She almost skipped the next report.
It was tucked into the corner, barely there. Half-faded ink, as if someone had once pressed it lightly and then thought better of making it bold. A symbol.
Three vertical lines, enclosed in a circle.
Parted lips that would never close. The lilies.
Her stomach dropped before her mind could catch up. The world tilted, and it took every bit of discipline not to tear the page out and burn it on the spot. Instead, she stared. And the longer she stared, the more certain she became.
It was the same mark. The same sigil carved into Dasmon’s mouth. The one they all pretended not to recognize. The one no one had dared to speak of since the Maroon Slaughter.
Her heart began to pound, fast and heavy. She blinked, forcing her gaze across the page again, scanning for a mistake, a context, anything.
Ravik’s handwriting. Crisp, efficient. It was definitely his.
But it wasn’t like him to leave something like this out in the open. Not without comment. This wasn’t an investigation report.
So why was it here? What does that mean?
The questions flared all at once, piling over each other before she could catch a single one.
She swallowed, the motion dry and deliberate.
The official word, back then, was that the symbol was meaningless. After all, it had only been found on Dasmon’s lips. One sigil, one body. Easy to say it was a delusion. Better that than admit they had no idea what it meant. But she had seen it. To this day, like an afterimage on her eyelids long after she closed them.
Convenient, that no one had to be punished.
After all, who wanted to dig through a graveyard looking for answers no one wanted to find?
And now it resurfaced, tucked into a corner of dry logistics.
Had Ravik placed it there?
He was many things. Unyielding, direct, strategically merciless, but not sentimental. He didn't linger in history. He had drilled that into her since she could stand: you carry the past as a lesson, not a weight.
Evelyne’s foot bobbed beneath the desk, an unconscious tremor she tried to still with her hand. She thought back to the hushed conversation she had overheard between Ravik and the High Preceptor. At the time, she had told herself it was nothing more than politics, words lifted out of context. But with the symbol appearing again, coincidence felt thinner.
However, it was natural they spoke of such things—they held power, they knew more than she did. Perhaps the investigation had never been closed. That was likely. That had to be likely.Calm down.
Ravik had never been lenient with her. She remembered him once lifting her onto a horse when she was too young to mount, holding the reins steady until she found her balance. Officially, she was meant to ride sidesaddle, as a woman should, but he’d sat her astride.Because when there’s danger, you don’t have time for the ceremony.Isildeth, watching from the edge of the yard, had touched her lips and then her chest in Rhyssa’s sign of warding.
She remembered, too, how the lines of his stern face had broken when his gentle wife died, how he had stood in the courtyard long after the mourners left, his armor unfastened.
No. He couldn’t be responsible.
Maybe he knows what the symbol means. He probably saw it and believed it was important. Just like me.
She could ask him. She should—
The latch turned.
Evelyne moved before she could think. Her hand darted to the parchment, sliding it beneath the stack as smoothly as if she’d rehearsed it. Which, in a way, she had. This kingdom trained its daughters in the art of concealment long before it taught them to speak.
The door opened.
Ravik stepped in, as precise as ever. The room always felt colder when he entered, like he carried the frost in with him on his boots. His armor was worn, dull at the edges from real use. He looked like a man carved from old stone. His face, stern and deeply lined, bore a long scar across one cheek. Stretching from the mustache to the right eyebrow. Short trimmed hair, broad shoulders. Dark eyes contrasted with his pale grey skin and held no softness, only the cold clarity of someone who had spent a lifetime making hard decisions.
She met his gaze, nodding once. Her palms trembled and she hid them into folds of her gown hoping he didn’t notice.
