Seraphina's accomplice wouldn't be a friend. It would be a tool—someone with access, motive, and enough vulnerability to be controlled.
I spent the hours before the tea party in the library, not with maps, but with the academy's servant registry and student conduct logs. Lucian was right. I was looking for a person. Someone who moved between the noble students and the staff, who could handle a poison vial without suspicion, and who had a secret Seraphina could leverage.
The logs revealed a pattern of minor, hushed-up infractions: stolen jewelry returned, drunken brawls smoothed over, and academic cheating quietly dismissed. All of these incidents involved mid-level nobles from minor houses and were resolved through the discreet intervention of a senior student—often Seraphina, who acted as the benevolent peacemaker.
She wasn't just building a social circle; she was building a network of indebtedness.
One name appeared with telling frequency: Lord Gavin Selwyn. A third son from a fading barony, perpetually in debt, known for his skill at cards and his larger appetite for gambling. He had been caught cheating in an alchemy exam six months ago—an offense that should have seen him expelled. The record simply noted: "Sanction waived due to intercession. Probation." The intercessor's name was omitted, but the registrar's shaky script looked suspiciously like that of a man who owed the Vale family money.
Selwyn. He was in our year. He had the desperate, hungry look of a cornered weasel. And he was on the list for the tea party—his family was just prominent enough to warrant an invitation.
It fit. He had access to it. His debt and his secret gave Seraphina leverage. And his alchemy knowledge, however flawed, made him the perfect candidate to handle the actual poison.
I found him in the common room, nervously polishing a pair of dress shoes that were slightly too fine for his station. The threads around him were a tangled mess of murky green (anxiety) and that same sickly yellow (fear) I'd seen in the apothecary.
"Lord Selwyn," I said, sitting opposite him without invitation.
He jumped, nearly dropping a shoe. "Lady Thorne! I, uh... wasn't expecting..."
"I need to know what Seraphina has you doing at the tea party."
All color drained from his face. "I don't know what you—"
"Moonbell and shadowcap extract," I said, my voice low and flat. "Delivered to the White Gardenia. Ordered by the Vale account. Handled by you." I was bluffing on the last part, but his reaction confirmed it.
His breath hitched. The fearful yellow thread throbbed. "She said it was just a prank! She had intended to put a laxative in the prince's wine as a joke! She said no one would get hurt, and she'd clear my remaining debts!"
A prank. Of course. She'd fed him a lie he was desperate enough to believe.
"You know that's not true, Gavin," I said, using his first name, appealing to the terrified person beneath the noble veneer. "You know what those substances are. Combined, they don't cause a stomachache. They cause cardiac arrest within minutes. It's murder."
He shook his head, a frantic, denying motion. "No. No, she promised. She has my confession about the alchemy exam... my father would disown me..."
"Your father will mourn you when you're executed as the prince's murderer," I said coldly. "Because that's who will take the fall. Not her. You. The desperate, indebted gambler with alchemy knowledge. She'll weep and say you must have been obsessed with me, acting on my behalf after I was cruelly rejected." The narrative wrote itself in my mind, perfect and horrifying.
His eyes widened in dawning, absolute horror. He saw it too. He was not the accomplice; he was the backup patsy. He would be the fall guy if I couldn't be framed directly.
"You have a choice," I pressed. "You can be her sacrificial lamb, or you can help me stop it."
"How?" he whispered, defeated. "She has the vial. She's carrying it. She said she would give it to me right before the toast, so I could slip it into his cup.
So she was carrying it. She wouldn't risk handing it off too early. That meant the poison was on her person right now.
"Here is what you will do," I said, leaning in. "You will go to the tea party. You will act normally. You will take the vial when she gives it to you."
"I can't! They'll hang me!"
"You will take it," I repeated, my voice leaving no room for argument. "And you will not use it. You will palm it, you will pretend, and you will, at the first moment of confusion or distraction, drop it into the decorative pond beside the rose arbor. The evidence will be destroyed, and you will be seen trying to make a toast, nothing more."
He stared at me, a flicker of hope battling the terror. "But she'll know I betrayed her!"
"By then, it won't matter," I said, though I wasn't sure that was true. "Do this, and I will give you five hundred gold crowns. Enough to pay your debts and leave the academy. You can start fresh somewhere she can't reach you."
It was a fortune. I had more than I technically possessed, but my father's name could secure a loan. A life was worth more than gold.
The greedy, survivalist light in his eyes told me I had him. "How do I know you'll pay?"
"You don't," I said bluntly. "But you know for certain what she will do to you. I'm offering the only chance you have."
He swallowed and nodded once, sharply. "I'll do it."
"Good. Now, tell me exactly how she plans to give it to you."
The plan was simple and elegant. During the customary "toast to the spring bloom," we would all be given a glass of sparkling wine. Seraphina, as the unofficial hostess, would move through the crowd with a servant's tray, personally ensuring the prince's inner circle had full glasses. When she handed Gavin his glass, the tiny, crystal-encased vial would be pressed into his palm beneath the stem.
He was to wait for Cassian to make his toast, then step forward immediately after to offer a "tribute from the younger sons." In that moment of raised glasses, he'd tip the vial into Cassian's cup.
It was bold. It required timing and nerve. Gavin Selwyn was currently lacking two essential qualities.
I left him, my mind racing. The plan was in motion, but it was fragile, reliant on a coward's nerve. I needed insurance.
I went to the one person who might provide it without asking questions I couldn't answer.
I found Elara in the northern guest quarters, sketching the mountain view. "Elara, I need a favor. A discreet one."
She put down her charcoal. "You look like you're going to battle."
"I am. A social one. At the tea party today, could you... stay close to Crown Prince Cassian? Engage him in conversation? Keep him pleasantly distracted during the toast?"
She raised an eyebrow. "The pretty prince? He's not really my type. He is all smiles, but lacks substance. But for you? Sure. Why?"
"Let's just say I've heard a rumor someone might try to embarrass him with a clumsy, over-enthusiastic toast. I'd hate for His Highness to be annoyed during such a lovely event." The lie was thin but serviceable.
Elara's sharp eyes saw right through it, but she simply nodded. "A Northern distraction. I can do that. We're experts at being loudly, boringly earnest about border tariffs. I'll monopolize him."
"Thank you," I said, squeezing her hand. Her blue thread glowed warm and steady.
One last piece. I penned a short, anonymous note and paid a street urchin to deliver it to the office of the City Watch Commander. The rumored disposal of a valuable artifact in the academy's decorative pond this afternoon caught my attention. You may wish to have it dredged before it is lost. It was a shot in the dark, but if Gavin succeeded in ditching the vial, having the Watch "coincidentally" find it might create a useful chaos.
As I dressed for the tea party—a simple, high-necked gown of pale blue that offered no hiding places—I felt the holy power stir again, a restless warmth in my core. It yearned to be used, to purify, to protect.
"Not yet," I told both the holy power and myself. Survive today with wits, not light.
Looking in the mirror, I saw not Rosalind, not Selene, but a strategist stepping onto a battlefield where the weapons were poison, lies, and the desperate self-interest of broken men.
The tea party bell chimed.
It was time.