When we reached the bottom of the steps and were on solid ground again, Leo ordered the guards to unlock my chains. They looked confused, but they did as they were ordered. Relief washed over me as the handcuffs fell away from my wrists.

"We have to go down on wyverns," Leo said, leading the way to the savage beasts. "I hope you're not afraid of heights." His voice held a challenge.

"If I was, you would have noticed on the wall."

"True." He stopped beside the closest wyvern. "You'll be riding down with the guards."

The two men exchanged furtive looks. I was now free to cross my arms, so I did. "Unless you're wanted criminals, I don't bite."

This did not placate them at all.

Commander Jago gave Leo a leg-up onto his mount. Once his feet were in the stirrups, he gathered up the reins. "I haven't got all day!"

"I'll have her." The oldest guard grabbed my shoulder and dragged me towards a wyvern.

He looked at me expectantly when we reached the beast. Thankfully, Rory had taught me to ride his horses the previous year. I grabbed hold of the saddle, put my left foot in the stirrup, and hauled myself on board. Once I was there, I took my foot out the stirrup again and shuffled backwards, leaving room for the guard to mount. He heaved himself on with a grunt and took up the reins. I put my hands on his shoulders. He had long, greasy hair that brushed over my fingers as he turned his head, and I almost gagged.

My stomach was soon lurching for a different reason.

Leo took off, and the guard clicked his tongue, urging our wyvern to follow. We shot upwards with one powerful wingbeat, leaving my stomach behind. Castle Krakenburg rolled out below us like a picture on a map. It was a long way to fall, and all that was between me and a certain death was my grip on a man's shoulders.

The blood drained from my face, and the world started to turn fuzzy.

I realised that Leo was looking over his shoulder and smirking at me. I tightened my hold on the guard's shoulders, heat flooding my cheeks. The blood cleared my head again. Bastard.

We circled over the castle. It looked so small beneath us that it was as if we were god-sized dragons preparing to dive down and tear it apart.

And then we dropped.

The wyverns swooped down steeply, circling into the hole. I gasped, choked on the air, and stared at the scene we were plummeting towards with terror. The flat bird's eye view rose up, walls wrapping themselves around us, as if we were descending into the pages of a dark pop-up picture book.

We spiralled until I felt dizzy, then finally landed on a platform before the imposing figure of Castle Krakenburg. I dismounted as soon as we'd stopped. My legs were shaky, but I drew myself up straight and walked to the front of the platform. Leo and the other guard were waiting there.

My guard dismounted and handed our wyvern over to a stable boy, then joined us. Leo nodded at his belt. "Hand her weapons back."

The guard unbuckled the belt, which he'd been wearing for safekeeping. He handed it to me along with the four extra knives I'd been concealing.

I strapped the belt on and patted the marble hilts of my daggers fondly, before returning my throwing knives to the straps within the arms of my leather coat and the small scabbards that were attached to my legs. Leo watched me, his expression giving nothing away.

"You are dismissed," he said to the guards once I was finished. Then he looked at me. "Come."

He strode off, crossing the wide bridge towards the castle entrance. I stalked after him. He was of average height, as was I, but I still had to move quickly to keep up with his long, impatient strides.

"Thank you for giving me my blades back," I said as I drew level with him, keeping my eyes trained ahead on the castle doors.

"With this murderer about, you might need them."

"How are the victims being killed?"

"Poison."

"So I need my knives to stab my food?" I scoffed.

"No." He lowered his voice and glared at me. "You'll understand shortly."

We reached the entrance to the castle. Leo took the steps two at a time, and I rolled my eyes and copied him. The guards standing at the doors bowed low and opened them.

"Prince Leo?" one called after us.

Leo stopped and looked over his shoulder.

"They're waiting for you in the throne room, my lord."

"Thank you." He strode down the corridor. "Damn it, I was hoping to be back before they assembled."

"Before who assembled?" I asked. "The committee?"

"Be patient! You'll see for yourself."

I certainly hoped so, because there wasn't much to see in the corridors. They were dark and shadowed, the light from the torches not quite reaching into every crevice. Still damp from my morning chasing Janus, I shivered.

We reached a grand set of double doors lined with gold, and Leo shoved both open without bothering to knock. They fell away from the room like a curtain, revealing what must have been the world's largest throne centre stage.

A huge flight of red steps ran up to a platform, where the chair blossomed like a lethal bloom. The back stretched all the way to the ceiling, black-and-gold at the centre, and surrounded by a red circle which had been fashioned to look as if it was full of spears. The wall behind it was painted with shadowy, gnarled trees that reached across the hall. Beneath its furthest branches, six people were gathered around a table.

By his position alone, I assumed that the man at the head of the table was King Xander. Even without that logic, he had an air of authority and attitude that was steelier than Leo's, and both his blond hair and his cold glare matched that of his brother.

To his left was a woman with sparkling, red eyes who I assumed was Queen Kassandra. A teenager was sitting alongside her, bearing even longer hair the same shade as her brothers' -- that had to be Princess Elise. The other princess of the royal family, Camilla, had moved to Valla not long after the war in order to serve Queen Kassandra's twin brother. She'd married Princess Hinoka of Hoshido, who had done the very same thing, not long after her arrival.

The chair to King Xander's right was empty, and the one after that, but the three others alongside them were occupied. There was Commander Jago, who had evidently made his descent much faster than us, looking tough and grizzled under the harsh torchlight. Alongside him was a man who looked equally as old but much nobler, and a woman who must have been at least two decades younger. Curly, black hair was arranged carefully over her shoulders, framing a sharp and elegant face.

King Xander frowned at me, but Leo spoke hastily before he could open his mouth. "My apologies for our delay. This is Captain Grace, the leader of the Macarath platoon that helped me to catch Janus. It turns out that she was our informant on his location, and her tracking skills were so excellent that I invited her to join this committee. May she, Xander?"

He wanted me to pretend to be the captain of a platoon in the Macarath Nohrian Guard? That was the very thing I had never wanted to be. The Nohrian Guard hadn't caught Janus before he'd killed Sasha.

King Xander's frown deepened, but he waved a hand at the empty chairs. "If you have such faith in her abilities, then I suppose she may. I trust the mission went well? Is Janus waiting in the dungeons?"

I slid into the seat by Princess Elise, keeping my bloodied hands under the table. My heart was pounding in my ears. How was Leo going to excuse this part?

He took his time in replying, waiting until he was sitting on Xander's right-hand side. "No. Unfortunately, he attacked the Macarath Nohrian Guard. They were forced to kill him in self-defence."

King Xander's gaze turned cold. "It does not sound like this mission was handled with the particular care it needed."

"Does it matter?" Princess Elise asked. "He was going to be hanged anyway."

King Xander glanced at her, then sighed. "I'll speak with you about this again later, Leo. But thank you, Captain Grace, for your help. Welcome to our murder investigation committee."

He proceeded to introduce his wife and his younger sister, whose identities I had been correct about, and then looked to the people on the other side of the table. "This is Commander Jago, head of the Royal Guard; and Lord Tor and Lady Savina, noble intellects from Windmire. We are also awaiting the arrival of Camilla, who's been travelling back to Nohr ever since she heard the news. Between us, we are trying -- to little avail -- to pinpoint who the murderer is. How much has Leo told you?"

"Almost nothing," Leo said. "We need to explain it all."

King Xander looked at his wife. "Kass? Do you want to?"

Queen Kassandra had spent most of the time since the murders had been mentioned looking at the table. Now she raised her eyes and met mine with none of the scorn that was held in those of the nobles. She didn't look at me curiously like Princess Elise, or suspiciously like King Xander. She looked at me with fierce hope.

"A week ago today," she said, "I was not feeling up to attending supper in the dining hall with my family, and I requested for it to be brought to my room. On the occasions when I choose to eat in privacy, Alice is always the maid to bring my meal to me. I momentarily left the room, and when I came back, she had been in. She'd left the food on my bedside table, and it looked as if she'd been on her way to the door when she was killed. She was just lying there, her eyes...so bright. Unnaturally blue. They were almost glowing."

She stopped and bit her lip.

"The poison used is called grykomis," Leo continued. "It kills instantly. Her wounds suggested she had struggled against someone, and they'd injected it in the back of her neck."

I frowned. "How can you tell all of this, about the particular poison and what the wounds suggest?"

Queen Kassandra cleared her throat and sat up straighter. "We have an in-house pathologist and toxicologist: Gideon. He's the one with the knowledge. He examines the bodies and tells us these things. He also looked at the second. My -- my tailor. She was discovered a few days ago in her own quarters, during the evening again. Gideon called the poison..." She looked at Leo.

"Fladyn," he said. "Which apparently causes a quick collapse but a drawn-out death. It's possible that she was poisoned a few hours before she died."

"With both of the victims having a connection to Kass," King Xander added, "we are now concerned that this may escalate to an attempt to assassinate her. And so this situation is being treated as a national priority. Only one clue has been left behind at each scene: a message carved into the walls. 'Someone remembers.'"

Leo sighed. "No one is ever spotted near the scene, and no one has been acting suspiciously."

"What about the handwriting?" I asked. "Could you get samples from everyone in the castle and compare it?"

Leo shook his head. "The message is always written in block capitals."

"And no one new has entered the castle in the past week?"

"Four people, actually: Hoshidan ninjas. Xander and King Ryoma of Hoshido have arranged for them to train our soldiers, as their skills of stealth are admirable. I questioned each of them on both occasions, and their rooms have also been searched. None of them are keeping poison, and none of them have been sighted anywhere near the crime scenes."

From there, the meeting turned into a proper discussion, during which I listened but said little, mostly because the conversation went around in circles. All theories aired seemed to have been aired before. Most of the suspicion was falling on the ninjas, but, as Leo had said, there was no evidence.

Eventually, the only new development was that King Xander ordered all members of the royal family to be accompanied by their retainers or a member of the Royal Guard at all times, night and day. Then the nobles were dismissed to go back to their homes in Windmire, and Commander Jago was dismissed too. King Xander kept the rest of us seated until they'd gone.

As soon as the doors to the throne room had closed, he looked shrewdly at Leo. "Now, would you kindly give me the truth about Captain Grace? The plan, as far as I was aware, was not to join forces with the Nohrian Guard of Macarath. As you took members of our Royal Guard with you, there was no need."

Leo looked at me with dark annoyance, propping his chin up in his hand. "Please explain the mess you've made for yourself."

I bristled. "I am not 'Captain' Grace, Your Majesty. It's just Grace, ordinary civilian of Macarath." I put my bloodied hands on the table. "And murderer of Janus."

Princess Elise stared at me with wide eyes.

King Xander glowered at Leo. "Explain why there is a murderer in our castle. Quickly."

Leo sighed and sat up properly again. "Could you have explained without such drama, Grace? What's happened is simply this: Janus' final victim was Grace's sister, and she's spent the past two years gathering spies in Macarath to find him. This morning, she finally managed to track him down. We almost caught up with her, but by the time we had, she'd already stabbed Janus in revenge. Unfortunately." He glared at me. "Obviously, I charged her with murder, but she clearly possesses intelligence and skills that could be very useful. She found a man we could not. I told her that I would forget the crime if she helped the investigation."

"It's murder, Leo." King Xander turned his cold gaze on me, scrutinising my face without blinking. My mouth dried.

"She only killed for revenge, and that's over now," Leo said. "Trust me, Xander. We have no leads and no idea when the killer will strike again, and Kass is in their sights."

King Xander dragged a hand through his hair, his gaze darting to his wife. For the briefest of moments, his face softened.

Until he looked at me again.

"Fine," he said. "Grace can aid our investigation -- for now. But the moment she does anything suspicious, I will have her in shackles. Understood?"

"Yes," Leo said.

"Good. Then this meeting is adjourned."

He stood up and strode out the throne room, slamming the doors behind him.