Orc’s Throne (The Veil Lands #6)

Chapter 1

ONE

FABLE

Ilean closer to the parchment, adjusting the enchanted crystal on my desk to cast more light across the cramped handwriting.

The blue glow makes my eyes ache—three hours past midnight, and I’ve been squinting at documents since dusk.

My back protests the hunched posture. My neck has forgotten what straight feels like. None of that matters.

King Morvak Flamebound, it reads across the top in the formal script of the royal physician. Cause of death: sudden illness of the blood. Date of passing: the fourteenth day of the Fire Moon, in the one hundred and seventeenth year of the Cindermaw’s blessing.

I’ve read this document countless times. I’ve memorized every curve of every letter, the way the ink pools at the ends of certain strokes, the particular flourish on the physician’s signature. It’s been the cornerstone of my investigation for six months.

Tonight, I’m not looking at this certificate. I’m looking at another one.

A land deed, filed the same week the king died. Routine paperwork—the transfer of a minor estate from one noble house to another. Nobody would ever compare these two documents. Nobody would have any reason to.

Nobody except an archivist with too much time and too little self-preservation.

The physician’s signature on the land deed is different.

Not dramatically different. Not the kind of forgery that screams its own falseness.

The slopes of the letters match. The proportions are correct.

But the pressure is wrong. The hand that signed the king’s death certificate pressed harder on the downstrokes, hesitated longer on the curves.

The hand that signed the land deed—three days before the king’s supposed illness even began—moved with a casual confidence that comes from genuine muscle memory.

The genuine signature. The suspicious one.

I can see the difference now, clear as the crystal light that illuminates my cramped workspace—but seeing a difference is not the same as understanding it.

Pressure variance, ink pooling, a moment’s hesitation.

These are patterns, not proof. A trembling hand could explain it. A different quill. A different day.

This is a thread. Just a thread. Follow it.

They’ve been destroying evidence.

The thought isn’t new. I’ve suspected it for months, ever since I noticed the gaps in the succession records—whole years that should be thick with paperwork reduced to a handful of surviving documents.

There is one other folder I have not yet resolved: a collection of treaty revisions, eight separate amendments compressed into twelve years, every signature on the covering documents belonging to the same Regent.

I have set it aside three times, telling myself the clustering is administrative routine.

Each time, something makes me hesitate before putting it away.

But suspicion and proof are different animals. Suspicion keeps you looking. Proof gets you killed.

The stone beneath my boots is cool—cooler than anywhere else in the Keep, a quirk of the ancient lava flow this wing was carved from.

Older rock, more time to shed its heat. I’ve grown to appreciate that coolness over two years of working here.

In a citadel that breathes sulfur and radiates warmth from volcanic foundations, this corner of the archives feels almost comfortable.

Almost safe.

Safe is an illusion. You’ve never been safe here.

I pull another box toward me—correspondence from the week of the king’s death. Letters of condolence, mostly. Expressions of shock and grief from noble houses across the kingdom. I’ve read them all before. I’m not looking for sympathy.

I’m looking for the letter that doesn’t belong.

The Flamebound kings kept meticulous records. Treaties, land grants, birth announcements, death proclamations. The history of seventeen generations, preserved in ink and parchment.

Most of it legitimate. Most of it accurate.

But not all.

It takes me forty minutes to find it. A note from the court physician to the head of the healers’ guild, requesting additional supplies. Routine. Boring. The kind of administrative minutiae that nobody reads twice.

Except the note is dated the eleventh day of the Fire Moon.

Three days before the king died.

Three days before anyone knew he was sick.

My hands go still on the parchment. I read the date again. Then again. The numbers don’t change. The eleventh. The supplies were requested on the eleventh.

The supplies requested are specific: silverleaf root, pale lotus extract, charcoal powder. I’m not a healer, but I’ve read enough medical texts to recognize what those ingredients treat.

Poisoning. They treat poisoning.

The physician knew. He knew three days in advance that someone would need treatment for poison. Which means either he could see the future, or he knew the poisoning was going to happen.

My hands shake as I copy the information into my notebook. The words blur. I blink hard, force my vision to clear. This isn’t the time for weakness. This isn’t the time for anything except precision.

The quill scratches against the page. Each stroke feels dangerous. Each word I write is another chain linking me to knowledge that could get me killed. I write anyway. I’ve spent two years in these archives. I’ve learned to swallow fear and keep working.

You’re in over your head.

Alone in a foreign court, surrounded by creatures who could snap my spine without breaking stride, investigating a murder that powerful people have spent three years covering up.

I stand, stretching muscles that have forgotten how to move. My joints pop in the silence. The sound seems obscenely loud. I freeze, listening, but the archives remain still. Just me and the dead kings’ secrets.

The oldest section of the archives lies beyond a brass gate that’s supposed to be locked. The lock has been broken for six months—I know because I’m the one who broke it. Carefully, methodically, with a hairpin and a prayer to whatever god watches over reckless scholars.

The gate swings open without a sound. I’ve been oiling the hinges weekly.

I’ve found dozens of contradictions.

Tonight, I’m looking for something specific.

The witnesses listed on Morvak’s death record are wrong.

Not forged—that would be too easy. The names are real.

The positions are accurate. But the order is wrong.

Every other Flamebound burial entry lists witnesses by rank, highest to lowest. It’s a tradition older than the Keep itself—a way of establishing legitimacy, proving that the proper authorities were present when a king breathed his last.

Morvak’s record lists the witnesses alphabetically.

Someone who knew the court but didn’t know the traditions. Someone who was forging quickly, under pressure, and made a mistake they thought no one would notice.

Sloppy. Careless. Arrogant.

The pattern is becoming harder to dismiss.

I pull the death record from its shelf, handling it with the careful reverence every archivist learns to cultivate. Old parchment crumbles at the edges. Old ink fades under harsh light. Old secrets fight to stay buried.

This one isn’t going to stay buried much longer.

I’m photographing the document in my mind—every word, every stroke, every imperfection—when I notice something wrong with the box it came from.

Too shallow.

I’ve handled hundreds of these archive boxes. I know their dimensions intimately. This one is the right length, the right width, but the interior depth is off by nearly two inches.

False bottom.

My pulse spikes. The cool air of the archives suddenly feels insufficient. My fingers find the edge of the false panel, work at it carefully. The wood is old, warped by centuries of volcanic heat. It resists. I resist back.

The panel pops free.

Beneath it lies a single document, crumpled and discarded, shoved into hiding by someone who wanted to destroy it but couldn’t quite bring themselves to burn it.

A draft. An early version of King Morvak’s death certificate.

I lift it with trembling hands. Smooth the creases. Hold it close, letting the pale light fall across the faded ink.

I read the cause of death.

Trauma to the throat consistent with strangulation.

The words swim before my eyes. My breath comes too fast. My pulse roars in my ears, drowning out the silence. The parchment shakes in my grip—or maybe that’s just my hands, trembling with the magnitude of what I’ve found.

They killed him.

They strangled the king and called it illness.

They forged the records and thought no one would ever know.

I’m holding proof of regicide in my trembling hands.

For a long moment, I can’t move. Can’t think.

Can’t do anything except stare at the words that shatter every official account.

Two years of investigation, hundreds of documents analyzed, a thousand small inconsistencies catalogued and compared—all of it leading here.

To this moment. To this crumpled piece of parchment that proves the Regent Triumvirate are murderers.

The word echoes in my skull. Murderers. Three of them, sitting in the king’s hall, ruling the king’s kingdom, wearing the king’s authority. And all of it built on blood.

Now what?

The question cuts through my paralysis. I force my lungs to slow. Force my hands to steady. I’m a scholar, damn it. I’ve faced Guildmaster Veth’s censure, hostile academics, an entire institution that decided I needed silencing. A piece of evidence—no matter how explosive—is just information.

Information needs to be used.

I slide the draft into the inner pocket of my robes, pressing it flat against my chest. The paper crinkles softly—a death sentence folded against my heart. The evidence needs to be preserved. Copied. Hidden in multiple locations so that even if they find one cache, the truth survives.

But that’s just the beginning.