The chaos in the administrative wing was a brief, contained storm. By afternoon, a brittle calm had settled over the palace. The official story, whispered by the lower servants, was that Steward Gorven had suffered a fit of apoplexy over misplaced inventory. But the eyes of the guards changed. Their patrols became less rote, their gazes lingering a moment too long in shadowed corners. The air grew thick with unspoken suspicion.
They were looking for a rat. They just didn't know it was a rat with a knife made of nothing.
Elara came to me that evening, her face a mask of controlled terror. She placed the tray down with trembling hands. "He's furious," she breathed, barely moving her lips. "The ledger… the entries were gone. Just… gone. He accused me. Said I must have used some trick."
"What did you tell him?" I asked, my voice the same flat monotone. The cold inside me was a buffer against her fear.
"I cried. I swore I couldn't read more than my name. I said maybe the apothecary's ink was faulty, that he'd cheated you." A flicker of shrewdness in her eyes. "He didn't believe me, but he had no proof. Then… he gave me a new task."
She reached into the folds of her apron and pulled out a small, ornate vial of dark blue glass, stoppered with silver. She placed it on the bed next to me as if it were a live serpent.
"He said the 'patron' is impatient. The prince's lingering is… inconvenient. This is to be poured into your water pitcher. All of it. He said it will look like a final, merciful collapse of your weak constitution." Her voice broke. "He said my family's new debt will be forgiven. Truly forgiven."
I picked up the vial. It was cold. Through my void-attuned senses, I didn't need to open it. I could feel the concentrated malice within. This was not the slow, subtle poison I'd been fighting. This was a violent, aggressive toxin. A murder weapon.
The patron—the 'V & Flame'—was done with subtlety. Gorven was tightening the leash on his pawn, and the pawn was me.
A plan, cold and intricate, unfolded in my mind. It was a risk. It would expose my hand further. But it was also an opportunity to turn their weapon back on them, to identify the patron, and to sever Gorven's usefulness in one stroke.
"You will do as he says," I said.
Her eyes widened in horror. "Your Highness, I cannot—"
"You will," I interrupted, the finality in my tone silencing her. "But not to my water. To the water in his office."
She stared, uncomprehending.
"Gorven drinks wine, but he has a carafe of water on his desk to cut it. You have access to his office to clean in the mornings." I held the vial out to her. "You will pour this into that carafe. Then, you will come immediately to tell me it is done."
"He'll die!" she gasped.
"Yes," I said, the word hanging in the cold air. "And when he does, his strongbox will be searched. The ledger with its missing entries will be found. The symbol will be seen. The investigation will focus on a falling-out among thieves. A patron silencing a loose end."
The logic was brutal, clean. It would create a fire that would burn the evidence and hopefully singe the hand that held the match.
"But… they'll suspect me! I clean his office!"
"You will also be the one to 'discover' the body, in a panic, after he's been dead for hours. You will be a witness, not a suspect. Your fear will be real. Your relief that your debt died with him will also be real." I looked at her, willing her to see the steel in my gaze. "This is how we survive, Elara. By being smarter, and by being willing to do what they would not hesitate to do to us."
She took the vial, her fingers white-knuckled around it. The weight of conspiracy settled on her thin shoulders. She gave one sharp, terrified nod and fled.
The next hours were an agony of waiting. I sat in the dark, the bead against my chest a cold anchor. I was gambling with a girl's life and my own tenuous position. If she faltered, if she was caught, the trail would lead directly to my door.
Just after dawn, she came. Her face was sheet-white, her breathing ragged. She didn't speak, just met my eyes and gave a single, shaky nod.
It was done.
Now, we waited for the poison to work.
I spent the day in a state of hyper-awareness, listening to the rhythm of the palace. The morning passed normally. At noon, a junior steward was seen running towards the administrative wing, his face alarmed. The whispers began an hour later, moving through the palace like a contagion.
Steward Gorven found dead at his desk!
Apoplexy, they say!
No—poison! His water carafe was tainted!
The alarm was louder this time. A steward was not a missing guard. He was a recognized, if disliked, official. An investigation was launched by the Chamberlain, a weary old man with no love for drama.
Just as I predicted, the strongbox was opened. The ledger with its ghost-entries and the mysterious 'V & Flame' symbol was found. The Chamberlain's face, according to Elara's later report, went grim. He immediately sealed the office and sent for the Captain of the Guard.
The palace was abuzz with theories. A disgruntled merchant Gorven had cheated? A rival steward? The symbol was the talk of the servants—some whispered it was the mark of a secret society, others of a disgraced noble house.
No one looked at the dying seventh prince.
But someone looked at the symbol.
That evening, as twilight bled into night, I received my first visitor.
The door to my room opened without a knock. The man who entered was not a guard, nor a servant. He was tall, dressed in robes of deep burgundy edged with subtle gold thread that shimmered with restrained heat. He had sharp, patrician features and hair the colour of ash, swept back. His eyes were the most striking thing—a calm, intelligent grey that held no pity, only assessment.
Prince Victus. Second in line. The cunning brother with a weak fire affinity.
He closed the door softly behind him and regarded me where I lay, feigning sleep.
"You can drop the act, Kieran," he said, his voice smooth, devoid of warmth. "I know you've been out of this room. I know you visited the north cellars. And I know a steward is dead under remarkably convenient circumstances."
Ice flooded my veins, but the void in my chest absorbed the shock, leaving my mind clear. I opened my eyes and slowly pushed myself up to sit against the headboard, saying nothing.
He didn't approach. He leaned against the wall near the door, a picture of casual control. "Gorven was a useful tool, but a blunt one. His patron, however, is not. The 'V & Flame'… such a dramatic sigil. My brother Valerius would be too proud for such clumsy symbolism. He wants everyone to know his strength." A faint, cold smile touched his lips. "It's meant to point to him, you see. To cast suspicion on the Crown Prince. A rather transparent bit of misdirection."
He was studying my face for a reaction. I gave him none.
"The question is," Victus continued, "who benefits from Gorven's death and the revelation of that ledger? Not Valerius. Not me. And certainly not you… ostensibly." His grey eyes pinned me. "Unless you are not what you seem."
The silence stretched. He was testing, probing. He had pieces, but not the whole picture.
"I am a prince who is dying," I said, my voice a dry rustle. "What else could I be?"
"A resource," Victus replied instantly. "Or a problem. My mother, the late Queen, believed your mother dabbled in things best left buried. Heretics from beyond the Starless Veil. Talk of consuming truths and voids that hunger." He took a single step forward. "Did she pass on any interesting… bedtime stories, little brother?"
My blood ran cold. He knew. Not about the Star-Eater, not about my power. But he knew the taint was there, in my bloodline. He saw my survival not as an accident, but as a potential inheritance.
He wasn't here to kill me. He was here to recruit me. Or to assess a new piece on the board.
"I remember no stories," I lied. "Only that she was afraid."
"She was wise to be afraid," Victus said softly. "This court consumes the weak. But sometimes, it can forge alliances with the useful." He straightened. "Gorven's death has created a vacuum. It has also upset my elder brother's faction. This is to my advantage. For now, your continued… mysterious survival… is also to my advantage. It keeps them looking here, at this sad little room, and not at other, more pressing matters."
He was telling me he would not expose me. For now. Because my existence served his political ends.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"For you to stay alive. And to remember," he said, turning to leave. "The hand that withheld the knife today is not necessarily a friendly one. It is merely a calculated one. We may have uses for each other, you and I."
He left as silently as he came.
I sat in the dark, the cold of the void inside me now mirroring the cold realization in my mind.
I was no longer invisible. I had been seen by a predator.
And I had just graduated from a pawn in a game of assassination to a piece in a game of thrones.
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