Chapter 20 #2
Above them, the ballroom’s vaulted ceiling glimmered with candlelight reflected off centuries-old frescoes. A thousand guests might have them, but Alaric’s gaze, as always, wandered up.
“What is that?” he asked. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Evelyne followed his line of sight without lifting her chin. “The Final Convergence. My grandfather had it restored. It spans the entire dome. It was painted around 600 Anno Aetherum.”
Painted figures danced across sky and stone.
Robed silhouettes caught mid-motion, paired with stags, cranes, wolves.
The scenes were dynamic, almost impossibly fluid, the layers of light and shadow creating the illusion of movement: sun and moon intertwined, hands cupping constellations, the ground blooming beneath their feet.
He studied it. “A Varantian scholar would call that magic.”
“A Varantian scholar would call a thunderstorm a divine rebuke if it suited his thesis,” she replied.
His lips quirked. “Touché.”
“It’s interpretation,” she added, watching the ceiling with him. “It represents the moment humanity found its balance. One of the few frescoes still allowed to remain here.”
He glanced sidelong at her. “You don’t think it looks a touch literal? People dancing with wolves, walking between phases of the moon...”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting,” he said, tone mock-wounded. “I’m listening. It just looks like art stripped of meaning. And I’m wondering how many other metaphors your kingdom has gilded onto its ceilings.”
Evelyne arched a brow. “You’re enjoying this far too much.”
“I enjoy mystery,” he explained. “Especially when it’s dressed in blue and pretending it is not interested.”
Evelyne sighed. Quietly, more to herself than to him. She had no strength left to argue. He was his nosy self. With irritating politeness and even more irritating intelligence. And she clearly had to get used to it. At least enough to get through her life without exploding.
Alaric glanced back up at the dome. “You’ve really never wondered if there’s more to it?”
“No,” Evelyne replied, too quickly. Then, quieter: “Not the way you mean.”
He turned to her; brows lifted in surprise. “Why not? Isn’t it interesting?”
She gave him a look—flat, level, too tired to be sharp. “Because if you start pulling at one thread, you risk unraveling the whole tapestry. Some of us weren’t raised in courts that reward curiosity.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off gently.
“I was taught to read carefully. To memorize, not reinterpret.”
Over the years, she had sometimes thought she saw things she shouldn’t.
Small flickers where the paint had cracked, shapes that didn’t belong.
A hand with too many fingers. A glint of color that seemed too alive to be pigment.
Once, she had sworn one of the saints’ eyes followed her as she walked beneath it.
She shook her head lightly. “And the truth is that if you looked too closely, you’d see something you can’t unsee.”
Alaric was quiet for a beat.
She kept her eyes on the ceiling, but her focus blurred at the edges. She thought of the symbol in Ravik’s report. The silence in Calveran’s chapel. The strange flicker in the garden air when she’d said the word red.
Wonder was a dangerous thing. It had a way of slipping past armor, of making you ache for what was better left buried.
She had spent years learning to silence it, to press it down until it no longer stirred.
Yet even now, when she tried to smother it, something in her still reached for the past, restless and unquiet.
That part of her wanted to know what truly happened last year.
And to know why.
Her voice, when it came, was smooth again. Measured.
“It’s a cultural story. The imagery isn’t meant to be taken as spellwork.”
“Of course not,” he teased. “Because that would be heresy.”
She smiled almost fondly, “Let it go, Your Highness.”
Footsteps approached from behind. Evelyne turned just as her stepmother appeared, flanked by Thalen.
Ysara wore a gown of modest dove grey silk.
Silver thread shimmered along the cuffs and neckline in a pattern of nivalen leaves.
Thalen looked determinedly regal in a miniature version of his father’s formal attire: deep crimson doublet embroidered with the Tresselyn crest in gold, boots polished within an inch of their lives.
Ysara dipped into a graceful curtsy. “Your Highness,” she said to Alaric, offering him a polite nod. “Princess Evelyne.”
Alaric bowed low in return. “Lady Ysara.”
Thalen bowed as well—dramatically, with a flourish that nearly knocked into his mother. “Prince Alaric,” he intoned. “Sister.”
“Thalen,” Evelyne said with a warm smile.
Ysara offered a soft nod. “You both look well together.”
Evelyne inclined her head. “Thank you.”
“You look very pretty,” Thalen added solemnly, as if reciting a line he’d rehearsed. But before she could so much as arch a brow, he turned to Alaric and blurted, “Does this smell like a man of mystery?”
Alaric blinked, then—without missing a beat—leaned forward and gave the boy an exaggerated sniff. “Hm. Bit of leather. Bit of panic. Definitely intrigue.”
“Thalen,” Ysara chided gently, though she was clearly fighting a smile, “it’s not polite to ask foreign princes to sniff you.”
“On the contrary,” Alaric explained, placing a hand to his chest, “if a gentleman is concerned about his scent, there must be a reason.”
“A reason?” Evelyne asked, one brow lifting.
Thalen nodded seriously. “Yes. A lady. Obviously.”
Evelyne pressed her lips together, but the small laugh escaped anyway. Alaric looked utterly delighted.
Ysara gave a small, amused smile. “We were just on our way to join the king before the formal dance. He prefers an overall view of the hall… and of everyone in it.”
“Then he’ll be pleased,” Evelyne assured. “Everything is immaculate.”
Ysara looked at Evelyne, and for a moment, her gaze softened. “Enjoy your evening,” she said. Then after a beat, “Both of you.”
Evelyne returned it with a smile. “You as well.”
And with that, Ysara gently guided Thalen away, his voice already rising with excitement as he asked if there would be sugared almonds again this time—and how many were acceptable for a future king to consume in one evening.