Chapter 5 #2
“I think truth is the only thing that survives violence.” I step closer, closing the distance he created when he approached me.
“You can kill your way to the throne. Plenty of kings have. But what happens after? You’ll spend your entire reign watching your back, waiting for someone to do to you what you did to the Triumvirate.
Fear doesn’t create loyalty. It creates opportunity. ”
“And truth does?”
“Truth creates legitimacy.” I’m in his space now, close enough to see the pulse beating in his throat, to smell smoke and blood and something underneath that’s just him.
“The evidence I’ve found proves your father was murdered.
Proves the Regents are killers who seized power through assassination.
If you can prove that publicly—if you can make the court and the common folk see what really happened—”
“They’ll have to choose.” Something shifts in his expression. Hope, maybe. Or hunger. “Not between me and the Triumvirate. Between truth and lies.”
“And orcs hate liars.”
The words land. I watch something shift behind his eyes. He’s thinking now—not just reacting, not just planning the next violent move, but actually considering an alternative.
“You’d help me.” His voice is rough. “Knowing what I am. Knowing what I’m willing to do.”
“I’d help you become something better.” I hold his gaze, refusing to look away from whatever he might show me. “The question is whether you’re brave enough to try.”
The challenge hangs between us. For a moment, I think he’s going to argue. Going to dismiss me the way he probably dismisses everyone who challenges his methods.
His hand moves instead.
Slowly. Deliberately. Giving me time to pull away, to step back, to break whatever is building in this small chamber with its borrowed view of destruction.
His fingers rise toward my face. Every sensible thought says to step back—caring about someone in a place this dangerous is painting a target on both of us. The thoughts dissolve.
His fingers brush my cheekbone. Feather-light. The touch of someone who has forgotten how to be gentle and is trying to remember. His skin is rough—calloused from weapons, scarred from battles—but the pressure is achingly soft. As if he’s afraid I might shatter.
Heat pools where his fingertips rest. Spreads down my neck, across my shoulders, comes to rest somewhere behind my ribs.
I’ve been touched before—embraced by colleagues, kissed by suitors who never understood that my mind was more important to me than my body.
But no touch has ever felt like this. Electric.
Dangerous. The first brush of fire before the burn.
His thumb traces the line of my jaw. Slow. Exploratory. Learning the shape of my face the way I learned the shape of documents—with careful attention, with reverence for detail.
“You keep surprising me.” His voice has dropped to barely a murmur.
My heart kicks against my ribs. My breath catches somewhere between my lungs and my lips.
His mouth almost moves. Not quite a smile—I don’t think he remembers how to smile—but something adjacent. Something warm.
Shouting erupts below.
We break apart. Not because we choose to—because survival instincts override everything else, sending us both toward the window, toward the source of the sudden noise.
The market streets are filling again. Not with rioters this time—with guards. Organized formations, torches held high, armor glinting in the firelight. The Triumvirate’s response has finally arrived, sweeping through the chaos with brutal efficiency.
And at the head of one formation, unmistakable even from this distance, a massive figure leads the march. Bulky. Scarred. Moving with the particular confidence of someone who enjoys the violence he’s about to inflict.
Kreth.
“He’s heading toward the Keep.” Zorath’s voice has gone flat again. Cold. All the warmth from moments ago buried beneath strategic control. “Toward the archives.”
Ice floods my veins. The archives. My workspace. The documents I couldn’t carry, the evidence I was forced to leave behind when we fled.
“He knows.” The words scrape past numb lips. “He knows where I’ve been working.”
“He knows what you’ve been looking for.” Zorath’s hand closes around my elbow—not gentle now, urgent. “If he finds your workspace before we can secure the rest of the evidence—”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
The draft death certificate is still hidden against my chest, tucked into the inner pocket of my robes.
But the other documents—the signature comparisons, the pattern analysis, the falsified records I’ve been cataloguing for months—they’re still in the archives.
Still vulnerable. Still capable of being destroyed by a Regent who knows exactly what truth can cost him.
“We need to move.” Zorath is already pulling me toward the door. “There are faster routes through the lower levels. If we’re lucky—”
“Luck isn’t a strategy.”
The words stop him mid-stride. He turns, and I see the question in his expression—the demand for explanation that he’s too trained to speak aloud.
I pull free of his grip. Not roughly—just enough to establish that I’m not cargo to be dragged. “Kreth has a head start and knows the Keep better than either of us. Racing him to the archives is a losing proposition.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Not sarcasm—genuine inquiry. The prince asking the scholar for strategy.
“The evidence in my workspace is damning, but it’s not irreplaceable.
I have copies hidden in three other locations.
” I tap my temple—my grandmother’s gesture, one I’ve inherited without meaning to.
“And more importantly, I have this. Six languages, near-perfect recall, two years of documents memorized down to the ink patterns. Kreth can burn every piece of paper in those archives. He can’t burn what I know. ”
Zorath stares at me. For a long moment, he doesn’t speak—just looks at me as if weighing something he hasn’t named yet. Something between assessment and admiration and something else, something that makes my pulse stutter despite everything.
“You planned for this.”
“I planned for disaster. This qualifies.” I move toward the door, then pause. “The question is what we do with the time we have. If Kreth is destroying evidence, he’s not hunting us. We can use that.”
“How?”
“By getting the evidence that matters.” My hand touches the hidden pocket where the draft death certificate waits. “There’s more. Things I haven’t shown you yet. Things that change more than just your father’s murder.”
“What things?”
“Your mother.”
The word hits him like a physical blow. I watch his expression crack—just for a moment, just long enough to glimpse something vulnerable beneath the surface.
“What about my mother?”
The gentle approach would be to prepare him, to soften this, to give him time to brace. But gentleness isn’t what he needs right now. What he needs is the truth, delivered with the same unflinching precision I’ve applied to everything else.
“She didn’t die in a riding accident.” I hold his gaze, forcing myself not to look away from his pain. “I found letters. Her letters, to Juk. She discovered financial irregularities—money disappearing from the treasury, funneled somewhere the records don’t show. She threatened to expose him.”
His breath catches. I can see him doing the math—counting backward through years, connecting dots I’ve already connected. His hands have curled into fists at his sides, the knuckles going pale beneath green skin.
“Three days later, her horse ‘spooked.’” My voice is quiet. Hard. “Twelve years before they killed your father, they killed your mother. And they made it look like an accident because they’d learned from their mistake.”
“Mistake?”
“Your mother was careful. She kept copies of her evidence. If they’d just silenced her without knowing where those copies were, the truth might have surfaced anyway.
” I step closer, watching him process devastation he hasn’t had time to prepare for.
“She hid the originals somewhere they never found them. I found those hiding places, Zorath. I found her letters. And I can prove that the Triumvirate didn’t just kill your father—they’ve been assassinating your family for over a decade. ”
The silence that follows is absolute. No sounds from outside, no distant riot noise, no crackling flames. Just Zorath, standing frozen, his face set hard as stone while something inside him shatters.
I watch it happen. Watch the stone mask crack, watch grief flood through the fractures, watch him fight to contain something that refuses to be contained. His jaw works. His breath comes in short, sharp bursts. For one terrible moment, I think he might scream.
He doesn’t scream. He does something worse. His face hardens, every muscle locking down around the news I’ve just delivered. Then he turns toward the door—toward the corridor, toward whatever action will keep him from drowning in the grief I’ve just handed him.
“Show me.” His voice is barely recognizable. Rough. Broken. “Show me everything.”
Outside, the Triumvirate’s guards sweep through the market, restoring order with clubs and chains and the particular efficiency of people who don’t care how many bodies they leave behind.
And somewhere in the Keep, Regent Kreth marches toward my workspace, ready to destroy evidence of the first murder.
He doesn’t know there’s proof of two.