"Before I was forced to run."
"For what?"
"For knowing too much," Saelis said. "I was once betrothed to a prince. He died. Not in battle, not by fate. Poisoned. I was blad."
"And now you’re here. Why?"
Saelis’s expression sobered. "Because the n who destroyed my country are now in your court."
Liora’s blood ran cold.
"You an Corvane?"
Saelis shook her head. "He’s just a puppet. The real hand lies higher. One of your council ministers. And if he succeeds, your kingdom won’t survive a decade."
Liora took a breath. The palace was already a fragile web of secrets, choked by power plays. But this... this could split it apart.
"Do you have proof?"
"Enough to start a war," Saelis whispered. "But I ca for allies. Not blood."
Footsteps approached. Rowan stepped in. Tension wrapped the air.
Saelis calmly veiled herself again. "You should decide, Lady Liora. Whether you’ll let the rot fester or burn it out."
She turned and walked out.
Liora stood there, her mind spinning. Because the woman hadn’t asked for help.
She had offered a choice.
By nightfall, Liora hadn’t moved from the desk in Lucien’s old study. Scrolls and ink-sared papers lay in disarray. A single candle illuminated her strained expression as she read the envoy’s records again: dates, nas, blurred emblems, so written in ink so faded it barely clung to the parchnt.
Saelis had left more than a warning. She had left a cipher. A ssage masked beneath court language and travel logs.
Rowan entered silently, placing a tray beside her elbow. "You need to eat."
"I will," she muttered, eyes scanning the bottom line again. "Rowan... do you know anyone nad Elias Morven?"
Rowan blinked. "No. Should I?"
"He’s ntioned here as a forr royal advisor during Alden’s regency. Said to have ’retired to the coast.’ But Saelis noted his seal showing up again three months ago. Unused for a decade."
"Is that possible?"
Liora leaned back. "If soone else is forging it, yes."
"And you think he’s tied to Corvane?"
"I think he may be the hand behind him."
Rowan exhaled sharply and crossed his arms. "Then this isn’t a battle in court anymore. It’s sothing buried deeper."
Before Liora could respond, footsteps echoed in the corridor. The door opened without a knock. Samuel entered, face grim.
"You have visitors," he said. "From the royal court."
"Now?" Liora asked.
"They carry no crest. No escort. They ca in quietly and asked for Lady Blackthorne, not Lady Liora."
Liora’s jaw tensed. That na hadn’t been used since Lucien’s disgrace.
"Bring them here," she said quietly.
Minutes later, two cloaked n stepped in. Both bore a hint of noble blood in their posture, but their faces were unfamiliar. One handed her a folded note, sealed not in wax but by a delicate red thread. The old thod of ssage protection, used only by the Royal Intelligence Circle.
She sliced it open.
"You are being watched. Do not trust the council. Do not speak to the Queen Dowager until instructed. et at the glassmaker’s ruins on the 17th night. Bring no one but the envoy. Burn this."
No na. Just the mark of the old royal falcon, clawed, wings sheared.
Liora t their gaze. "Who sent this?"
The first man spoke. "Soone who rembers the old reign. And who believes your husband still has a place in the future?"
Her fingers clenched around the note. More pieces, more shadows. Everything is circling Lucien again.
And this ti... dragging her directly into the fire.
The night was cold and quiet, the kind of silence that presses against the skin like a warning. Liora wrapped her cloak tighter around her, the worn path through the abandoned glassmaker’s ruins barely visible under the moon’s pale glow.
Rowan had offered to follow at a distance, but she had refused. The note had been clear: no one but the envoy.
And now, she wasn’t even sure if she counted.
The ruins were remnants of a once-grand workshop, shattered glass embedded in stone, iron supports long rusted. Fire had destroyed most of it years ago, a symbol of the kingdom’s fall into internal chaos during Alden’s contested rise.
She stepped lightly over a cracked tile and paused near what had once been a furnace chamber.
A figure erged from the dark.
Older, lean, with silver in his temples and a sharp gaze, he removed his hood slowly, as though testing her resolve.
"You ca," he said.
Liora stood straight. "And you are?"
"Elias Morven."
She hadn’t expected him to be alive, let alone this calm.
"You forged the seal."
"I took back what was mine," he said evenly. "And I ca because the country is walking toward a trap. A war within and a war beyond."
"Corvane?" she asked.
He nodded. "That man is a distraction. A puppet propped up by nobles who want to break the power of the crown without staining their hands."
"And Queen Dowager Lilian?"
"She’s playing her own ga," Elias said. "But she fears Lucien. Not for what he was, but for what he still could beco."
Liora stepped closer, her breath catching. "You think they’ll try to kill him again?"
"No," Elias said. "I think they’ll try to make you betray him."
The words struck like a whip.
He continued, his voice low and sharp. "They know what you are to him. If they fracture your bond, Lucien becos volatile. Dangerous. Easy to exile or worse."
A gust of wind carried shattered leaves through the ruins.
"You have allies," Elias said, pressing a new note into her hand. "But you must choose when to act. Do not wait for his permission."
She looked down at the note, but when she glanced up, he was already gone, vanished into the folds of ruin and darkness.
She turned back, heart pounding, eyes scanning the crumbling stone. The glass underfoot cracked faintly with each step, as if whispering secrets of the past.
But all Liora could think of was one truth.
Lucien had survived betrayal once; she would not be the second blade.
The next morning, the court was in quiet uproar.
It wasn’t loud, not yet but the murmur was spreading like rot beneath the polish. A foreign envoy had arrived unannounced at the outer capital gates, dressed not in royal heraldry but in rchant silks, silks that bore the unmistakable insignia of Etria, a rival nation once bound by fragile treaties now cracked at their edges.
King Alden stood before the tall windows of the eastern audience chamber, watching the envoy’s procession from above. His light blue eyes were sharp with calculation.
"They’re testing us," he said flatly.
Lord Averin, the Minister of Trade, cleared his throat. "Etria claims this is rely a diplomatic gesture. A renewal of goodwill."
"Goodwill?" scoffed General Soren, stepping forward. "We intercepted a caravan last month carrying steel and nightshade, both Etrian-forged and destined for Lord Verin’s estate. Does goodwill now an poisoning border nobles?"
Alden didn’t answer imdiately. Instead, he turned to the man waiting near the chamber’s side doors, Samuel, Lucien’s old contact, dressed like a lowborn but with eyes that missed little.
"What word from Vale?" Alden asked him.
"Rowan sent notice this morning," Samuel replied. "Lucien suspects an internal collaboration, soone high up. Possibly from within the treasury."
Alden’s fingers tapped the hilt of his ceremonial dagger.
"And what of the girl?" he asked quietly.
Samuel hesitated. "Lady Liora is... alert. More than they expected her to be. And she’s asking the right questions."
A flicker of thought passed through the king’s gaze. "She mustn’t be hard. But if she moves too early..."
"Understood."
"Have Rowan keep a closer eye. If Lucien falters, the whole structure collapses."
Just then, a page entered briskly, bowing with urgency. "Your Majesty, the Etrian envoy requests a private audience."
Alden raised an eyebrow. "Private? Bold."
He motioned toward the door. "Send them in. But have the guards listen."
As the page turned, Alden murmured to himself, "Let’s see which ga they play first: threats or bribes."
anwhile, within Lucien’s estate, Liora burned the note Elias had given her in the hearth. She morized every word before the flas swallowed it whole.
In the ashes remained two nas.
One was a mber of the council.
The other... was a ghost from Lucien’s past.
The clink of goblets echoed faintly in the empty corridor outside Lucien’s study. Inside, the air was still, heavy with the scent of parchnt, ink, and the tension that ca with war councils. The court’s latest whispers, the murmurs of a southern trade route threatened by rogue factions, had reached even the far corners of Lucien’s estate.
Liora stood by the tall window, her hands clasped behind her. She didn’t speak unless prompted and had learned by now that silence often lent her more power than words. But Lucien noticed.
She no longer flinched when the doors opened too suddenly. No longer looked away when he caught her watching him.
"The nobles will press Alden to send aid," Lucien muttered, skimming over the scroll. "But it’s not just trade. The border towns are thinning out. Sothing’s coming."
Liora didn’t respond. Instead, she turned to him quietly. "You don’t trust them."
He looked up. For once, his expression wasn’t guarded. "I trust no one who smiles too easily at a bleeding nation."
She nodded, understanding more than he expected. "What will you do?"
Lucien stood, folding the scroll and moving to the hearth. "I’ll give them a reason to worry. A prince cast aside still holds teeth."
There was a pause. Not cold, but suspended.
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