47. Chapter 47
AMARIA
The great hall was half-empty at midday.
Long tables stretched across the vaulted room, most of them occupied by minor nobles and visiting dignitaries picking at their lunch.
The clatter of silverware echoed off the stone walls.
Servants moved between tables with platters of food, refilling goblets, clearing plates.
Nobody paid attention to the grey-clad prisoner and her companions tucked into a corner table near the windows.
That was the advantage of eating with the masses. We were beneath notice.
At the far end of the hall, the King held court at his own table—elevated slightly, draped in cloth-of-gold, laden with food that looked nothing like ours.
Silver towers of pastries. Glazed tarts.
Delicate confections dusted with powdered sugar.
A feast meant to remind everyone exactly who ruled here.
I pushed a grape around my plate, my appetite long gone. Serenya sat across from me, the Codex propped against a water pitcher, though she hadn't turned a page in ten minutes. Her gaze had drifted toward the King's table, fixed on something with longing.
The lemon tarts. Golden crusts, piled high with pale yellow filling, dotted with candied citrus.
"Five years," she murmured, almost to herself. "It's been five years since I've had a lemon tart."
Maxx's eyes sharpened—tracking from Serenya's wistful expression to the King's table, to the tower of golden pastries gleaming under the chandeliers.
His lips curled. That look. I knew that look.
"Maxx," I warned.
"Hmm?" Pure innocence. Already back to watching the room, boot propped on the bench, the picture of casual disinterest.
But his eyes had that glint. The one that meant trouble.
"I've been thinking," I said.
"Dangerous," Maxx muttered.
The princess's ridiculous dog chose that moment to trot through the main doors, ears perked, scanning the hall with single-minded determination. It spotted Dreadscale and made a beeline for his boots, tail wagging so hard its entire body wiggled.
Dreadscale didn't look down.
I ignored them both. "The Veil sickness. The glitches. They've been getting worse for months."
I leaned forward, the theory I'd been circling for days finally taking shape. "What if it's me? What if my presence—my power—is what's poisoning everything?"
Silence.
"Amaria—"
"Think about it." The words came faster now.
"Ever since I got here, I've had Suppressors on me constantly.
My Marks are dampened. My power is... contained.
" I swallowed. "And the King's miracle worked.
The healing ceremony actually worked. What if that's not only because of Vivienne's mark?
What if it's because I'm finally being suppressed? "
Serenya's pen had stopped moving. "You think you're the source of the sickness?"
"I think I might be tied to it. Somehow.
" I scrubbed my hands over my face and sighed.
"In the basin, during the ritual—Kaelen said my power was connected to the Veil.
That I could feel it because part of me was in it.
What if that connection goes both ways? What if every time I use my Marks, I'm making it worse? "
The dog yipped and pawed at Dreadscale's ankle, attempting to scale his boot like a very small mountaineer conquering a very large cliff.
Dreadscale continued staring at me, unmoved. The dog slid back down.
"That's a theory," Maxx said carefully. "A very self-flagellating theory. What do you want to do about it?"
I looked at him. "You don't have a Suppressor following you."
His eyebrows rose.
"You can still glamour. Still move around the palace without a shadow ten feet behind you." I straightened. "I need you to do some reconnaissance."
Maxx was already nodding, that familiar gleam in his eye—the one that meant he was calculating angles, possibilities, escape routes.
"What kind of reconnaissance?"
"Talk to the servants. The ones who've been here longest." I ticked off points on my fingers.
"Find out if the Veil glitches have decreased since I arrived.
Since I've been suppressed. See if the 'miracle sites'—the places they've done public healings—are actually staying healed, or if the rot is creeping back. "
"You want me to prove you're the villain," he said flatly.
"I want the truth," I ground out. "If I'm the reason people are dying—if my power is the poison—I need to know. I can't fight something I don't understand."
Serenya closed the Codex. "And if you're right? If you are the source?"
Then maybe the King was right all along. Maybe suppressing me—severing the bond—is the only way to save everyone.
"Then at least I'll know," I said quietly. "At least I'll stop looking for enemies and start looking at myself."
Maxx opened his mouth to respond, but across the hall, servants emerged from the kitchens carrying fresh platters.
They fanned out between the tables, depositing silver trays piled high with fruit—plums glistening with dew, peaches blushed pink and gold, grapes so purple they were nearly black.
One platter landed on the table beside ours.
Another at the far end of the hall. Another near the windows where a group of visiting nobles were laughing over their wine.
Serenya reached for a grape from our platter. "At least they feed us well."
She wasn't wrong. The fruit was piled high, glistening, perfect. The kind of abundance that felt obscene after everything we'd seen outside the palace walls.
Dreadscale sniffed the platter. Grunted. "No toxins I can detect."
"Helpful." Serenya popped the grape in her mouth. "Tastes fine to me."
I reached for a peach. The skin was velvet-soft, warm from the kitchens. I brought it to my lips—
And caught something out of the corner of my eye.
A flicker. Like heat shimmer off summer stone. The peach in my hand wavered, its golden skin blinking, stuttering—
Glamour.
I turned to look for my Suppressor. He had drifted closer than usual, distracted by conversation with a nearby guard. The dampening field pulsed, and wherever its edge touched the platter, the illusion failed.
The peach in my hand wasn't a peach.
It was grey. Shriveled. Covered in a fine fuzz of mold that made my stomach lurch. The smell hit a second later—rot, decay, something that had been dead for weeks masquerading as fresh fruit.
I dropped it.
"Don't eat that." My voice came out sharp. "Don't—Serenya, spit it out—"
She was already gagging, the half-chewed grape expelled into her palm. It sat there, blackened and oozing, nothing like the jewel-bright fruit it had appeared to be.
Dreadscale moved. In one motion, he swept the entire platter off the table. It crashed to the floor, silver clattering against stone, and where the fruit scattered, the glamour flickered and died.
Rot. All of it. Every perfect plum, every glistening grape. Decay dressed up in pretty magic and served on a silver platter.
The dog trotted over, sniffed the nearest blackened peach, and sneezed violently. It backed away, shaking its head, and retreated to the safety of Dreadscale's boots.
"What the hell," Serenya breathed, wiping her mouth. "What the hell—"
I stared at the ruined fruit. At the glamour still trying to reassert itself at the edges, where the Suppressor's field didn't reach.
"He's hiding it," I said slowly. "The King. He's glamouring the rot."
I looked at the window. At the perfect roses swaying in the garden below.
"What if the miracle sites aren't healing at all? What if he's just covering it up?"
Serenya shook her head slowly. "The garden ceremony—there were five Suppressors ringing that lawn. I counted. The dampening field would have shattered any glamour."
She was right. I'd felt it myself—that suffocating pressure from every direction, my Marks buried so deep I could barely breathe.
"And the public healing," she continued. "Thousands of people watching. The King wouldn't risk a glamour failing in front of the whole kingdom."
"So the miracles are real," I said. "But this—"
I gestured at the rotted fruit scattered across the floor.
"This is something else." Dreadscale's voice was low. "Smaller. Hidden."
The weight of it pressed down on all of us. Another secret. Another crack in the King's perfect facade.
Maxx stood, chair legs scraping softly over the marble. His face had changed—the easy grin gone, replaced by something sharp and focused. He looked at the rot on the floor, then at me.
"I'll add it to the list." He squeezed Serenya's shoulder on his way past, his hand lingering a beat longer than necessary.
I watched him disappear through the servants' entrance with a mixture of hope and dread.
The fear that he'd come back with proof that I was exactly what the King said I was—a rupture in the world that needed to be sealed.
And now, something worse—proof that the King's kingdom was rotting from the inside while he dressed it in pretty magic.
Serenya was still staring at the blackened grape in her palm. She set it down carefully, like it might bite.
I should have mentioned it then. About the ache pushing through the Suppressor's field—distant and persistent on my Griefweaver. Pain that wasn't mine, pulsing from somewhere below. A pain that held a familiar imprint.
The Hunter.
But Serenya looked exhausted and Dreadscale's patience was fraying by the hour.
The ache pulsed once more, then faded. I turned back to my cold food and pretended I couldn't feel the Hunter breaking somewhere below us in the dungeons.
Nestled at Dreadscale's feet, the dog let out a small snore, utterly unbothered by the end of the world.