'I need to get closer,' he thought.
Cassius slipped out of his study and into the old servants' corridor. He moved quickly and quietly, the way he used to on mercenary jobs, counting turns until he reached the narrow passage that ran behind the eastern wall.
A thin crack in the stone let in a sliver of daylight. He pressed himself against the wall and held his breath.
[She's an S-rank mage. If you let even a trace of mana leak, she'll sense you.]
'I know.'
He pulled his mana inward until it felt like nothing at all. Then he listened.
"—you're being dramatic," the Duke was saying. "He's alive, isn't he? He awakened. You should be thanking me."
"Thanking you?" The woman's voice was cold and sharp. Cassius recognized it immediately. "His room burned down three days ago, Lucas. His maid is missing. And you're throwing him a party."
"The servants are handling it."
"The servants." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Do you even know what happened in that room?"
"Do you?"
Silence.
Cassius's fingers curled against the stone. 'Since when does she care?'
"Unranked," Aurora said finally. "Of all the things it could have said. You understand what that means as well as I do."
"It means nothing. A glitch."
"You don't believe that."
"What I believe," the Duke said, his voice dropping, "is that it's none of your concern. You gave up any say in this ten years ago."
"I gave him up because you swore he'd be safe here."
"And he is."
"Is he?" Her voice wavered for the first time. "Then tell me, Lucas. What is he to you?"
Cassius found himself leaning closer to the crack without meaning to.
It was a stupid question. He already knew the answer. He had known it since the moment he woke up in his ten-year-old body and looked into his father's eyes. There was nothing his father could say that would surprise him.
The Duke sighed, the way he did when a servant asked something obvious.
"The boy is useful. That's all you need to know."
Cassius didn't move.
'Of course.'
He had expected that answer. He had expected it so thoroughly that he could have mouthed the words along with him. So there was no reason for the sudden tightness in his chest, as though someone had wrapped a fist around his ribs and squeezed.
[Cassius.]
'I'm fine.'
[I didn't ask.]
'Then don't.'
He was fine. It was just the dust in the corridor. It was hard to breathe in here. That was all.
'Useful.' He tasted the word. 'At least he's honest for once.'
He told himself it was a relief. Now there was no doubt left, not even the small, stupid part of him that had wondered whether some fragment of the man who used to play catch with him in the yard was real. That part could finally die quietly, and he wouldn't have to be the one to kill it.
"Useful," Aurora repeated slowly.
"Don't look at me like that. You knew what he'd be the day you found out you were pregnant. A child with both our blood? The whole empire was watching. Every house would kill to have him." The Duke's tone turned almost casual. "I simply made sure he belonged to mine."
"He's not a sword, Lucas."
"Everything is a sword if you hold it correctly."
Footsteps crunched on gravel. Through the crack, Cassius saw the hem of a hooded cape step closer to his father.
"He's ten," Aurora said quietly. "He asked me once if I was upset that he was born."
Cassius stopped breathing.
'What?'
That had never happened in this life. She had barely spoken two sentences to him in the palace hallway. The only time he had ever asked her that—
Mother, are you upset I was born?
—was at his awakening ceremony. In his first life.
[Cassius. Breathe.]
He didn't. He couldn't.
'How does she know that?'
"Did he?" The Duke sounded bored. "Children say all sorts of things."
"I told him no," Aurora continued, as if she hadn't heard him. "I hesitated, and he noticed. He was smart enough to notice." Her voice cracked. "And I thought, at least he has his father. At least someone in that house will love him."
"Love," the Duke scoffed. "Don't be sentimental, Aurora. It doesn't suit you."
"No. It doesn't suit you."
"What's that supposed to—"
SMACK.
The sound echoed off the courtyard walls.
Cassius stared through the crack. His father stood with his head turned to the side, a red handprint slowly blooming across his cheek. The Swordmaster of the Karavan Empire, the man vassals bowed to and nobles feared, had just been slapped like a misbehaving servant.
And for the first time in either of his lives, Duke Lucas Blackwood looked completely speechless.
Aurora lowered her hand. Silver hair spilled from beneath her hood as she leaned in close.
"If anything happens to my son," she said, every word quiet and clear, "I will burn this estate to the ground. Starting with you."
Then she was gone. No light, no sound. Just empty air where she had stood.
The Duke touched his cheek.
Behind the wall, Cassius slid down until he was sitting in the dust, his heart pounding in his ears.
'My son.'
He didn't know what to do with those words. So he did what he always did. He buried them somewhere deep, where they couldn't hurt him.
'She's lying. They're all lying.'
But he couldn't stop thinking about how she knew what he had asked her in a life that no longer existed.
[Don't trust her, Cassius. She knew you were hiding behind the wall. She wanted you to hear that. ]
'How can you be so sure?'
Kar brought up a screenshot of her smirking while staring at the wall in the half second before she disappeared when Cassius was slumped on the floor.
'How conniving.' Cassius thought. 'To think she used this opportunity to try and manipulate me. I knew it'