Before she could speak again, he gave a sharp tilt of his head and slipped back into the crowd—swallowed by the tide of politics, as though the exchange had never existed at all.
Beside her, Alaric murmured under his breath, “Do you believe he is a friend?”
Evelyne kept her eyes on Ravik’s departing back.
“No,” she said, turning towards the window. “He is someone with the same enemy.”
Outside, the moon hung low in the sky, heavy and blood-red near the edge of the coming sunrise. She tilted her head.
Red.
In Edrathen, that color had been twisted into a lie. But that memory had always been hers. And she would reshape it.
As truth.
Someone had killed Dasmon and his entire bloodline to learn a single line of text.
It had happened under their noses. And it would happen again. It would keep happening. They, whoever they were, would keep stealing lives to pry free another scrap of the song.
Another moon. Another verse.
Until it was finished.
How important must those words be, for men and women to kill for them so easily? And what did it say about them—that they kept letting it happen?
Chapter 76
They left the council chamber like survivors fleeing a collapsed stage set—half the cast still inside, rewriting the final act and arguing over whose version of the tragedy would make it into the official script. All very important things when a child had just died on sacred ground.
Evelyne said nothing. Alaric didn’t speak either. But he didn’t leave her side. Not when Vesena fell into step behind them. Not when Cedric threw him a look. Not when Isildeth reached for Evelyne’s elbow with a whisper of her name.
Alaric lifted a hand, and the others halted at once. He walked the rest of the way beside her alone—through hollow corridors and the weight of too many stares.
At the threshold to her chambers, Alaric held the door.
She crossed the threshold.
The room was dim. A clean robe waited, neatly folded on the bench. She made no move for it. She remained where she was, wrapped in the same blanket they'd draped around her after Thalen's body was carried away. Her arms clung to it, tight against her chest, as if releasing it would make everything that happened impossible to deny.
With effort, she turned and met his eyes.
“I suppose,” she began, forcing her voice steady, sharp, “this is the part where you tell me to keep quiet and smile. Let the memory of tonight rot, and pretend the world is still whole.”
She hated how brittle the words sounded. She hated more that some part of her had expected it.
“You speak as if you had never seen the worst side of me,” he said, stepping closer. “Whatever they claim, whatever pretty stories they wrap it in—it’s wrong.”
His fingers brushed lightly over the bruised skin of her wrists. The contact was feather-light. A flicker of pain crossed his face.
“I think it was meant to be me,” she whispered. “The next one.Iwas supposed to say it.”
Alaric tilted his chin slightly towards her.
“That woman took the mark,” Evelyne continued, more to herself now. “But the cycle didn’t break. I feel it, Alaric. It’s not done.”
She exhaled, slow and careful.
“I’m still on that list. I can’t explain how I know it, but I do. There’s something left in me. Something that wants to speak.”
