Alaric pressed on. “It's a fine gathering, truly. The art, the atmosphere—Varantia could learn from you, Your Highness.”
“You flatter me,” Evelyne replied. “But if you truly wish to learn, I suggest you start by mastering silence.”
The smirk that flickered at the corner of Alaric’s mouth was pure mischief. “I stand corrected, Princess. I see you are an artist after all.”
“Oh?” Evelyne raised a brow.
“Yes,” Alaric explained, grinning wider. “In the delicate art of polite assassination.”
She silently prayed that Rhyssa might grant her the strength not to commit royal homicide in the middle of the drawing room. Perhaps, if she prayed hard enough, the goddess would also grant her the miracle of Alaric losing his voice.
Or, at the very least, his enthusiasm.
A beat of silence stretched between them, taut as a pulled bowstring, as they measured each other. Gods, how he annoyed her. How was it even possible that one man could be so grating and—
She locked down the thought, clearing her throat and looking away. Alaric, of course, only smiled wider.
“Princess Evelyne,” he began, his voice a velvet drawl, “might I have the honor of a private tour of the exhibition? I know you possess vast knowledge in the history of art... and I'd like to learn.” His grin tipped into something almost self-deprecating. “Aside from the value of silence, of course. I promise to listen this time.”
Evelyne stared at him for a long moment. The nobility was watching—she could feel their eyes like the prickling brush of thorns against her skin. The royal couple, united. That was the image they needed to project.
She could not afford to give them fodder for doubt.
“Very well,” she said. “If you can manage to keep your commentary to matters of actual relevance, I suppose I shall endure your company.”
“A more generous invitation was never given.”
Evelyne smiled after the briefest hesitation, and together they turned toward the paintings.
They walked close enough to suggest unity, distant enough to preserve propriety. The afternoon light caught on frames of oil paintings and the gleam of marble busts. Isildeth had managed to weave through the crowd and return with Evelyne’s requested lavender lemonade. She accepted the glass with a slight nod.
They stopped before a tall canvas framed in dark walnut. It depicted a lone figure in a sunlit atelier—elderly, bald man hunched over a half-finished portrait, the painted, barely legible face of a young woman in red staring out at the viewer with a gaze that was almost alive.
Alaric’s voice broke the quiet. “This is beautiful. Not like what passes for art now. Designed to drain creation rather than spark it.”
Evelyne’s gaze traced the edges of the scene—the loosened collar of the artist’s shirt, the tired curve of his shoulders, the shadow where another figure might once have stood. “It’s pre-Sundering,” she replied. “He was a master portraitist. This was his final work. It’s said the life of his lover paid for it.”
Alaric’s brows drew together. “Meaning?”
“She killed herself,” she explained. “The records never confirmed it. But it’s the story people remember.”
Her focus lingered on the brushstrokes. “He worked entirely in oils, always on dark ground. No one could catch light the way he did. His palette was muted; but liked to put an emphasis on the red.”
He exhaled. “I saw a few of his works in our archives. But most were lost after the Sundering.”
From the far side of the gallery, a pair of blue-robed officials moved in slow orbit through the crowd. Their eyes flicked from guest to guest. The Artisanal Circle.
Alaric followed the line of her attention. “And now we have this. Every brushstroke inspected. Every commission catalogued. An unlicensed artist is arrested. Or worse.”
“Those are the laws,” Evelyne recited, voice even.
“For commonborns, they’re a sentence,” he countered. “You’re lucky if you can scrub brushes in someone else’s studio. Highborns get to sip tea and admire work their rank protects. Everyone else—” He broke off with a small shake of his head. “Art should be for everyone. Not just those the Circle finds convenient.”
Her lips curved, but it wasn’t quite a smile. “And I suppose you’d start by handing a chisel to every dockhand in Varantia?”
“If it would wake the world,” he murmured with a tense jaw, “I’d hand them the hammer, too.”
“Another thing that bothers you?” Evelyne asked, her tone deliberately light, though her eyes stayed on him.
