The iron bolt thudded into place outside her bedroom door, followed by the hollow drag of the guard’s boots moving toward the stairwell. Dawn sat three hours away. Three hours before Jasker marched his dreadnoughts into the valley at Oakhaven, where Rhede guns waited in the mountain cuts to tear the hulls out of the sky. And when the flagship burned, the Spouse’s Clause would pull its twine tight around her throat. A firing squad against the wet limestone wall behind the Bastion. No trial. Just a clean, state-sanctioned disposal of the traitor’s widow. "Blind, stubborn beast," Runa hissed under her breath. She dropped to her knees by the hearth. Her hands worked with frantic precision, tugging the thin steel stay out of the hem of her corset. It was stiff, flat wire, bent double with a scrape against the brick until she had two tension levers. The brass tumbler gave way in four seconds under two firm counter-twists. The latch cleared the strike plate without a sound. She slipped into the corridor. The gas lamps had been trimmed down to blue beads of flame. Down the eastern wing, two doors past the gallery, lay the threshold Jasker guarded like a tomb: Inga’s suite. No guards patrolled this wing; Jasker permitted no living soul near his sister’s shrine. He visited it alone each Sunday, nursing his venom in the dark. This mortise lock was heavier, reinforced with five pins. Runa rested her temple against the cold oak panel, feeling the vibrations through the wire. Click. A slip of the wrist. Click. The cylinder turned with a dry shriek. She slipped inside and sealed the door behind her. The air carried the stale scent of dried lavender and old wax. Thin gray moonlight filtered through the lace curtains, laying square patterns across an unmade bed, a small mahogany writing desk, and shelves stacked with botanical journals and mechanical drafting tools. Jasker had preserved it exactly as it was the morning Inga died. Her woolen shawl still hung over the chair. Her pens rested in their ceramic trough, dry and crusted. "Think, Inga," Runa muttered, her fingertips skimming the edge of the desk. "You never kept your journal where he could lecture you on grammar." She remembered their third year at the cadet academy. Inga had been so terrible at hiding contraband fruit from the mess hall that Runa had built her three spring-loaded drawers in her trunk. Inga’s mind was brilliant with floral patterns and mechanical drafting, but child-like in its insistence on romance. She loved music. She loved things that ticked. On the nightstand rested a rosewood box topped with an inlaid brass bird. Runa lifted the lid. The interior drum stood still, tiny steel teeth suspended above the comb. She turned the key twice; a tinny, stumbling melody from the Southern provinces plucked at the room’s stillness. She reached under the velvet lining, probing the underside with her thumbnail until she found the seam. A hollow base. A dual-action catch. She pressed the bird’s beak downward while sliding the brass baseplate to the left. The false bottom popped free with a snap. Inside lay no jewelry. Only folded sheets of cream vellum, tied with blue embroidery floss, and a single silver-halide photograph. Runa untied the ribbon. The handwriting was Inga's—tall, hasty, slanting sharply left. *July 14th.* *Jasker brings Linnea to dinner again tonight. I told him I had a fever so I wouldn't have to sit across from her. He thinks she is so gentle, like moss on a wall. He doesn't see how she watches him when he speaks of anyone else. She cornered me by the linden tree on Tuesday. She asked me why I spent so much time helping Runa with the cipher engines. She said, 'Your brother cannot afford distractions, little girl. And neither can I.' Her voice barely carried over the leaves. She didn't blink once. Jasker believes she’s an angel who weeps when a dog dies. He is blind. If I tell him, he’ll think I’m being childish and cruel to her. But she frightens me, Runa. She truly frightens me.* "She saw it," Runa murmured to the empty room. She unfolded the second leaf. *August 2nd.* *The aconite in the garden has been harvested. The root stock is gone. When I asked Linnea if she had taken cuttings for her pressed collection, she stared through me as if I weren't made of flesh. She said the winter frost would kill them anyway. Runa, she is tampering with the transmissions for the border posts. I saw the schedule on Jasker’s desk, but the handwriting on the altered routing docket was hers. It looks like mine. She mimics my script. I need to show you the sheets before the train departs for the western front. If I go to Jasker, he’ll defend her. He loves her. I have to give them to you first.* Inga had never reached the train. She had collapsed on the station platform with foam at her lips and her lungs bleeding into her throat, hours before she was scheduled to meet Runa at the rail depot. The military tribunal had declared it an enemy poison administered via a classified coding device Runa had personally certified. Runa turned to the photograph. It was from the Midsummer Fair, two years before the war tore the borders apart. The paper was cracked at the corners. Inga was laughing, holding a paper cone of roasted hazelnuts, her arm looped through Runa’s. Runa looked ridiculous, wearing a crooked straw hat, her face split in an uncharacteristic grin. Then Runa looked past their shoulders. Standing ten paces back, half-shielded by the striped awning of a baker's stall, was Linnea Sten. She was not smiling. Her hands were buried inside a dark fur muff, her shoulders rigid as iron girders. Her eyes were fixed entirely on Runa’s hand draped over Inga’s arm—a stare of such pure, venomous loathing that it turned the summer sunlight rancid. She had hated Inga for bringing Runa into Jasker’s orbit. "You absolute monster," Runa breathed, the vellum crinkling beneath the pressure of her grip. Linnea hadn't just murdered Inga to preserve an espionage ring; she had executed a competitor, framing Runa so that Jasker himself would swing the hammer down on her neck. It was a double slaughter, conceived out of sheer, deranged possessiveness. A heavy floorboard groaned outside in the hall. Runa stopped. The paper went slack in her grip. The footfalls were heavy, measured, and familiar. The tread of service boots with steel-plated heels. Jasker. He had not gone to the garrison yet. He had come here, to the shrine, before setting off to his death. The brass handle rattled. The key scraped into the lock from the corridor.

The Unsent Letter