Chapter 39
They’d crouched in that gods-cursed corridor for hours the night before. Cold stone under his boots, darkness so thick he was sure he’d inhaled some of it. After they’d crept out, he’d lain in bed, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling like it might have answers. It did not.
Because Cedric had seen magic.
Real magic. None of the illusionist nonsense peddled at taverns or sleight-of-hand charms sold by snake oil merchants in the eastern markets. No, this had been different. Powerful, ancient and took its price from somewhere beneath the ground.
Which was a delightful thing to witness right before bed.
Now, running on the kind of sleep deprivation that made statues look spry, he stood like a particularly tense potted plant by the wall of the royal breakfast room. The morning light cut sharp across the silverware. Somewhere next to him, a servant coughed into the hush of clinking cutlery.
The king was eating. Evelyne was slicing her fruit with surgical precision. Alaric looked as if he’d just woken from a ten-hour nap on a cloud made of compliments, if it weren’t for the fact that he was staring at the princess like she was a fuse and he was waiting for the spark.
Always impatient. He wanted all the answers, and he wanted them yesterday.
His obsession with magic had once been an academic curiosity, but over the years it had fermented into something else.
Some kind of hunger. He saw patterns in everything: scrollwork, swordplay, the spacing of stars, the shape of someone's grief.
The worst part? He was rarely wrong.
Still, he was Cedric. And he had no intention of feeding that already well-fed obsession.
Alaric was doing just fine spiraling all on his own.
Now Cedric was too busy trying to catch Vesena’s eye without openly waving his arms. He was also very busy holding back his tears when someone mentioned that he felt an earthquake during the night.
Fifteen minutes. That’s how long he’d been silently willing her to look at him. He was two blinks away from having them dislodge entirely and roll onto the parquet.
Finally, finally, Vesena noticed. She made some quiet gesture to the princess, then moved to his side. Her expression, he was relieved to see, mirrored his own: tired, tight-lipped, and ever so slightly on the edge of panic.
“What is it?” she murmured, her tone clipped.
Cedric leaned in just enough to avoid royal eavesdropping. “We found something.”
She tilted her head slightly. “You too?”
“I see we weren’t the only ones having a fun evening of creeping through forbidden spaces. What did you find?”
Vesena cast a glance toward the others, then replied, quick and quiet. “We found a report in Ravik’s office. It mentions another incident. A similar massacre—before Dasmon. Covered up.”
Cedric blinked. “Well, that’s lovely.”
He leaned in further, lowering his voice until it was barely a breath. “We found a hidden ritual chamber. Deep under the chapel. There was a stone altar, a mysterious symbol made of a circle and three lines. And three people met there. Passed a message. And then—”
He paused.
He wasn’t sure how to say it without sounding mad.
“We saw magic.”
Vesena gasped so hard she looked like she might choke on the tension. Her mouth fell open. She stared at him like he’d announced he was pregnant with the god Orvath’s child.
He frowned at her, deadpan. “Close your mouth or you’ll catch a fly.”
She snapped it shut.
Breakfast, meanwhile, continued as if no one else at the table was sitting on top of a sacrificial conspiracy.
Vesena huffed beside him, the sound very nearly a laugh if she’d had more sleep or patience left in her.
She glanced toward the royal table with him, their gazes settling on the carefully neutral silhouettes of Evelyne and Alaric, sitting opposite each otherlike two beautiful statues sculpted by entirely different artists.
“They act like children,” she muttered. “And neither of them will ever admit they need the other.”
Cedric sighed dramatically. “Don’t even get me started. I swear, if I have to listen to one more of their charged silences, I might throw them into a closet and lock the door until they either kiss or stab each other. Whichever comes first.”
Vesena tilted her head thoughtfully. “That’s not such a stupid idea.”
His brows lifted. “Wait—what?”
“You’re not the only one tired of their brinkmanship,” she muttered.
Cedric lingered a moment longer eyeing Vesena.
Her gaze was fixed somewhere just beyond the window on the other side of the room—as if she was trying to rearrange the entire castle in her mind.
He’d learned early that when Vesena looked like she was staring at nothing, it usually meant she was solving everything.
Alaric set down his fork with a sigh.
Cedric took that as his cue. He moved to collect the plates. Stacking the dishes with one hand and lifting the tray with the other, he turned toward the kitchen corridor, offering a half-nod to Vesena on his way out.
He didn’t get far.
Grand Marshal Ravik was standing near the archway, arms behind his back like he was supervising the air. Cedric clocked him too late. The man turned as Cedric approached, and something about the shift in his posture said interception.
“You’re the prince’s servant, right?” Ravik asked, the words flat.
Cedric narrowed his eyes, not bothering to hide it.
“Yes,” he said, the syllable short and clipped. “And you’re the one who breathes too loud in council meetings. We all have our burdens.”
There were maybe four people in this castle Cedric gave genuine deference to: Alaric, the empress-to-be, the cook on meat day, and Vesena. Ravik was not, and would never be, on that list.
Ravik didn’t answer right away. He simply looked at Cedric.
And Cedric held it. He stood, tray in hand, weight balanced lazily on one hip, returning the look with the bland expression of someone entirely unimpressed with the conversation.
“Tell me,” Ravik began, voice low and clipped, “what was the journey from Varantia like?”
Small talk. Seriously?
Cedric blinked. “Long. Dusty. Too many rivers, not enough bridges.”
Ravik didn’t flinch. “And the prince?”
Cedric tilted his head slightly. “He has a better horse than I do.”
“And he’s adjusting well?”
“To the horses?”
“To Edrathen.”
Cedric offered a lazy shrug. “He’s still breathing.”
Ravik’s mouth twitched, but not into a smile.
He’s investigating me, Cedric realized. Or at least poking for cracks.
Which was fine. Sometimes letting a man ask the questions was more informative than anything you could say aloud.
“Interesting,” Ravik acknowledged after a pause, stepping slightly closer. “That the prince arrived alone. No Empress. No Emperor. No royal retinue of note.”
Cedric’s jaw twitched, just slightly. “The royal couple is very busy,” he uttered evenly.
“The old emperor, however, is not. Lucien Soleranos has been absent from court for some time, hasn’t he?”
“He’s traveling,” Cedric replied.
“Ah,” Ravik hummed. “And travel, it seems, is more important than the wedding of his grandson. I was told the Soleranos family values its blood ties. Fiercely.”
“Is there a point in there, or are we just reminiscing about absentee monarchs?”
Ravik tilted his head, and for the first time, Cedric saw the glint of something colder behind his eyes—not disdain, exactly. Suspicion.
Yes, Alaric had come alone. Yes, it looked strange.
But there were reasons. War clouds were gathering on the Vaelmont-Kaer’Vosh border.
The engagement had been sudden. There had been no time to mount the parade of protocol.
Someone had to hold Varantia’s center while its crown prince marched to foreign soil and married into steel and silence.
But Ravik wasn’t interested in the reasons.
“I find it interesting. Imagine my position,” he began, voice still calm.
“The Princess of Edrathen is engaged to a very powerful man. Heir to the Dvorenic house—the bloodline that manages the royal treasuries of half the continent.” He paced a slow step, as if the thought had just occurred to him.
“And then, on the day of the wedding, tragedy strikes. Everyone in the chapel dies. The ceremony never happens. The family is gone. The girl survives—but now she is marked. A princess without a husband. And what does the court do? It offers. And offers. And every kingdom, one by one, politely declines. No one wants the curse.”
Ravik turned slightly. “And then,” he recounted, quiet now, almost reflective, “a single kingdom steps forward. Eager. Willing. Enthusiastic, even.”
His eyes met Cedric’s.
“Coincidence?”
Cedric’s jaw tightened. “What exactly are you insinuating, Marshal?”
Ravik’s smile was faint. Too faint.
“I’m not insinuating anything,” he assured.
“I’m merely observing how very… convenient it is that Varantia took advantage of such an opportunity.
A marriage to Edrathen—militarily unmatched, strategically placed, and rich in ore and discipline.
” He tilted his head slightly. “Especially now, with tensions rising along the Kaer’Vosh border. ”
The insinuation hit like a slap. Is he suggesting that Varantia had orchestrated the Maroon Slaughter? That they’d eliminated the Dvorenic family to create the vacuum and to push Edrathen into desperation?
He could hear the blood rushing in his ears.
It was absurd. Insulting. And, in the most dangerous way possible. “Careful,” Cedric warned, his tone no longer pretending at politeness. “If you keep thinking like that, Marshal, you’ll start believing your own fiction.”
“Fiction becomes policy more often than you think.”
Which, Cedric thought bitterly, was Edrathen’s favorite sport.
He smiled, but it was the tight, wolfish kind. “Funny,” he said. “I didn’t realize Edrathen was in the habit of accusing allies in the middle of wedding preparations. Does the king know, or is this just your own personal brand of hospitality?”
Ravik’s expression didn’t shift. Of course it didn’t. Stone walls flinched more often than the Marshal of Edrathen. Cedric took a breath, swallowing the next ten insults that begged for daylight.
“I should go,” he said instead. “Some of us have actual work to do.”
He stepped to the side, but Ravik’s voice followed.
“Where are you from, boy?”
Cedric stopped, back stiffening. He turned his head slightly, keeping the tray balanced in his hands.
“Varantia,” he replied.
“And your family?”
That gave him pause.
“I don’t know,” he raised his brow. “I was raised in an orphanage.”
He said it flatly, but the old ache licked up his spine all the same.
Ravik was quiet for a moment. Then came the hum—thoughtful, judgmental, just shy of patronizing. “I see,” he acknowledged, lips barely moving. “You’re loyal. That’s clear.”
Cedric didn’t reply. He was already halfway done with this conversation and halfway planning Ravik’s slow, metaphorical undoing.
“But be careful,” Ravik continued. “Loyalty is admirable. Until it’s forced.”
Cedric stared at him, letting the weight of the words land, sit, and curdle.
Then he nodded once, mock-courteous. “Thanks for the wisdom, Marshal. I’ll be sure to embroider it on a pillow.”
He turned and walked away before he said something that would get him arrested.