Chapter 19 #2
The king leaned forward, his clasped hands resting atop the polished wood. “We’ve been conducting quiet inquiries in the capital,” he explained. “Looking for disruptions. Heretics. Those who might see the wedding as an opportunity to stir unrest.”
Alaric’s pulse quickened—but his face did not betray it. Heretics. Where there were heretics, there were symbols. Whispers of magic.
“Heretics,” he echoed, carefully neutral. “That’s not a term you toss into the air without weight. And yet this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
King Rhaedor didn’t blink. “Because, so far, we’ve kept it from becoming your problem.”
Alaric’s brow twitched. That old Varantian instinct, to answer frost with fire, flared at the edge of his tongue, but he bit it down. He turned to Ravik, who stood as still as a statue carved from military honor.
“Is there a specific threat?”
The general’s silence stretched long enough to border on insolent. He gazed at the king and shifted one gauntleted hand behind his back.
“There are seditious symbols carved into chapel pews. We’ve seen pockets of unrest, small ones, mostly confined to the lower districts. It smells like rot, but we have yet to find the source.”
Symbols?
Alaric’s gaze narrowed. “Are there loud objections to the match?”
He expected the king to answer, but Ravik responded instead. “Every kingdom has rebellion. What matters is whether you feed it.”
Alaric drew in a breath, then let it out through his nose.
“And you believe this wedding,” he noted, “will be a feast.”
The general’s eyes didn’t flinch. “It is a royal union. A crown on a platter. Expect the best but prepare for the worst.”
Alaric rose from the chair, crossed the room, and paused by the window, his gaze settling on the barracks below.
“Heretics do not rise in a vacuum,” declared the High Preceptor.
Alaric turned, half-forgetting the man had been sitting there all along.
“They rise when fear loses its shepherd,” the man continued, hands steepled. “Symbols, unrest, disappearance—these are not merely threats to be tracked. Disorder has its own source.”
Ravik’s jaw ticked. “Spare the sermons. The threat is real.”
The High Preceptor didn’t look at him. His eyes remained on Alaric. “You think this marriage is a union of nations,” he said, “but it is more than that. Blood binds, not just hearts and houses, but the very threads of order. And in Edrathen, order has always been sacred.”
Alaric studied them both, intrigued. “You mean to say this union is not only political.”
The Preceptor gave the faintest nod. “Princess Evelyne will not be just a bride. She will be a symbol. The people need something to believe in. To ease the unrest. To…help cure the curse that is looming over her.”
Alaric turned back to the window. Below, the barracks buzzed. Soldiers training, the muted clash of steel ringing through the air. He drew a long, steady breath, letting it fill his chest before exhaling.
A symbol. A rite.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Curses had their uses. They clung to places, where something had gone wrong enough to leave a scar. People believed in them. And people, when gripped by fear and conviction, were often far more dangerous than whatever the curse threatened to be.
“She is my daughter, High Preceptor,” Rhaedor murmured. “And future empress.”
Alaric still stood with his back to them, hoping the High Preceptor’s face soured.
“But you know as well as I, Prince,” Rhaedor continued. “Since last year, her name has been spoken in whispers. The Maroon Slaughter tainted more than the chapel floor. Her reputation is... fragile. And a fragile legacy is a dangerous one.”
Alaric didn’t realize his fist had clenched until the sharp sting of his nails biting into his palm snapped him back.
Rhaedor cleared his throat. “This union is not merely a matter of state. It’s a remedy. For her sake, and yours. And for both our kingdoms.”
A pause. Then, more pointedly: “When diplomacy, the army, and the gods all speak with one voice—people listen.”
So that was it. Giving Evelyne a ‘happy ending’ wasn’t about affection. It was an attempt to rewrite the narrative, to stitch a cleaner ending over a bloodstained story.
“If you hear anything, Grand Marshal—”
He turned from the window to face them, taking in the room with a slow, measured glance.
The High Preceptor watched him too closely, something in that stillness made Alaric’s skin crawl. Rhaedor looked faintly bored, his fingers drumming once against the table before stilling again. Ravik remained a wall of, as if carved from the same stone as the castle itself.
“Anything that threatens her safety, you will bring it to me directly.”
His tone was quiet, and Ravik’s brow lifted just enough to make his disdain clear.
“My daughter,” Rhaedor began, “is not ignorant. She knows the weight of her position. And she is not foolish enough to provoke the mob, or indulge sentiment at the expense of reason.”
Alaric didn’t flinch, but he felt the cold edge of those words slide beneath his ribs.
“These are standard precautions,” the king continued. “We’ve made them for every royal celebration in the last two decades. And I assume the same will be done in Varantia when your coronation comes—in six months’ time.”
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the muffled sound of soldiers training outside.
“I understand,” he said at once. “And I assure you—on my crown and my name—when that day comes, I will see to it personally that not a hair falls from her head.”
“That’s why the capital is under such watch,” Ravik explained. “The more we consolidate around the city, the more eyes we keep where they’re needed.”
Eyes, Alaric thought, but not ears. And certainly not perspective.
“An understandable instinct,” he replied, voice even. “But a risky one. Cluster too many sentries in one place and you weaken everything else.”
He returned to his seat, flicking open the folder. Inked maps, troop placements, patrolling intervals. The scent of wax and parchment rose faintly from the vellum.
“Unit rotations,” Alaric prompted, tapping the margin with his forefinger. “Supply routes. Emergency withdrawal points. Everything appears accounted for except this—” He turned the page, spreading it with a smooth motion. “—the northern pass. Kelvar’s Cross.”
He looked up, fixing the general with calm curiosity. “There’s a drawdown of guard presence. No reassignment. No coverage notes. Has there been a threat assessed?”
Ravik’s eyes narrowed just slightly. “The region is low priority. Sparse terrain. Harsh conditions. The weather does most of the guarding.”
“Yes, well,” Alaric murmured, “the weather has never sworn an oath to the crown.”
Ravik’s jaw ticked, one muscle pulsing like a clockwork spring wound too tight. He didn’t answer.
“As you are aware, the wedding draws attention,” Alaric went on. “If I were planning to make a point, I wouldn’t go for the castle steps, not when they’re swarming with your men. I’d take the back road.”
Ravik looked to Rhaedor; the king gave a curt nod. “We’ll consider it.”
Which, of course, translated to absolutely not, Varantian prince in fluent Edrathen.
Alaric returned a nod, the smallest flick of civility masking his irritation. Gods, how did Evelyne do this every day without biting someone’s head off?
The king excused himself with little fanfare, offering Alaric a brief nod that might have contained the barest molecule of approval—or indigestion.
Hard to tell. The High Preceptor bowed in the slightest way possible, and trailed behind Rhaedor like a shadow.
The heavy doors shut behind him, and Alaric found himself alone with Ravik.
Wonderful.
He lingered a moment, closing the folder with a deliberate slowness.
“You’ve served the king for many years, haven’t you?”
“I served his father before him,” Ravik replied without hesitation.
“Then you’ve known Princess Evelyne since she was a child.”
“I’ve seen her at court since she could walk,” Ravik said, his tone clipped, edged with impatience.
“She’s clever,” Alaric remarked, choosing his words with care as he watched the general’s eyes. “And she’ll rule in her own right. I imagine you must be proud.”
Ravik’s lips twitched—not quite a smirk, but close.
“She was born for salon intrigue, not war,” he muttered. His voice was gravel, ground down by years of protocol. “She’s precise, yes. But that won’t stop a blade, nor win a siege.”
Alaric’s fingers curled slightly against the wood.
“So strength, to you, is measured only by the weight one can lift? By scars and sword calluses?”
“A ruler must know how to make hard decisions. Shed blood when needed.”
“She does,” Alaric replied. His voice was quiet, unshaken. “I assure you, Marshal, your enemy may swing the heavier axe, but Evelyne will have already moved the map beneath his feet.”
That earned him a look—flat, unreadable, but more direct than before.
“Even the sharpest weapons dull without upkeep.”
Alaric’s gaze snapped to him, the words hitting like grit in the teeth. Disgusting. The man had really said that—about his fiancée, and in front of him. His smile came slow and cold, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes.
“You must forgive her then, Grand Marshal, for not showing you the edge. If she seems delicate to you,” he continued, “perhaps she simply doesn’t find you worth sharpening herself on.”
Ravik didn’t respond. His jaw clenched, a faint tic pulsing near the temple, and his eyes narrowed on Alaric with the cold focus of a man marking an enemy.
The conversation ended with Alaric turning sharply on his heel and walking toward the corridor, the door groaning shut behind him like it was exhaling tension.
It was obvious that everyone had something to gain from this wedding.
Alliance, political subterfuge, control over the mob.
Evelyne was a leverage. A symbol to bend into whatever shape the room required.
And that was the part Alaric couldn’t stomach—not the strategy, not even the opportunism, but the way they intended to use her.
To accomplish through doctrine what they couldn’t through diplomacy. To ritualize control.
He could see it clearly now—Ravik with his military chessboard, the High Preceptor with his riddles wrapped in scripture, Rhaedor playing the long game with iron courtesy. All of them treating the marriage as performance. But no one asked what happened when the curtain dropped.
Alaric swirled a signet on his finger with his thumb.
He had always known that ritual had more enduring power than steel. One could kill a man with a sword, but a symbol could make an empire outlive its kings.
A marriage as ritual. A bride as a symbol.
He couldn't let that pass unanswered.
To find something would mean everything.
Not just for Varantia, or the crown. For him.
He was clever, yes, but not exceptional.
Without magic, or at least without the means to restore it, he would be another ruler in a long line of rulers.
Another prince who smiled and signed treaties and was remembered for nothing at all.
The thought burned low in his chest, steady and consuming, like hunger that had forgotten it was hunger. It hollowed him, drove him.
But if he found something lost... if he was the one to return it?
They would need him.
Even if it devoured him in the process.
And what if you fail? What if you find nothing at all? What will be left of you then?
He smiled more when that thought came. Laughed louder. Masked it well.
But it was always there. A hairline crack, waiting.
Alaric was wary of the High Preceptor, as he was of most priests. There was always something fraying at the edges of men who spent too much time near divinity. But obsession, he’d learned, often stood just a step away from truth.
That alone was reason enough to dig deeper.
Something was brewing. He could feel it.
And he intended to find it first.