Chapter 9 · The Girl Under the Throne

"Don't touch it." Kael's hand closed around her wrist before her fingers reached the ash.

Seraph froze, knees in the wreckage of the dais, ash sifting warm between the cracked stone. Under it, a shape. A shoulder. A curve of collarbone. Skin, not stone.

"It's a person," Lya said behind them, voice thin. "Seraph. It's a person."

"I know what it is." Seraph didn't look away from the ash. Her pulse was doing something stupid, hammering in her throat like it already knew whose face was under there.

Kael's grip didn't loosen. If anything it tightened, thumb pressed flat against the inside of her wrist where her pulse jumped. "You knew this was here."

"I didn't."

"You went straight for it."

"I went straight for the throne, which is where you brought me, Commander." She turned her head, close enough that she could feel the heat off him, close enough that his jaw was a hard line six inches from hers. "Or is this the part where you decide I buried a body in your family's war room."

His eyes didn't move off her face. Not suspicion exactly.