Cedric had no idea what to do with that. His mouth opened. Closed. A quiet what in the bloody hells echoed through his skull.
Then Thalen straightened with sudden, diplomatic resolve. “Anyway, I’ll ask my teacher about wooden swords.”
“Fantastic,” Cedric muttered, already inching toward the door like it might open onto another reality.
“But I have one more request.”
Cedric paused, defeated. “Of course you do.”
“Will you protect my sister in Varantia?”
The weight of it hit harder than Cedric expected, mostly because it wasn’t coming from a king or a councilor or even Evelyne herself, but from a ten-year-old.
Cedric had spent the better part of the last year keeping Alaric alive through poison threats, political traps, and one near-death inn fight. He didn’t do sentiment. Not on purpose. But there was something about the boy’s stubborn affection for his sister that struck a little too close to Cedric’s sarcastic heart.
Still, he wasn’t about to open that box. He was tired, underpaid, and vaguely allergic to emotional entanglements. So, for the sake of peace—and to get leftovers of his morning back—he nodded once, briskly.
“Yeah, yeah, I will,” he waved his hand to dismiss the boy.
Thalen beamed, satisfied.
“Now go away,” Cedric added, opening the door wide.
The prince left with a bounce in his step.
Cedric stood there a moment longer, staring at the empty hallway.
Absolutely not paid enough.
Chapter 15
“The loom always takes the brightest thread.”
Some afternoons had the nerve to pretend everything was fine. This was one of them. The rustle of pages was the only sound in the garden as Evelyne read theTale of the Singing Pearl. Sunlight slanted through the carved lattice of the garden pavilion, scattering faint, dappled shadows across the stone table. The roses bloomed too brightly, and the air felt borrowed from some softer kingdom.
Her gown, slate blue and neatly embroidered, gave the illusion of calm: square neckline, capped sleeves, a well-behaved empire waist.
The pastries beside her sat untouched, artfully arranged and utterly useless. A few strands of hair had pulled loose from their pins. She let them fall, everything else inside her head already was.
The book from Alaric was open, one palm covering the title. She’d read the same line three times. She still couldn’t tell what it said.
Because she couldn’t stop thinking about the sigil. It sat in her thoughts like a drop of ink in water, expanding slowly, staining everything around it.
The question, of course, waswhat now?
Who was she supposed to tell?
Isildeth would scold her for looking at a soldier’s report without permission. Her father would deny it. The Edrathen way of dealing with ghosts: pretend they had never been invited in.
And Alaric?
That earned a short, humorless laugh in the back of her throat. Yes. She could just imagine it— “My Prince, while we’readjusting to marriage, might I trouble you with a half-buried conspiracy marked by a heretical sigil, tied to my last would-be husband’s murder?”
So. That left her.
She tried to make sense of it. Ravik had been involved in the investigation. Appointed as the royal family’s liaison. Maybe the inquiry wasn’t entirely closed. The Assembly’s official word meant nothing when it came to actual bureaucracy. Paperwork lasted years. But even so—why here? Why this?
Ravik wasn’t careless. And he wasn’t cruel. In her mind, he had always been the man who knew the most but revealed only what would keep the kingdom intact. So why did he leave the mark in plain sight?
