Chapter 57: Who Did It?

Kai found Flora in the smaller receiving room that overlooked the eastern courtyard.

She was seated near the window with a cup of untouched tea, posture composed, the deep green of her dress sharp against the pale stone. She looked up when he entered and offered the small, practiced smile she had perfected.

Kai closed the door and walked closer to her, only stopping about two arms length away from her.

For a moment he only stood opposite her and let the silence establish itself.

Flora’s smile thinned slightly as she took in his expression.

"You look unwell," she said. "Should I send for—"

"Did you do it?"

The question landed without preamble. Kai heard the unevenness in his own voice and hated it. He was not in the habit of asking questions he had not already framed for every possible answer. Today the frame had failed him. He remained standing, hands at his sides, and watched her face with the full attention he usually reserved for border reports and succession threats.

Flora set the cup down with a soft, precise click.

"No."

The denial was immediate, and while it had sounded clean and so genuine, Kai did not relax.

"You threatened him," he said. "In this house. You told him to stay away from me. You told me you would remove the problem yourself if I did not keep him at a distance. And today he is on a hospital bed fighting for his life. You will forgive me, Flora, if I require more than a single word before I file the matter under coincidence."

Color rose faintly along her cheekbones—not embarrassment, but the sharp edge of a temper held under political restraint.

"I only made those threats to keep him away from you because I know how desperate omegas can get," she said. "Surely you don’t think that I am capable of poisoning someone. Besides I haven’t even seen or spoken with him since that day. So no, I didn’t poison that boy."

"Then look me in the eye and say it again."

She did. Without blinking. Without the small, softening adjustments she sometimes made when she wanted a conversation to end on her terms.

"I did not poison Levi Hill. I did not order it done. I did not supply wolfsbane to anyone in this household. If someone tried to kill him, they did not do it with my knowledge or my assistance."

Kai held her gaze for a long moment, searching for the fracture that would give the lie away. He found anger. He found the cold, precise pride of a northern Luna who did not appreciate being accused in a private room by the man she was meant to marry. He did not find the particular flicker of someone scrambling to cover a fresh track.

It was not the same as proof.

He turned away from her and walked to the window, bracing one hand against the stone.

"You’re very concerned about him," Flora said behind him. Her voice had cooled. "The physicians’ reports are consistent. He will live. The dose was serious, not inevitably fatal once treatment began. So explain to me, Kai, why you are standing in this room interrogating your intended as if the omega’s recovery were not already assured."

Kai’s fingers pressed harder into the stone.

"It is not about the reports."

"Isn’t it?"

"Someone brought wolfsbane into this house." He turned back to face her. The unease in his chest had sharpened into something closer to anger. "They put it into the body of a person under our roof. If the servants had been ten minutes slower, we would be discussing a corpse instead of a recovery timeline. That is not a problem that resolves itself because the current victim is expected to survive. What happens when it is someone else? What happens if the next cup is meant for Aaron, or Dexter, or you, or me—and help does not arrive in time?"

Flora’s expression had gone very still.

"You are describing a threat to the household," she said carefully.

"I am describing a threat that has already breached the household." Kai’s voice stayed low, but the control in it was thinner than usual. "Wolfsbane does not appear by accident. Someone sourced it, brought it past the gates, and delivered it to a target. Until we know who and how, every meal, every pitcher, every closed-door tray is a potential second attempt. Levi’s survival does not close the matter. It only means the first attempt failed."

He was still speaking when the knock came.

Three sharp raps. Kai called entry. A guard stepped in, helmet under one arm, expression carefully blank in the presence of the first heir and the Luna.

"Report," Kai said.

"The kitchen staff have been searched, my prince. We found nothing. The senior cook is prepared to submit formal statements from every worker on the rotation."

Kai absorbed the information without visible reaction.

"Expand the search to the servants’ quarters and anyone with access to the supervised wing in the last two days. I want names, movements, and any deviation from assigned duties. Quietly. If the household starts circulating the word poison before we have a source, we will have panic in addition to a breach."

"Yes, my prince."

The guard left, closed the door, and the room returned to its previous, heavier silence.

Flora had not moved from her chair. She watched him with an attention that had shed the last of its social performance.

"If I am telling the truth," she said, "and the kitchens are clean—then who, in your estimation, has a motive strong enough to attempt a killing inside your father’s house?"

Kai did not answer immediately.

He had been turning the same question over since the medical wing’s first message. Flora had motive in the abstract, but she seemed to be telling the truth.

Dexter wanted the omega alive and bound. Aaron had just publicly taken ownership of a claim and negotiated terms that required Levi breathing. Elvis had been conspicuously absent, which was its own kind of information, but poisoning the object of a long-standing proprietary interest was a poor way to reclaim it.

He looked at Flora.

"I do not know yet," he said. "That is the problem."

He moved toward the door, there was no need to stay here if he already got his answer. He had more pressing matters to attend to.

He was happy that Levi would survive, he didn’t know what would have happened to him or his brothers if the omega had died. But his relief was short-lived. None of it mattered as much as the simpler, colder remaining truth.

Until they found who had brought wolfsbane into the house and put it in Levi Hill’s body, the first attempt would not be the last. The next cup might not be found in time. The next target might not even be Levi, it could be him or one of his brothers. He paused at the threshold and looked back once at Flora.

"If you learn anything that touches this," he said, "you will bring it to me."

Flora held his gaze. After a moment she inclined her head a fraction before returning to her tea.

Kai left the room and walked toward the medical wing, his mind still running wild with the same question since he kind of determined Flora wasn’t the culprit.

If not Flora, then who?