Chapter Two-Hundred-And-Forty-Nine
**3rd Person POV**
There was of course one werewolf that came to mind.
“His mistress,” King Armand and Azrael said at the same time.
****
Azrael found his friend much later that night when it was past midnight. He observed that his friend was in deep thought.
“What troubles you?” he asked Prince Kristoff.
Kristoff turned to see his friend but he had no words. In just a few days the werewolves had spent in the palace, a distance had grown between them. Kristoff knew that he could not tell his friend what troubled him.
He had found the murder weapon in Charlotte's bed.
The shock on her face had made one thing clear_she had not put it there. It was also very clear that someone had meant for Charlotte to be frightened into disposing of it. If she did so, when her room was searched later, the silver bullets would have been found and it would be discovered that she got rid of the gun. There would be no exonerating her afterwards. She would have been tagged the killer. What more? She had a motive to kill Major Drieden having just a few hours ago been disgraced by the man.
When they had discovered the gun, Kristoff had known at once that it was meant for Charlotte to find. It had been placed to distract her from the real problem. So they turned her room upside down and found the silver bullets.
He had always seen Charlotte as strong but in that moment she had been vulnerable. She had looked upon him with raw fear, scared to death that surely he would think her a murderer and turn her in. But he knew that although many had fallen by her sword, Charlotte was not one to end a man's life except on the battlefield.
“The murder. Why do you think Major Drieden was murdered?” Kristoff replied to his friend and added a question to his response.
“Is it not obvious? We have these werewolves swarming our palace like roaches, they have…” but Kristoff was no longer listening. He had gotten what he wanted from Azrael and that was the motive. If anyone had a motive to implicate the werewolves it would be Azrael. Although, he understood that Azrael was not the only vampire who hated the werewolves.
Kristoff realised that this was going to be a lot harder than he had thought. Someone had planted those things in Charlotte's room and he needed to find out who had done so and why. He also needed to figure out what he was supposed to do with the things he had found in her room before the crack of dawn. He could not throw them away because it was vital evidence in the investigation but if he submitted them then he would have a lot of explaining to do.
“Are you listening to me, Kristoff?” asked Azrael to his friend who appeared to be lost in thoughts.
“I'm sorry, what did you say?” quipped Prince Kristoff.
“I have a bad feeling about Charlotte,” he said. This caught Kristoff's attention. He and his friend had never particularly discussed Charlotte. This was largely due to the fact that Azrael would not have approved of the romance between them.
“Princess Charlotte, you mean?” quipped Kristoff.
Azrael ignored the correction and said, “I suspect that she is involved in Major Drieden's death.”
“How so?” quipped Kristoff, waiting for his friend to proffer an explanation. Kristoff personally hated baseless accusations. If one must defame another's character then one must be ready to do so with absolute proof.
“I believe the light of day shall reveal all things. Will your father really wait to get a response from their council before continuing with the investigation?” quipped Azrael. This was news to Kristoff but he was not surprised. It was protocol and he believed that his father must have dispatched the letter immediately after he'd settled down. He thought about his father and wondered if perhaps he ought to come clean with his father about Charlotte but he decided against it. Now was simply not the time.
“When you say the light of day, do you know something that I don't?” quipped Kristoff looking at his friend. He saw that a cynical smile played on the lips of his dear friend.
“I would not like to preempt anything but I believe…”
A guard interrupted them at that very moment and Azrael never got the chance to complete his words.
“His Majesty would like to see you both in his study,” the guard who had interrupted them said. The two friends exchanged a look and at once made their way to King Armand's study where the man was pacing about.
“Father?” There was a note of worry in Kristoff's voice. He noticed that his father seemed to have aged in just the span of a couple hours with this terrible problem.
“You must have told Kristoff all about the letter,” said King Armand. Azrael cleared his throat and told the king that he had not had the chance to, then he proceeded to fill Kristoff in on Lowell's torn piece of paper. Kristoff was slightly angered with Azrael that he had chosen to blab on earlier about his suspicions about Charlotte and failed to mention something so important.
“My guards report to me that she has disappeared; we are looking for her but there is no trace of her within my walls. It was like she was never here for dinner,” said King Armand.
Kristoff wondered if now was the time to mention the gun and silver bullets but he kept mum. With Nydia gone missing, it was possible that she had planned this whole thing. It was also possible that she had planted the evidence on Charlotte given their estranged history. He was not aware of the intricate details but it was public knowledge that Nydia had deeply wronged the trio of heirs that were now residing in the palace.
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