He stepped to the side, but Ravik’s voice followed.
“Where are you from, boy?”
Cedric stopped, back stiffening. He turned his head slightly, keeping the tray balanced in his hands.
“Varantia,” he replied.
“And your family?”
That gave him pause.
“I don’t know,” he raised his brow. “I was raised in an orphanage.”
He said it flatly, but the old ache licked up his spine all the same.
Ravik was quiet for a moment. Then came the hum—thoughtful, judgmental, just shy of patronizing. “I see,” he acknowledged, lips barely moving. “You’re loyal. That’s clear.”
Cedric didn’t reply. He was already halfway done with this conversation and halfway planning Ravik’s slow, metaphorical undoing.
“But be careful,” Ravik continued. “Loyalty is admirable. Until it’s forced.”
Cedric stared at him, letting the weight of the words land, sit, and curdle.
Then he nodded once, mock-courteous. “Thanks for the wisdom, Marshal. I’ll be sure to embroider it on a pillow.”
He turned and walked away before he said something that would get him arrested.
Chapter 40
He had seen men hold swords with less discipline than Evelyne held her knife. Her spine was straight as judgment, each slice of the plum clean enough to shame a physician. Impressive—and, if he was honest, a little terrifying.
A few minutes had passed since King Rhaedor excused himself from the dining chamber, leaving only Evelyne, him, and a handful of attendants quietly tending to their duties.
Alaric shifted, more to contain the tension in his shoulders than from discomfort. He hadn’t slept much. The hours between midnight and dawn had become his sanctuary for the kind of research he couldn’t do in daylight—scouring old field journals, flipping through his own annotated volumes. He’d made diagrams, charts, entire constellations of inked speculation.
His mind had drifted to the Echoes of the Old Gods.
Lucien had been the first to entertain the idea seriously. In the Soleranos library, over an open scroll and two glasses of wine they’d debated what an Echo actually was. Whether it was bound to bloodlines, born from curses, triggered by rare celestial alignments—or nothing more than coincidence shaped into myth.
Some sources claimed an Echo carried the god’s nature, struggles, and legacy like an inheritance no one asked for. That they might manifest divine gifts, dreams, or visions tied to the god’s original domain. That their births often coincided with omens.
And most dangerously, that Echoes could be the key to the return of magic. Return of the discovery, or the unraveling.
No one agreed on how they appeared. His grandfather leaned toward the theory of circumstance. Into people caught in theexact wrong moment at the exact wrong place, reshaped by it forever.
Alaric wasn’t so sure. Circumstance explained thehow, perhaps, but not thewhy.
He tapped a finger once against the linen napkin in his lap. Somewhere out there, if the stories were to be believed, the Drowned Flame walked again. The god who had drowned in silence, might already be moving in the world. Unaware, fate tugging them back toward a path that had been buried for centuries.
And if that was true, they wouldn’t stay hidden forever.
The conversation with Irashe still echoed in his mind, sharper than any wine. It had stirred something—an itch he hadn’t been able to name until now. He researched more about what happened in the capital of Kaer’Vosh. The Circle of Binding was more than myth; it was a pattern, maybe even the origin of the symbol Evelyne had seen. A tether between past and present. Unfortunately, he hadn’t brought many research materials with him. The books he needed were scattered in his chambers in Solmara.
His gaze had drifted to Evelyne before he noticed. He always needed something to anchor him when his thoughts turned heavy.
But then she licked her lips.
A quick, unconscious gesture. But his brain did something stupid and ancient. He froze, halfway through repositioning his glass. Then he noticed her lips moving. And then something hit the plate. A spoon or maybe just reality itself, and the whole room snapped back into clarity.
