It wouldn’t. Not unless something changed.
Thessa rose without a word. She crossed the room, pulled the last clean cloth from the shelf. She reached for the worn shoes tucked under the bench. The leather creaked as she rubbed at the dirt, flakes of dried mud falling onto the floorboards.
Just one week. Maybe two.
If it meant Sera would stop whispering things that tasted like prophecy.
Then she’d go.
Chapter 23
Cedric wasn’t supposed to be skulking around corridors.
That was spy’ business, or assassins’, depending on how cheerful you were feeling. But apparently, when Alaric got it into his head that Ravik was acting stranger than usual, he was the one sent to “observe discreetly.”
Right. Because Cedric and discreet were practically synonyms.
So here he was, trailing the Grand Marshal down half a dozen corridors, watching him peel off toward his office, mutter with someone he couldn’t quite see, and then vanish like a stone into fog. The someone else had been hooded, feminine shape maybe, scroll under her arm. Suspicious enough to follow. Ravik might be the kind of man to order his boots polished to regulation gloss, but he wasn’t in the habit of meeting mystery women with paperwork after curfew.
Cedric trailed the hooded figure just far enough to watch her slip into Orvath’s chapel. Perfect. Of all places she could have chosen, it had to be the one shrine in Edrathen that looked like a dungeon had eaten a void.
Cedric lingered outside a moment, hood tugged low, debating. He could leave it, report back, let Alaric gnash his teeth about missed opportunities. But then he’d always wonder. And the worst part? Cedric would wonder too. Curiosity was a contagious disease.
So he slipped in.
The air was cold and smelled faintly of old ash. It was dark; he could see little beyond the long stretch of the chapel, the covered window, the altar, and the faint outlines of stone benches. They stood in neat, punishing rows. The altar sat bare, a slab of gray with chains hanging from its edge like they were waiting for wrists.
Empty.
Cedric let his eyes adjust. He’d expected a clandestine exchange. Instead—nothing. The hooded woman was gone.
He stood there longer than he meant to, leaning against one of the pillars. Five minutes. Ten. Long enough for his legs to stiffen and for him to start counting the cracks in the flagstones. If she was still inside, she was a ghost. And Cedric didn’t believe in ghosts—only people who were very good at not wanting to be found.
He muttered a curse and pushed off the pillar. One last sweep, he told himself. Then he was gone.
That was when the door creaked.
Footsteps, light, cautious. He stilled, hand drifting toward the knife at his belt. He narrowed his eyes, waiting for the shape to resolve in the dim.
A figure slipped through the shadows. Familiar gait, precise in a way most servants never managed.
Recognition hit just as cold steel kissed his throat. His pulse jumped so hard he felt it thrum against the blade.
He blinked down into brown eyes.
“Vesena?” he blurted.
Her dagger didn’t waver. “Cedric?”
Of course. Leave it to him to spend half an hour waiting in a cursed chapel only to nearly get his throat slit by the one person he’d trusted most.
For a moment they just stared at each other, her blade right where his pulse beat. He lifted his hands halfway, mostly to signal “please don’t accidentally slip.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, voice low but pointed.
“What areyoudoing here?”
Vesena didn’t lower her dagger so much as allow it to drift downward. “Are we really doing the mockingbird routine now?”
