Chapter 54
The castle had returned to normal. Or at least, the performance of it.
Preparations for the wedding surged forward with renewed intensity, as if bouquets and seating charts could erase blood on the stones.
The ceremony would proceed as planned. The investigation, interrogations and executions. .. all neatly shelved for later.
Evelyne noticed the changes immediately. The guards, already doubled, had doubled again. What she did not see were the Eclipsants of the Celestial Assembly.
Not a single white-robed sentinel with stitched lips.
From what she’d been told the High Preceptor had been questioned.
His chambers searched. He had been cleared of direct suspicion, though ‘cleared’ was a generous word.
Guarded now, constantly, and conveniently present.
His story matched Ravik’s: he had not interfered.
Had, in fact, allowed the search beneath the chapel.
So yes. They were clean. But not free.
And that, Evelyne could live with—for now.
Isildeth didn’t speak since they left the solar.
Not a single word. She worked with her usual calm, chin high, but Evelyne could see the crack beneath it.
Evelyne didn’t know what to say. The apology forming on her tongue felt too small and entirely unworthy of the woman beside her.
Isildeth had wanted this transition and now it was slipping through her hands like ash.
She’d spoken to Ysara again. Thalen was too sharp for his own good—always watching, always following threads. If he kept tugging at the wrong ones, someone would notice. Someone dangerous. Evelyne had told her to keep an eye on him. It was the only precaution she could still take.
She also found Vesena and Cedric before the evening bell.
She apologized, but Vesena had simply inclined her head and said, “I follow you, not permission.” And Cedric, predictably, waved her off with a dry, “One day you’ll apologize for dragging me into something dull.
Until then, I’ll assume we’re even, Your Highness. ”
Still, guilt coiled in her gut like smoke.
She veered from the main corridor and took the familiar side passage. Past the locked now entirely Hall of Seals, straight into the shrine of Rhyssa. The place was mostly empty. Light poured through the circular skylight above, soft and golden.
She saw them before she was seen—two figures near the altar. Halwen stood with his back straight, hands clasped behind him. Across from him, the High Preceptor of Orvath loomed with the displeasure of a storm cloud.
They weren’t praying.
She hadn’t caught the beginning of their exchange. Only the rising tension that curled through the air like smoke.
The High Preceptor stood tall and glacial. Halwen, by contrast, looked more alive than Evelyne had ever seen him—face drawn but lit from within by something fierce. She strained to listen. A few words floated through the haze.
“…not your jurisdiction…”
“…he wants her divine…”
“…be careful what you stir…”
The rest was lost in the echo of footsteps and shifting robes. Then the High Preceptor stepped back noticing her lingering at the entrance. Halwen bowed his head once.
Evelyne's heart beat harder.
A breeze stirred through the braziers—and with it, her cloak shifted, the embroidered hem brushing too loudly against the stone. The High Preceptor moved toward the exit; his gait was smooth. When he passed by her, he didn’t stop. But he looked at her.
Just once.
His gaze landed with the weight of cold iron, and Evelyne could swear time slowed.
And then he was gone.
Only when the great doors hissed shut behind him did she step fully into the shrine. Halwen stood alone now, framed by the light. His warm, weathered face turned toward her the moment she stepped inside, the lines around his eyes creasing not with welcome, but worry.
“Your Highness,” he greeted gently. “You should be at your chambers. It’s unwise to wander the halls like this.”
Evelyne gestured behind her. “I have a large escort.” Four guards, silent as shadows, took their positions at the entrance. “Is everything alright?”
“Yes, don’t bother your mind. Come in.”
Evelyne didn’t believe it, just like most of the things she heard in last few days.
They sat together on the first bench—the one with the best view of Rhyssa’s statue. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Evelyne said, without softening, “Did you know anything?”
She didn’t explain what she meant. She didn’t need to.
Halwen didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He exhaled slowly, folding his hands over his lap. “No,” he admitted at last. “We and the followers of Orvath… aren’t exactly on trusting terms. There are walls, Your Highness. And we’ve learned not to lean against them.”
Evelyne let the silence spool out. What had they been speaking of? She doubted the High Preceptor had ever set foot here before. Unless, of course, it was only her frayed, sleepless mind, stitching conspiracies into shadows where none existed.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” she murmured finally, “that there are hidden tunnels beneath the castle, or that no one is surprised.”
Halwen gave a soft hum. “Old places collect secrets. Just as they collect dust. And your castle…” He looked up toward the opening in the ceiling. “Your castle is ancient enough to be a library of them.”
Again. Exactly what Alaric said.
She faced him. “And where do I file this one, Keeper?”
He studied her for a moment. His eyes had always reminded her of the riverglass windows—faintly blue, faintly tired. “Perhaps under survival,” he said gently. “Sometimes we don’t get the luxury of choosing what our chapters are called.”
“I still want to believe we’re the ones writing the ending.”
“You are,” he replied. “But the ink is running, and you don’t have a clean page.”
Evelyne looked down at her gloved hands.
“Do you think I’m ready?” she asked quietly.
Her voice caught on the word. Ready. As if that meant anything. As if any of this could be prepared for.
“No one is,” Halwen answered. “But readiness is a fiction people cling to when they don’t know what else to believe. What you are, Princess, is willing. And willing women change history.”
She swallowed, the breath behind her ribs unsteady. Then turned her gaze again on Rhyssa’s marble expression, as if she could read prophecy in the unmoving lines of her lips.
“She’s always so calm,” she murmured. “Serene. Even when everything burns beneath her feet.”
Halwen’s smile was fain. “That’s the curse of being carved from stone, I imagine. You endure, but you don’t bend.”
He looked at her, gently. “You keep asking how to survive this,” he explained. “But maybe that’s not the question. Maybe the question is—what are you willing to lose to change it?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she tilted her head up toward the gap in the shrine, where a shaft of light spilled down over faded murals. Colors long dulled by dust, hints of a beauty that once had been. She found herself wondering what this place had looked like before.
Her fingers curled in her lap. The list lived behind her eyes, branded there like a birthmark. She could make sense of murder under the right circumstances. But a name on a list felt more ancient. Who had written it? Why had it ended with her?
It would’ve been easier not to know. Ignorance was lighter than this shadow of certainty. But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true. Knowledge burned, yes—but it illuminated.
But she wasn’t that Evelyne anymore.
“Do you believe in signs, Keeper?”
“Only when they persist. That’s when the gods are whispering.”
She nodded slowly, more to herself than to him. Whispers or not, the next move was hers. And she would not stand at that altar tomorrow with her eyes closed.
“Ysara spoke to you?” she asked, voice soft.
He inclined his head. “Yes. She sent instructions. Everything’s ready.”
“Thank you,” she smiled, though her eyes were already drifting past him.
Her hand drifted to the edge of the pew. She paused, nose wrinkling.
“It smells different.”
Halwen turned to her. “Ah. Yes. I didn’t light the milfoil today. It ran out, we have to collect and dry new ones.”
Evelyne let the silence close over the answer and did not press further. But she filed it away, like every other thread she couldn’t quite name—because if the gods were whispering, she needed to learn how to listen.