The wax cracked beneath Beatrice’s nail as she peeled open the ssage delivered straight from the capital. The sigil stamped into the red seal belonged to one of Lilian’s discreet agents, not to the Queen Dowager herself — which ant this was not official court communication.
Her eyes darted over the neat lines.
"Minister Calder has been contained for now. But House Velmora’s threads run deeper than expected. You are to keep watch on any correspondence Lucien receives. Especially if it concerns trade, troop movents, or... the girl."
She flipped the parchnt over. A second, smaller note slipped out. Unmarked. Almost carelessly tucked within the folds.
Liora’s na was written in a hand Beatrice recognized. It wasn’t Lilian’s.It was Alden’s.
Beatrice’s fingers froze.
Her chest rose with a silent breath. She sat down, the parchnt resting against her knees. For a mont, the estate’s silence weighed on her shoulders heavier than ever before. Lilian had asked her to observe , watch Liora. That had been the mission. Not to assist. Not to engage. Just to docunt.
But now?
Now the king was involved.
Beatrice stood and walked to the window. From this angle, she could see across the gardened inner courtyard where Liora had spent her early mornings. Quiet. Diligent. Still a mystery.
The girl had not once overstepped. She hadn’t acted like soone sent to seduce or spy. If anything, she moved with the cautious restraint of soone desperate not to be seen at all.
"A waste dumped at Lucien’s feet," Beatrice had once said in jest.
But she was beginning to doubt it.
Beatrice turned away from the window.
She needed answers , not just from Liora, but from the estate itself. If Alden’s hand was involved, if Lilian’s intentions went deeper than loyalty... then sothing far larger was moving beneath their feet.
"Rowan," she called as she stepped into the hallway.
The steward, always within earshot, appeared without delay.
"I want a full report on the girl’s arrival again. Not from the papers, but from the servants who saw her co in. Every detail. Who opened the gate? Who escorted her? What she brought. What she didn’t."
Rowan nodded once. "You suspect...?"
"I don’t suspect," she cut in, her tone sharp but not cruel. "I need to know if we’re sitting on fire."
As Rowan departed, Beatrice turned her eyes south toward the capital, where lines of power were beginning to shift. If Lucien had truly re-entered the court’s battlefield, then everything, even the smallest na whispered in ink, could tilt the kingdom’s balance.
Near the remote western woods, a healer nad Evanthia walked her goat past an abandoned chapel. The doors had been shut since the Eastern Rebellion. But today, she paused.
A sound. Faint. tallic.
She pushed the doors open.
Inside, beneath dust and old moss, soone had scratched a phrase into the altar stone.
"Find the girl who bleeds silver. She is the last one."
And beneath it, the sa vulture symbol.
Evanthia stepped back. She was no ordinary healer. She had once served the High Alchemists. This—this was sothing deeper than prophecy.
She returned to her hut and penned a ssage on mirrored parchnt, inked with blood and rcury. It would reach Beatrice, one of her few remaining contacts in the East.
"Tell again," Alden said slowly, pacing before the closed court doors, "how did this letter reach , without passing any hands, without any seal or crest?"
Mistress Veyra kept her eyes lowered. "Your Majesty, the Vulture is not a man, nor a house. It’s a network—ancient, self-funded, and untouchable. They don’t need gates or guards. They watch from the places we forget exist."
Alden turned, blue eyes sharp. "Do they serve Lilian?"
Veyra hesitated. That pause was telling.
"No. But they’ve worked with her. Before you were king."
The silence in the corridor thickened.
Inside the court, ministers and nobles began to gather. But outside, Alden no longer trusted any of them—not even his own brother, and certainly not High Minister Elric, who just arrived with his signature staff tapping on the stone.
The chamber buzzed with usual politics—border disputes, trade complaints, noble bickering—but Alden cut it short.
"Summon the map," he ordered.
A roll of deep velvet was unfurled onto the court table. The Western Territories, once peaceful, were marked in red ink.
"The people of Endewood have vanished," Elric stated calmly. "No bodies. Just smoke, ash, and a trail leading west."
"Bandits?" soone asked.
"No," Alden said, voice steely. "The Vulture’s mark was found carved into the mayor’s skin."
Gasps rippled through the room.
Elric frowned. "We cannot chase shadows. We have unrest in the eastern borders, Your Majesty. The rebels—"
"I said the court will focus here," Alden interrupted. "Because the threat is here."
Just then, a cloaked man entered quietly and stood in the back without ceremony,Rowan.
He bowed slightly. "My prince regrets his absence, but offers this."
He held out a sealed note. Alden waved Veyra forward to read it. Her brows knit as she whispered in the king’s ear.
"He says he’s found a survivor. Soone with mory loss, claiming knowledge of ’silver blood,’ hidden in his estate."
Alden didn’t speak.
He just stared at the flickering candle flas.
Beatrice studied the coded ssage from Evanthia under candlelight. Every curve of the letters was like a ghost from the past.
"She still lives," she whispered, folding the note with trembling fingers.
She rembered Evanthia’s experints, the tallic blood, and the way they tested newborns for traces of silver veins—bloodlines wiped out by the Queen Dowager herself decades ago.
Beatrice turned to the fire and fed the ssage to the flas.
She could not risk Lilian finding out.
Then she stood.
She needed to et with Rowan in secret—without Lucien knowing.
Later That Night in Liora’s Room
Liora woke with blood on her tongue. She’d bitten it again in her sleep. Her dreams were getting darker.
Tonight, she had seen a woman with silver lashes and black teeth whispering her na.
She pulled back her sleeve, and for a mont, under the candlelight, her veins shimred. Just faintly. Like rcury beneath skin.
She stared.
"Who am I really?" she whispered.
when Minister Elric was summoned to the king’s private chamber.
He bowed, his staff clinking against the obsidian floors. "You summoned , Your Majesty?"
Alden leaned by the window, gazing into the twilight horizon. "What do you know of House Varnest?"
The minister stiffened. "That house was burned to ash years ago."
"So ashes still breathe," Alden murmured. "And soone is trying to fan the fla."
Elric’s eyes flickered. "I see."
Alden turned to face him. "No, you don’t. But you will. Assign a shadow envoy. Let them whisper through the border towns. I want nas, symbols, and any trace of that bloodline."
"Yes, Your Majesty." Elric bowed again, but the mont he left the room, he scribbled a code on his palm and pressed it into the mouth of his silver serpent ring.
The ssage would reach the east by dawn.
Deep beneath the estate, below the cellars, below even the wine chambers—a secret room pulsed faintly in blue.
Rowan stood with arms crossed as Samuel dragged the girl forward.
She was no older than seventeen, gaunt, silent, and dazed. Her wrist bore an unusual mark—a jagged crescent moon carved into her flesh.
"She hasn’t spoken," Samuel muttered. "But she recognizes Lucien’s na."
Rowan stepped closer. "Does she rember the Vulture?"
The girl blinked. Her mouth opened, dry, cracked.
"...the silver one is awake..." she rasped, eyes staring past Rowan. "She’ll kill you all."
Rowan tensed.
Samuel whispered, "What did she an? Liora?"
Rowan didn’t answer. Instead, he ordered, "Send word to Lucien. Tell him the girl’s mories are coming back, and they’re dangerous."
Beatrice t Lord Cevan, a lesser noble with a sharp mind and sharper secrets. He served the eastern ports, but more importantly, he owed her a favor.
"You said you have knowledge of the foreign fleet?" she asked.
Cevan nodded. "They’re docking on the pretense of trade. But their crates... they’re not full of spices."
"What then?"
"Silk. But not ours. Eastern style. Hollow embroidery with serpent sigils. And beneath it... weapons."
Beatrice narrowed her eyes. "They plan to enter through fashion and feasts."
Cevan smirked. "That’s what won do best, don’t they?"
Beatrice’s voice turned to steel. "And that’s why they’ll never see us coming."
She tried to sleep again, but her dreams grew louder.
Voices echoed,nas she didn’t recognize.
One voice, female, sharp like flint:
"Your blood was never ant to kneel."
Another voice, masculine, deeper:
"They killed your mother before she could tell you."
She gasped awake, sweat dampening her collar.
Then...her mirror cracked.
No wind. No quake. Just cracked.A single spiderweb across the surface, right between her eyes in the reflection.
She stood, barefoot, and whispered to herself, "Who... who did I co from?"
anwhile, far away in the depths of the estate, Beatrice sat in her chamber, a single oil lamp casting flickering shadows against the wall. Her thoughts churned.
Queen Dowager Lilian’s last letter still lay untouched on her bedside. Beatrice didn’t need to open it to know what it would say.
Get closer. Find the girl’s weakness. Lucien’s too, if you can. We need leverage.
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