CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Rebel’s Truth
LUCIAN
There are few situations in which a king expects to spend dawn hiding in an abandoned tannery with a rebel commander, an assassin, his furious sister, and a man named Darius who keeps asking whether anyone wants breakfast.
Yet there we were.
The quarry attack made the palace unsafe. Temple guards controlled the north district, and council riders had already begun spreading word that I had abducted Malrec. Returning openly would give the High Seer exactly the spectacle he wanted.
So Elias led us to a rebel safehouse beneath an old tannery near the river.
The place smelled terrible enough to discourage investigation.
“That,” Darius said, covering his nose, “may be your finest military strategy.”
Elias glared. “You’re free to sleep in the street.”
“Excellent. I like you already.”
Nyra sat on a crate while Seraphine cleaned the cut on her lip. My sister had survived three assassination attempts in her life and considered each one a personal insult.
“I want Malrec’s head,” she said.
“Take a number,” Seraphine replied.
The ease between them should have concerned me.
Instead it felt oddly right.
Elias spread a bundle of stolen documents across a table.
“I took these from a transport six months ago,” he said. “Moon clergy moving records east.”
Most were coded requisitions. Grain. Iron. Blue myrrh. Wolfsbane.
Then I saw a name.
Rorik.
The general who had commanded Ashen Vale.
I pulled the page closer.
Payment authorized by M.A., one week before the purge.
“Malrec Ardyn,” Seraphine said behind me.
Elias’s expression became stone.
Another document referred to “Vale resistance” before my father had even issued the suppression order.
I read it twice.
“This was planned before the royal council knew there was an uprising.”
“There was no uprising,” Seraphine said.
Elias gave a bitter laugh. “There was dissent. Father organized petitions against the Edict. He wanted Moonmarked families registered as citizens, not blood threats.”
Seraphine looked at him. “You knew?”
“I knew he was meeting people. I didn’t know why until later.”
He pulled out a thin leather journal.
Our father’s handwriting, Seraphine said before she even touched it.
She sat.
The room quieted.
The first pages were ordinary: harvest notes, pack disputes, a list of repairs needed at the meeting hall. Then the tone changed.
Malrec came again. He says the king will never permit repeal. He says sacred order requires fear.
Seraphine’s fingers trembled slightly.
She turned the page.
I do not believe Aldric understands what Ardyn intends. The prince may be different. Too young, perhaps, but he watched the tribunal today as though he hated every word.
My breath caught.
Seraphine looked at me.
I remembered a tribunal at nineteen. Three Moonmarked prisoners brought before my father. Malrec had demanded execution. I had argued for exile and been struck in private for embarrassing the crown.
Her father had been there.
She continued.
If anything happens to me, the original words are not ruin. The oldest copy in Selene Temple says release. Ardyn knows.
No one spoke.
Darius swore quietly.
Elias closed his eyes.
“Malrec killed him,” Seraphine whispered.
“His archers did,” Elias said. “Rorik’s men. Malrec paid them before the purge.”
She looked at me, grief opening through the bond.
I wanted to cross the room.
I did not know whether she wanted me to.
Then she held out her hand.
The choice nearly undid me.
I took it.
Elias saw.
His jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
I read the next pages.
Her father had believed the Edict hid something beneath the royal consecration ritual. “The crown of blood,” he called it. A force binding every Veyr heir to a moonstone beneath the throne.
I touched the scar over my heart.
At sixteen, Malrec had told me the ritual connected the king to the realm.
Perhaps it connected us to something else.
“Selene Temple,” I said. “Where is it?”
“Ruins north of the Veiled Forest,” Elias replied. “No road left.”
Seraphine traced the journal line. “If the oldest copy is there, we can prove the Edict was changed.”
“Assuming Malrec hasn’t destroyed it,” Nyra said.
“He would if he knew Father wrote this,” Elias said.
“Does he?”
“I stole the journal from Rorik’s private effects after escaping the labor camp. As far as I know, Malrec never saw it.”
A knock sounded at the cellar door.
Three short. Two long.
Elias drew a blade.
A rebel scout entered, breathing hard.
“The palace council met before sunrise,” he said.
I already knew I would dislike the next sentence.
“They’ve declared the king compromised by forbidden magic.”
Nyra stood. “On whose authority?”
“Councilor Voss, backed by the moon clergy. They say until the tribunal resolves the corruption, Lord Severin Veyr will serve as Regent.”
My cousin.
A man whose greatest political achievement was surviving every side of every argument.
“Severin accepted?” I asked.
The scout nodded.
Of course he did.
Darius leaned against the wall. “So we’re homeless.”
“I own the palace,” I said.
“Your cousin currently disagrees.”
Seraphine looked at the journal, then at me.
“We go to Selene.”
Elias shook his head. “You leave now, Malrec takes the capital.”
“If we stay, we fight a war with no proof.”
“He already declared war.”
“No,” I said. “He declared me unfit. There is still a difference.”
Elias scoffed. “Kings and their definitions.”
I met his stare. “If I march royal loyalists into the city today, people die believing they are defending sacred law. If I return with proof the law is false, Malrec loses the story he built his power on.”
“And if proof changes nothing?”
“Then we fight.”
Seraphine’s fingers tightened around mine.
Elias looked at our joined hands again.
“You really mean to keep her.”
The wording stirred my wolf.
Seraphine’s eyes flashed before I could answer.
“No one keeps me.”
Elias lifted both hands. “Poor choice of words.”
“Catastrophic,” Nyra agreed.
I looked at Seraphine.
“I mean to choose her,” I said. “If she keeps choosing me.”
The room went quiet.
Her expression softened just enough to be dangerous.
Elias turned away with a muttered curse.
Darius grinned.
Nyra whispered, “Finally.”
I decided exile might improve all of them.