Ruby was still pacing the small confinement room.

Where are you?

Sasha’s mental reply came through, shaky and exhausted. Staff changing room. I’m about to leave.

Ruby stopped pacing for a second, relief washing over her. Good. Make it quick. We don’t have much time—

The door to her room suddenly swung open.

Derek stepped through it, and Ruby’s mind-link cut so fast it left her dizzy.

He stood in the doorway and looked at her, and for a moment, Ruby could not move. His eyes had gone a shade of amber she had never seen on him before, gold burning at the edges, and the air in the room shifted the way it did before a storm broke.

Her heart slammed once against her ribs and then started running, fast and uneven, and for the first time in her life, she could not bring it back under her control.

She did the only thing left to do.

She burst into tears.

"Derek." She crossed the room toward him, hands already wringing at her chest, words tumbling over each other.

"Oh, goddess. I don’t know what came over me. I have not slept since it happened. I keep seeing her face. Is she alright? Please tell me she’s alright. I need to see her, I need to apologise, I need to—"

"Sit."

The single word cut through everything.

Ruby’s mouth snapped shut. Her body obeyed before her mind had caught up, and she dropped onto the edge of the mattress, blinking up at him through tears that she was fairly certain still had some effect on him.

They had always had an effect on him.

Derek pulled the chair from beside the small desk and turned it to face her. He sat down, leaned forward with his forearms on his knees, and looked at her with a cold, flat patience.

She did not yet know that he knew. She was seriously counting on her luck. But she knew showing remorse would go a long way.

"Why did you do it?" he asked.

Ruby’s breath hitched. She thought he meant the staircase. She thought she was on solid ground.

The tears came faster, easier now that she had a script.

"Derek, please. Please. I don’t know what came over me. I was petty. I would never try it again. I meant no harm. You know I would never do that..."

Her words trailed when she saw that he remained immovable. She tried another approach.

"I have given everything to this pack. Everything. My whole life. Are you going to punish me like this for one mistake? One stupid moment when I was not in my right mind?"

She reached for his hand. He did not move it away, but he did not give her his either. Her fingers found his knee instead and stayed there.

"Give me one more chance. Just one. I will make this right. I will make it right with her, with you, with anyone you ask me to. After everything I have done for Dravengard, you cannot mean to throw me away over this."

Derek said nothing.

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled something out and set it on the small table between them. It was the small container.

Ruby’s tears stopped.

It was a brief, involuntary pause, half a second at most, but Derek caught it. His eyes did not leave her face.

The colour left her cheeks in a visible drain. Her jaw fell slightly open, and her mind, which had been so smooth a moment ago, had gone completely white at the edges.

"Do you remember this?" Derek asked quietly.

Ruby’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Her mind ran through the options, the lies, the configurations of half-truth that might still get her through this, but the container was sitting there on the table, and her hands had started to shake, and she could not, for the first time in her life, find a single sentence that would fit.

"Cat got your tongue?"

She shook her head fast. Too fast. Tears spilt over again, but they were different tears now, the kind that came when everything was walking against you.

"I remember it," she said. The words came out rough. "I made it. Yes. I made it for Sasha."

She drew in a long breath, keeping her eyes on the floor. "She came to me and asked me for an appetiser herb, something to help make her hungry; she had been struggling with eating, and said she was tired all the time."

Derek watched her.

She kept talking, faster now, her brain finally catching up and finding its footing. Ishita could not yet remember. Ishita could not contradict anything Ruby said. She had the entire space to herself to shape this however she needed to.

"I made it for her. As her friend. I had no reason to think there was anything strange about the request."

Derek said nothing for a long moment. Then he leaned back in the chair.

"Do you remember what I told you sometime ago," he said, "about monsters?"

Ruby did remember. She remembered exactly. She shook her head anyway.

"I told you," Derek said, slowly, "that two monsters cannot exist in a kingdom. I told you that the day I find out that you’ve become one, I’ll let you go."

He looked at her.

"Today I see you for who you truly are, Ruby."

Ruby’s lip trembled.

"You planned to make sure my wife never carried an heir," he continued, his voice still level but his eyes burning now, gold pulling forward in slow increments.

"You handed Ishita a herb that would damage her womb. You tried to poison the food going into my house. You did all of this while sitting at my table and walking my corridors and being treated like family."

"Derek." She shook her head harder. "I swear on my brother’s grave. I knew nothing about any of this. I made what Sasha asked for. I did not know."

His patience snapped, and Leo surged so fast it pulled him up from his seat. The chair tipped backwards, and Ruby flinched so hard her shoulders hit the headboard.

"Then who tried to silence Ishita?" he barked, his voice cracking across the small room. "Who paid attention to what she was about to tell me that night? Do you take me for a fool?"

He crossed to her before she could answer and yanked her off the bed. His hand closed around her throat and pulled her up off the mattress.

Not hard enough to crush, just hard enough that her feet barely kept contact with the floor and the breath in her lungs became something she had to think about.

"I’ll confess," she gasped. "I’ll confess, I’ll confess, please, please—"

His grip loosened slightly, but he didn’t let go.

Ruby grabbed at his wrist, tears streaming freely now, and the words came tumbling out exactly as she had cooked them a few moments ago.

"It was Sasha." Her voice cracked. "Everything. From the beginning. I made the herb because she asked, but later she told me what she actually wanted to use it for. She wanted to make Kira miscarry. She wanted to damage her womb so she would never carry an heir."

Ruby’s hands shook against his wrist. "I’m sorry I did not come to you immediately. I was scared, and she was my friend, but I see now I should have—"

Derek’s grip tightened slightly.

"Liar."

"I am not lying." She was sobbing now, properly, her body shaking against his. "Derek, please. Sasha is at the medical centre right now. She is on her way to Ishita’s ward to kill her."

The words rushed out now. She needed to save herself. "She has potassium chloride. She knows Ishita is the only one who can tell the truth, and she is going to silence her now. If you do not believe me, send someone. Send someone right now, and you will see for yourself."

Derek went still. Ruby felt the smallest shift in his grip, and she knew, with the cold instinct of a survivor, that she had landed a hit.

"I am not lying." Her voice rose and broke. "I saw Ishita with the herb that night, yes. I found out what she wanted to tell you and made her give it to me. I took it from her to protect the Queen."

She sniffed. "That is the only reason I had the container. Why would I keep it otherwise? Why would I let it be found?"

He released her.

"Why," he said slowly, "would Sasha want to harm my wife?"

Ruby’s breath was coming in ragged pulls. "She has every reason," she said. "Every reason in the world. You killed her soul bond, some years ago."

Derek’s eyes narrowed. "Sasha’s husband died in the war. I did not kill him personally."

Ruby looked up at him. Her face was wet and red, and her hair had come loose from its careful arrangement, and her voice when it came out was quiet and clear and steady for the first time since he had walked into the room.

"Gamma Nolan was not her soulbond, Derek."

She held his eyes.

"Her soulbond was a werewolf you killed at the borders years ago. And he was the father of her son."