The silence that followed my question was absolute and profound. It was the silence of a hundred nobles holding their breath, of guards forgetting their orders, of a world tilting on its axis. Every face in the Rose Pavilion turned from me to the woman in shell-pink silk.
Seraphina did not flinch. She did not pale. She transformed.
The tears on her cheeks, moments ago symbols of distressed concern, became emblems of outraged virtue. Her delicate hand flew to her throat, her green eyes widening in a perfect pantomime of shocked betrayal. The performance was seamless, instantaneous.
"How dare you!" Her voice was not a scream but a wounded, ringing cry that carried to the farthest corners of the pavilion. It was masterful—the tone of a true innocent falsely accused. "After what you've done? You try to shift your monstrous crime onto me?"
She took a step forward, pointing a trembling, accusatory finger not at me, but at the space between us, as if the very air was stained by my lie. "I saw you! When everyone was toasting, I saw you fidgeting with your spoon, your eyes darting about! You were nervous! You knew what was in that cup!"
She then swung her arm, the dramatic gesture encompassing the stricken prince being carried away. "And now the Crown Prince lies poisoned, and you have the gall to accuse me? Everyone knows the truth! You've hated him since he gently rejected your… your inappropriate advances at the Winter Ball! You've been simmering with jealousy and spite ever since!"
The narrative, her original narrative, was launched not as a defense, but as a crushing counter-offensive. It was perfect. It was personal. It explained motive (spurned love), opportunity (she was at the table), and behavior (my "calm" was actually guilty nervousness). She framed my accusation as the desperate, flailing lie of a caught murderer.
A low, angry murmur rippled through the nobility. Heads nodded. The Winter Ball incident—where the original, lovesick Rosalind had indeed made a fool of herself over Cassian—was common gossip. Seraphina was weaving old, accepted truths into her new, bloody tapestry. She was reminding them who Rosalind Thorne was: the desperate, unstable villainess.
The Captain of the Guard, his momentary confusion hardened into resolve by Seraphina's convincing outburst, snapped his fingers. "Enough! Lady Thorne, you will come into custody. Your accusations are noted, but the evidence is before us." He gestured to the physician still holding my poisoned cup. "You will have a chance to speak to the investigators."
The guards around my table closed in, their hands on their sword hilts.
"You are making a catastrophic error, Captain." Kaelen's voice was a blade of winter, cold and sharp enough to cut through the rising tension. He did not move from his place beside me, but his stance shifted subtly, from observation to interposition. "You are allowing hysterics to override logic. The lady stated the poison was meant for the prince. The cup in question came from the prince's own service. The simplest explanation is that the poisoner targeted the Prince, and through a serving error, the cup landed before Lady Thorne. To arrest her for being the victim of that error is idiocy."
"A serving error that left her cup full while the Prince drank his?" The captain shot back, but doubt flickered in his eyes. Kaelen's cold logic was a bucket of water on the fiery narrative Seraphina had built.
"Perhaps she was waiting for a moment to drink it, to avoid suspicion!" Seraphina cried, her voice climbing in pitch. "Or perhaps she lost her nerve! Look at her! She's not even denying she knew about White Veil! She's a student of poisons! What noble lady studies such dark arts unless she intends to use them?"
It was a clever twist, turning my botanical knowledge against me. The murmur grew louder. Seraphina was good. She was adapting, using every tool.
"I study botany to understand healing, Lady Vale," I said, my voice cutting through her theatrics with deliberate, calm precision. "A fact you would know if you ever opened a textbook instead of a gossip ledger. But let us address your other point. You claim you saw me 'fidgeting' and being 'nervous.'" I took a single step forward, forcing the nearest guard to step back or risk touching me. "You were across the pavilion, surrounded by your own circle. The Prince's table, and mine, was obscured by the central fountain from your vantage point. How could you possibly see the subtle state of my hands?"
Seraphina blinked, momentarily thrown. She hadn't anticipated a forensic challenge. "I… I have sharp eyes. I was concerned for His Highness's comfort."
"Or," I continued, pressing my advantage, "you were watching because you knew something was about to happen. You were waiting for the signal. The signal you gave."
"What signal?" the captain demanded, his head swiveling between us.
"When the servant approached me with the tray," I said, my gaze locked on Seraphina, "she hesitated. She was confused. She looked across the pavilion to Lady Vale's table as if waiting for instruction. A moment later, Lady Vale dropped her napkin. And then the servant acted, placing the cup before me. " I left out Kaelen' part, the dropped spoon. That was my secret, our secret. "It was coordination. Not a serving error. A planned delivery."
"Lies!" Seraphina shrieked, but the color was draining from her face. "A coincidence! I dropped my napkin by accident!"
"And the servant with the jade ring?" I asked, my voice dropping, becoming almost conversational. "Gil, I believe his name is. The one with the gambling debts to your family's steward. Was he also looking to you for a signal before he tried to serve me earlier? Before the Duke intervened?"
The air left Seraphina's lungs in a silent rush. Her mask cracked. For a split second, raw, panicked fear shone through. I had named the name. I had connected the debt. This was not speculation; this was specific, damning knowledge.
The captain's head snapped toward the group of detained servants. "Bring forward the servant Gil!"
Gil was dragged forward, his face a parchment of terror. He couldn't meet anyone's eyes.
"Is this true?" the Captain thundered. "Do you owe debts to the Vale household?"
Gil trembled violently, his jade ring flashing as his hands shook. "I… I…"
"He's a liar! She's twisting everything!" Seraphina cried, but the desperation in her voice was now palpable.
"Answer the question," Prince Lucian said, stepping forward. His voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of his bloodline. In the absence of his brother, his authority was growing by the second. All eyes turned to him.
Gil crumbled. He fell to his knees, sobbing. "Yes! Yes, I owe money! But I didn't want to! She made me! She said she'd have my hands broken if I didn't take the packet and put it in the cup!"
A unified gasp swept the pavilion. Seraphina took a step back as if physically struck.
"What packet?" Lucian asked, his voice like ice.
"The white powder! In a crystal vial! She gave it to me last night in the scullery yard! She said to put it in the Prince's cup on the gold-rimmed set during the third service! But I… I got scared when the Duke was there, I messed up the timing, and then the head server took over, and I thought maybe I was off the hook, but then… then the Prince…" He dissolved into incoherent weeping.
The story was spilling out, a confession of coercion and bungled execution. It matched the evidence: the poison in the prince's cup. It explained the serving confusion. It pointed directly at Seraphina.
Seraphina stood isolated in a widening circle of space, the nobility drawing back from her as if she were contagion itself. Her face worked, emotions warring—terror, fury, and that strange, blank shock. Then, something in her seemed to break and reform, harder, sharper.
She drew herself up, her tears vanishing. The wounded innocence was gone, replaced by a chilling, regal hauteur. "A desperate servant's lies," she declared, her voice cold and clear. "Trying to save his own skin by blaming a noble lady. He obviously acted alone, for reasons of his own. Or," her green eyes, now gleaming with malice, swung back to me, "he is in the pay of the true schemer here. The one who just happened to know every detail of his debt and his movements. The one who magically avoided the poison meant for her. How very convenient for you, Rosalind, that this simpleton just confessed to exactly the story you needed."
It was a brilliant, ruthless counter. She was painting Gil's confession as my fabrication, part of my deeper plot. She was implying I had coerced or bribed Gil first, framing her as the fall guy. The complexity of it was dizzying, but to a nobility raised on layers of intrigue, it was morbidly plausible.
The captain looked utterly lost, the case spiraling into a whirlpool of he-said-she-said with a prince's life in the balance.
It was time to end this.
"There is a simpler way," I said, raising my voice above the rising babble of arguments and theories. "The physician confirmed the poison was White Veil. A controlled substance. Logged and tracked by the Royal Apothecary. Its sale or distribution is recorded." I turned to Prince Lucian, appealing to the only clear authority left. "Your Highness, I request—no, I demand—an immediate audit of the Apothecary logs for the past month. And a search warrant for the conservatories of the Vale estate, where Ghost Bloom is known to grow."
Seraphina's hauteur vanished. Her hand flew to her throat again, but this time it was no act. Real, cold terror flashed in her eyes. The paper trail. The physical evidence. She could manipulate servants and gossip, but she couldn't erase official logs or hide a cultivated toxic plant.
Before she could formulate another denial, a new voice, weak and slurred but dripping with venom, croaked from the entrance to the pavilion.
"Arrest… her."
Cassian was conscious. Propped up on the stretcher, his face slack, one eye drooping, but the other blazing with a hatred so profound it cut through his physical ruin. He pointed a trembling, accusatory finger. Not at Seraphina.
At me.
"The Thorne… witch," he rasped, every word a struggle. "She poisoned me… Saw her… jealous… vengeful… Arrest her… now."
With his last ounce of strength, the Crown Prince, the victim, the hero, had spoken.
And his word, in this empire, was law.
The Captain of the Guard straightened, all doubt erased by the royal command. He nodded to his men.
"By order of the Crown Prince," he announced, his voice final. "Take the Duchess Rosalind Thorne into custody."
The guards surged forward, their hands no longer hesitant, reaching for me.