"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when n are afraid of the light."
***
The world had gone mad.
One mont, Lyra had been staring at her own death. An erald necklace she’d never seen before, planted in her quarters like poison. The next, voices were shouting, accusations flying, and Marcus Grundy was backing against the wall like a cornered rat.
She couldn’t follow the exchange between Thomas and Grundy. Ledgers. Embezzlent. Forged docunts. The words washed over her like a foreign language. Numbers and dates and discrepancies. Evidence of cris so vast they made the theft of a single necklace seem like a child swiping cookies from a jar.
The guards had let go of her when the commotion started. Their iron grip just vanished, like she’d stopped existing. She rubbed her wrists. Felt the phantom pressure of their fingers. The bruises were already forming beneath her sleeves.
This isn’t possible.
Servants don’t get rescued at the last mont. Servants die, and the world moves on. They’re expendable. Replaceable. They disappear, and nobody asks questions.
But the tide had turned. Lord Blackwood’s fury, which monts ago had been aid at her, was now focused entirely on Grundy. The noble’s face was purple. Spit flew as he roared about betrayal and the audacity of theft from his own coffers.
Thomas kept talking. His voice was steady. Relentless. He laid out evidence of financial cris that made a stolen necklace look like pocket change. The footman had always been ambitious, always angling for a better position, but this wasn’t ambition. This was righteous anger. The fury of soone who’d witnessed injustice and chosen to expose it.
How did he know?
How did Thomas discover what Grundy was doing? The steward was careful. Paranoid. He wouldn’t have left evidence lying around for a footman to stumble across.
Lyra’s gaze swept the room. Lord Blackwood’s thunderous expression. The veins standing out on his neck. Leo’s confused look, his heroic features marred by genuine bewildernt. The protagonist caught off-guard by a twist he hadn’t seen coming. The servants crowding the doorway, their eyes wide with the realization that one of their own had been saved.
And then her eyes found Kaelen.
He was leaning against the doorfra at the far edge of the room. Apparently absorbed in examining his fingernails as if the drama before him was just a tedious play he’d been forced to attend. His posture spoke of boredom. A man who would rather be anywhere else. His grey eyes held no surprise. No shock. No reaction at all to the miraculous turn of events.
He looked like soone who had already read the end of the book and found it predictable.
While everyone else reacted with shock or anger or confusion, while the room churned with emotion, Kaelen Leone was the only person who didn’t seem even remotely surprised.
No. That’s not possible.
He’s just Kaelen. The failure. The waste of noble blood. He barely has enough mana to light a candle. He can’t even hold a sword properly.
But she couldn’t look away from his face. Couldn’t shake the creeping realization taking root in her mind.
Her hands began to shake. Not from fear this ti. Sothing deeper. The tremor that ca from realizing everything you thought you knew about the world was wrong.
The timing.
Thomas appearing at exactly the right mont with exactly the right evidence. When she was seconds away from being hauled before a magistrate. The way Grundy was caught completely off-guard, as if soone had anticipated his every move.
She thought about the past few days. mories that had seed insignificant suddenly took on new weight. Young Master Kaelen’s strange behavior at dinner. His uncharacteristic humility when he’d asked her about the household schedules. The way he’d positioned himself during the search. Seemingly bumbling. Getting in everyone’s way. But always in exactly the right place at the right ti.
How he’d stumbled near Thomas. Whispered sothing she couldn’t hear. Then retreated with an apology.
He knew.
Sohow, impossibly, he knew this was going to happen. He knew Grundy would fra her. He knew Thomas would have the evidence. He orchestrated every mont.
The argunt was winding down. Grundy’s protests were growing weaker as the weight of evidence crushed him. Thomas had produced enough docuntation to damn a dozen stewards. Ledgers with altered figures. Receipts for purchases that never arrived. Testimony from rchants who’d been paid to falsify records.
"Arrest him," Lord Blackwood commanded. His voice was final. "Marcus Grundy, you stand accused of embezzlent, fraud, and conspiracy against a noble house. You will be held pending trial."
Guards moved forward. They seized Grundy’s arms and hauled him upright. The steward’s face crumpled as his sche collapsed around him. All his power and influence evaporated in a single mont.
"The girl," Father said quietly. "What about the girl?"
Lyra’s breath caught. Even now, even after everything, she was still just "the girl." Naless. Faceless.
"Released, of course," Lord Blackwood replied. He waved a dismissive hand as if her near-death was rely an administrative error. "Clearly, she was ant to be a scapegoat. The real thief has been caught."
That’s it?
Reviews
All reviews (0)