Evelyne’s jaw tightened. “Why didn't you warn us?”
“The best way to catch a knife,” Ravik explained, “is to let the hand holding it strike first. We were ready. We had containment. And as you can see—” his gaze moved between them, “—the royal family is alive.”
Her father exhaled, a long, weary sound.
“Is the wedding in danger?” he asked, and though his voice was calm, Evelyne could hear the iron tension underneath it.
“You can never consider yourself one hundred percent safe, Your Majesty,” Ravik replied. “But based on the intercepted communications, there is no indication of an attack planned during the wedding itself.”
Evelyne studied him for a long moment. As furious as she still was, she had to admit it: the man didn’t wear that uniform for decoration.
The strategy was sound. Ruthless. Effective.
Alaric, however, looked markedly less impressed.
“I asked you to tell me if the princess was in danger,” he pressed, voice low but sharp. “That wasn’t a suggestion. That was an order.”
Ravik met his gaze with an unfazed calm. “No offense, Your Highness, but I serve the Tresselyn family. And the Princess,” he added, glancing toward Evelyne, “was safe. I made certain of it. My men and I watched her.”
There was a pause.
“As she poked into prohibited places.”
Evelyne face fell as her father’s expression shifted in that slow, inevitable way that meant lectures were brewing.
“You’re wrong, Grand Marshal. I am offended,” Alaric’s voice went colder, blade-sharp. “My fiancée’s life is not a battlefield for your private experiments. You left a pass open for intruders to cross. That’s fine. But you didn’t stop them before the parade. Why?”
Ravik spoke without hurry. “People had to see that we caught them.”
Alaric’s laugh was a small, dangerous thing. “You did it for public image.”
“I did it for the crown.”
Evelyne turned toward her father, searching his face. His expression barely shifted, but she knew him well enough to see the tension gathering at the corner of his mouth.
Alaric’s voice cut across the room, low and lethal.
“Then know this—if it were my court, it would earn execution. Because you didn’t just gamble with soldiers, Marshal. You gambled with the future Empress. And Varantia will remember this.”
Ravik didn’t flinch. If anything, his mouth curved into something that might have once been a smile. Years ago, before the war wore it away.
“Then maybe,” he said, calm and cutting, “you are your grandfather’s offspring.”
Alaric simply raised an eyebrow, unimpressed and unbothered.
“Explain the list,” Alaric continued. “The one with her name. Hundreds of names, all crossed out. Except one. Evelyne Tresselyn.”
Ravik blinked. Slowly. And then, to Evelyne’s surprise, frowned—not with the sharpness of defense, but with genuine confusion.
“Where did you find it?” he asked.
“In your little chamber of treasures,” Alaric said smoothly.
“It is Edrathen’s treasury,” Rhaedor cut in, pinching the bridge of his nose. “A vault of legacy and record. And you, Prince, should not have had access to it.”
Evelyne had enough. Treasury? Legacy? As if that explained away a ledger with her name still inked in black. Ravik had used her as bait for assassins, and now her father summarized the existence of a vault of dangerous relics as if it were nothing. It was unbelievable.
“I know the list,” Ravik admitted. “I found it on one of the Heretics we captured a year ago. It listed one victim from each incident—the Maroon Slaughter, Zharesh, the… fire in Kelvar’s Cross. We believe those people had the same sigil on their lips.” He paused. “But Evelyne wasn’t on it. It ended with Dasmon Dvorenic.”
