“That’s dangerous. Someone will notice. Do you think you can wander under the Orvath’s chapel without being seen?”
“Do you think the Archives are any better?” He raised his brow. “A princess nosing around in dusty ledgers doesn’t raise suspicion?”
“I have a reason prepared,” she countered.
Alaric let out a breath through his nose. “You won’t find anything.”
“Why are you so certain?” she asked.
“Are the Archives publicly accessible?”
Evelyne nodded once. “To the royal family and the Council, yes.”
“Then there’s nothing worth finding.” He shrugged, tossing the bread aside untouched. “Anything there is either falsified or sanitized. If it’s allowed to be seen, it’s already been cleaned.”
Her brow furrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you won’t find truth in curated ledgers and stamped approvals,” he said. “You’ll find omissions and propaganda.”
“If you want thetruth, you don’t look in what’s been permitted. You look in what was meant to be erased. In the places where symbols outlived the stories.”
She gave a tight, almost imperceptible shake of her head. “So, you assume I wouldn’t recognize a lie.”
“That’s not what I said.” Alaric gestured with his hand. “I think that it’s better to act than sip tea with a clerk and wait for censored footnotes.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Alaric caught Cedric dragging a hand down his face in a full-bodywhy-are-you-like-thisgesture. Beside him, Vesena looked as if someone had just passed something particularly rancid beneath her nose.
Evelyne turned her head. Slowly. That kind of slowness that signaled danger in every language.
“I beg your pardon?”
He replayed his words in his mind, then glanced at her face, at Cedric’s raised brows, back again.Damn it. He was an idiot.
Alaric hesitated trying different approach. “I meant that your methods are too… clean. Too polite.”
She stared at him.
Her eyes narrowed, lips pressing into a line that managed to be both unimpressed and devastating.
“My apologies,” Evelyne objected, her voice smooth as velvet and cold as frost. “I was under the impression I needed a partner. Not a patronizing strategist with an exaggerated sense of his own brilliance.”
Seriousness had never sat well on his tongue; it felt like armor he hadn’t earned. When things got too real, he always reached for the nearest joke—as if laughter could buy him a breath.
“Exaggerated? I assure you, Your Highness, my brilliance is well-documented. There are records.”
“Yes,” she sighed, rising to her feet with a grace that suggested she might also enjoy throwing him off the ledge if she deemed it efficient. “Most of them penned by yourself, I imagine.”
Alaric stayed seated, looking up at her now, the sun cutting a sharp edge along her profile.
All right. Jokes weren’t working. What a shock.
“Thank you for the enlightening conversation. I’m sure I’ll treasure every word,” she said sharply, already turning away.
Alaric stumbled to his feet. “I was just trying—”
“No,” she cut in, her voice flat. “You were being a typical man I’ve dealt with. ‘Let’s do it my way,’” she said, mimicking his tone so perfectly he might have laughed—if he wasn’t fairly certain it would earn him a swift execution.
“Unbelievable.” She shook her head. “This is about memory. About justice. About myfamily.”
