The departure of Seraphina Vale, escorted not with dignity but with the frantic, stumbling resistance of a trapped animal, left a vacuum in the Rose Pavilion. The shock that had held the nobility in a murmuring stasis broke, replaced by a frantic, buzzing energy. Questions flew like shrapnel. Eyes darted between the exit where Seraphina had vanished, the stretcher bearing the half-conscious Crown Prince, and me, standing isolated and guarded at my table.
The Captain of the Guard, his face etched with the strain of a day that had veered wildly off script, turned to Prince Lucian. "Your Highness, with your permission, I will oversee the immediate sealing of the Vale family apartments here at the Academy and dispatch riders to their estate. The… audit you mentioned."
