She didn’t wait for a response. She turned to Vesena, already dusting off her gloves with ruthless efficiency. “We’re leaving.”
Alaric approached her, hand reaching. “Evelyne, please wait—”
She cut him off with a look sharp enough to peel paint. “Forget it.”
With all the grace and fury of someone who could break bones without raising her voice she mounted her horse, “I’ll take care of it myself,Your Highness. With justpoliteness.”
Ang then she rode off—cloak snapping in the wind like a banner in retreat. Vesena and two Silverwards followed.
Alaric stood there, utterly still, as the hoofbeats started and then faded. He watched her go like a man watching the sea retreat—knowing it would never bring back what it took. And he was a drowning sailor. In someone who hadn't even looked twice.
Behind him, Cedric made a noise.
“Don’t,” Alaric warned.
Cedric crossed his arms. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You said it. With your face.”
Cedric gave him a long, theatrical look of disgust. “And yet you both somehow keep proving me right.”
Alaric sighed, dragging a hand through his hair as he watched the last flutter of Evelyne’s cloak disappear beyond the bend. Brilliant. He’d turned a moment of actual progress into a disaster with a single ill-timed joke. A masterpiece of self-sabotage.
“That was your bestnot reading the roomperformance since the incident of—”
“Shut up,” Alaric muttered approaching his horse.
Cedric arched a brow. “Honestly, I thought you’d learned after that one.”
“I did,” Alaric said dryly. “Just not enough to survive this court.”
Cedric gave a low whistle, glancing toward him with that irritatingly knowing half-smile. “Tragic, really. You’d think nearly dying of humiliation would be a better teacher.”
Alaric shot him a sidelong look. “Remind me why I still speak to you.”
“She just rode off,” Cedric noted. “Are we backing down now?”
Alaric stared after the dust still settling on the path where Evelyne had vanished.
“Absolutely not,” he said, voice flat with certainty.
His pride was bruised. His ego had taken a minor, but well-deserved beating. But he’d spent enough time around nobles, soldiers, and philosophers to know when something mattered.
He smirked, finally turning to Cedric with a glint in his eye. “Besides, the princess still needs to learn a few things about me.”
Cedric raised a brow. “Such as?”
Alaric clasped his hands behind his back with a perfectly mock-serene expression. “That I don’t give up that easily. And—”he added, already anticipating the eye-roll, “—that I’ve always liked a bit of competition.”
Cedric exhaled slowly. “You know you’re going to perish by her hand one day, right?”
“Probably,” Alaric agreed. “But what a lovely way to go.”
Chapter 26
The next morning, under the neat guise of reorganizing diplomatic correspondence ahead of the transition to Varantia, Evelyne and Vesena made their way to the castle Archives. Technically true—they would be organizing things. Specifically, Ravik’s movement reports and military assignments. If the Grand Marshal had ordered anything—repositioned patrols, dispatched riders, authorized equipment transfers—it should be recorded.
Isildeth had been gently redirected to another task for the morning—told, quite truthfully, that Vesena was ready for more responsibility and that she herself had earned some rest. But as Evelyne passed the sunlit northern corridor and watched Isildeth’s silhouette vanish around the corner with a satchel of linens and one last worried glance, she felt the weight of it anyway.
