were ordinary, but some had reinforced locks or smelled faintly of unwashed clothing. Scuff marks dragged across the floors as if something heavy or unwilling had been pulled through. In a few places she spotted fibers of rope on the ground. When she passed one of the kitchens late at night, she noticed trays were missing even though no meals were scheduled.
Her senses kept tugging her toward things she could not yet explain.
Servants avoided eye contact and walked quickly, shoulders tight and heads down. Some guards flinched when Nick passed them, even though he spoke gently. Others looked frightened but carefully trained not to show it. The atmosphere around him was off, as if everyone knew something she did not.
Solace began watching the way Nick walked through his own home. She watched the way people responded. She watched the tiny cracks in his expressions, the moments that did not fit, the signs she had never known to look for until Isabella told her to pay attention.
And slowly, her instincts started forming a picture she did not want to see.
Solace did not set out to uncover anything. She only followed the strange details that pulled at her attention, the way her instincts always did when something was wrong.
The first thing she noticed were the crates. They arrived early in the morning, marked with symbols from all across the continents, several markings she didn't recognize at all. They were too varied, too scattered, too inconsistent to come from one source.
Isabella had once explained how trade markings worked, waving her hand lazily as she described different regions and how each one labeled its shipments. Solace remembered only pieces of that conversation, but enough to understand one thing clearly.
These crates didn't belong to a single trade route.
They were coming from everywhere.
Nick always called the shipments "trade supplies," but they were too large and too frequent. More importantly, they didn't match any pattern in the Northern economy.
Thiago mentioned hearing muffled voices after midnight. Arlenna had seen a guard carrying someone who was not walking on their own. Solace's stomach tightened when she heard that part, because Isabella's warning kept replaying in her head.
Pay attention.
One night, Solace followed a scent. A faint metallic trace that did not belong in a hallway. A sterile, too-clean disinfectant smell used only to scrub something unpleasant away. Rope fibers on the floor near a door she had never seen open. A single piece of fruit, dropped and stepped on, not from the kitchens, not from anything that should have been in that area.
Her senses led her down a corridor she had never explored, toward a room that felt wrong.
When she opened the door, the air inside was cold.
Shackles hung on the wall, not decorative, not old, recently used. Collars were arranged neatly on a table, each one polished in a way that made her skin crawl. A ledger sat open on a desk, the pages filled with Eastern names, each one crossed out with dark ink that cut into the paper.
She stood there for a long moment, hands cold, heart pounding quietly in her chest, not because she was afraid, but because she finally understood the shape of the pattern forming around her.
Later, in the kitchen, Isabella confirmed it in the soft, matter-of-fact tone she used when truth hurt too much to dress differently.
"That is what he is moving," she said. "People."
Solace turned toward her, stunned. Isabella did not meet her eyes.
"I have seen hints of it myself," Isabella added. "I just... cannot do anything about it."
Solace held her breath.
Now she had the beginning of an answer. And the beginning of something much worse.
Solace decided to tell her crew.
She waited until they were alone, away from Nick, away from the servants, away from anything that might listen. When she pulled Arlenna and Thiago aside, she did it quietly, the same way she did everything when she was thinking too hard.
Thiago noticed first.
"What's going on with you?" he asked. "You've been... different."
Solace looked at both of them, steady and controlled, but her voice carried a weight they had never heard from her before.
"I think Nick is hurting people."
Thiago's face tightened. Arlenna frowned. Neither of them immediately understood what she meant, and neither wanted to believe it. Arlenna was the first to speak.
"Solace... Nick?" Her voice held doubt, but also something else, the trust she placed in Solace's instincts. "You're sure?"
Solace didn't argue. She only turned and started walking. They followed.
Down the hall.
Through the quiet corridors.
Past rooms that suddenly felt different now that Solace was leading them.
When she stopped in front of the hidden room, her hand hovered over the door for a moment. Then she pushed it open.
Thiago saw the restraints first.
His entire body froze. His fists curled so tightly his knuckles whitened. He stepped forward in one sharp movement and looked like he might kick the doorframe straight off its hinges.
"Are you kidding me," he breathed, rage rising fast.
Arlenna didn't move. Her eyes scanned the room slowly, taking in each detail: the shackles on the wall, the polished collars, the ledger with names slashed out in thick, angry ink. She didn't speak. She didn't have to. Her blood had already gone cold.
That was the moment both of them understood.
Solace had been right.
And the truth was worse than they expected.
Thiago stood in the doorway breathing hard, trembling with the restraint it took not to tear the room apart. Arlenna stayed silent, frozen in that razor-sharp stillness she slipped into when shock was settling.
Solace swallowed once.
"There is more," she said quietly.
Arlenna turned. Thiago looked over his shoulder.
"What do you mean, more?" Thiago asked.
Solace did not answer.
She simply motioned for them to follow.
They moved through the halls again, this time with a new heaviness, every step echoing against a truth none of them wanted to name. Solace led them down the familiar corridor toward the kitchen.
The door was propped open. Warm food-scent drifted out.
Isabella stood at the counter slicing herbs with a precise, quiet rhythm. She glanced up when Solace entered, but she did not flinch at the sight of Arlenna and Thiago behind her. Her expression stayed neutral, her knife steady in her hand.
Solace stepped forward.
"Isabella," she said, her voice low. "They need to hear what you told me."
Isabella's knife slowed. She set it down carefully before she met Solace's eyes.
"You told them already," she said. It was not a question.
"I told them the part I found," Solace replied. "Not your part."
Thiago leaned on the counter, trying to stay calm. "What part is that?"
Isabella hesitated, then spoke in the same soft, matter-of-fact tone she always used when the truth hurt too much to dress differently.
"Nick is moving people," she said. "I do not know everything. But I have seen enough to know it is not good. And enough to know I cannot stop it."
Arlenna's jaw clenched. "How long?"
"Long enough," Isabella answered.
Silence filled the room, heavy and tight.
Then Solace asked the question that had been pressing against her ribs since the hallway.
"Is King Wonek part of it?"
Isabella's face changed, not with fear but with honest confusion. She shook her head.
"I do not know," she said. "Truly. He and Nick are close. Very close. But that does not always mean knowledge. Sometimes it only means trust. Sometimes too much trust."
Solace looked at Arlenna, then Thiago.
"Should we tell him?" she asked.
Thiago answered instantly. "Yes. If he doesn't know, he needs to. And if he does, we find out fast."
Arlenna was not as quick. She folded her arms, thinking.
"Nick manipulates," she said. "We have already seen it. If Wonek really trusts him, telling him without proof might put us in danger."
Solace nodded slowly. "But if he isn't involved, he could help us."
"And if he is," Arlenna asked quietly, "then what?"
Thiago's fists tightened. "Then we handle it."
Solace looked back at Isabella.
"You are sure you don't know?"
Isabella shook her head again, this time more firmly.
"I know what Nick does," she said. "But I do not know who else is tangled in it."
Solace exhaled, her thoughts spinning.
"We need to tell him," she said at last. "But we need to be smart. We need proof. Real proof. Something he can't ignore, even if Nick tries to twist it."
Arlenna nodded. "Then that is what we look for."
Thiago looked toward the door, already itching to move.
"And we move before Nick figures out we know."
Solace glanced back toward the hallway where King Wonek had walked earlier.
Isabella's words echoed again.
Sometimes it only means trust.
Sometimes too much trust.
Solace's stomach tightened.
They would find out soon enough.