POV: Seraphine Vale
The court dinner feels like it lasted a thousand years.
Seraphine's feet ache. Her face feels frozen in the careful smile she has been wearing since the appetizers were served. She has spent the entire evening watching. Listening. Gathering fragments of information from conversations between lords and ladies who think she is too insignificant to matter.
She has learned that Lord Voss recently purchased a second estate using money from sources outside the empire. A detail only someone paying very close attention would notice. A detail she will use to defend herself if the court ladies try to attack her again.
The screaming from the locked corridor has not returned. But Darian's coldness has. Whatever broke his control three nights ago has been carefully locked back away. He treats her now with distant courtesy — polite but unreachable. As if their moment in the hallway never happened.
Seraphine does not know which is worse. The coldness or the fact that she misses the brief glimpse of his humanity.
She climbs the stairs to her suite slowly, exhaustion dragging at every muscle. The guards nod as she passes. She is no longer watched as closely. The king has decided she is safe. Or at least predictable enough to require fewer precautions.
When she opens the door to her room, she stops.
There is a maid standing in the corner, folding towels.
It is Mira.
Seraphine's breath catches in her throat. She cannot scream. Cannot call out. Cannot do anything that might alert the guards outside. Instead, she closes the door behind her quietly and walks directly to the maid, her heart hammering.
Mira's face is different — her hair is pinned back in the plain style of palace servants, and her dress is the simple gray uniform of someone who works below stairs. But her eyes are exactly the same. Sharp. Intelligent. Loyal.
"Do not react," Mira whispers, keeping her voice low and her hands moving with the towels. "I am a new servant in the laundry. I have been here four days."
Seraphine wants to cry. Wants to run to her friend and hold her. Wants to ask a thousand questions about how she got into the palace and why she came and what she has found. But she forces herself to remain calm. Forces herself to keep folding alongside Mira as if this is a normal evening.
"Your father," Mira says quietly, her hands never stopping their work. "He was arrested, but not before he got a message out. To someone. We do not know who, but the palace servants talk, Sera. They talk constantly. The guards in your father's cell heard him asking for paper. Asking for ink. He wrote something. A letter. They do not know who it was for, but it left the palace two days ago."
A chill runs down Seraphine's spine.
Her father should be broken. Should be destroyed. Should be thinking only of his own survival. But instead, he is still scheming. Still plotting. Still connected to whatever forces are working against the king.
"What else?" Seraphine whispers, her hands mimicking Mira's movements.
"The foreign buyers never left the city," Mira continues. "They are hiding somewhere in the merchant quarter. The servants hear guards talking about searches that turned up nothing. And there is something else. The night you arrived, the guards found weapons hidden in the palace gardens. Not old ones. New ones. Recently smuggled."
Seraphine's hands freeze for just a moment, then resume their work.
The implications crash down on her. The foreign powers have allies inside the palace. They have weapons here. They are not just waiting for another chance to steal her away. They are actively preparing something. A coup. An assassination. Something large enough to require weapons hidden in the gardens.
"Has the king been told?" she asks.
"The captain of the guard knows. I heard two guards talking about it. But I do not think the king knows everything. The guards said Lord Croft ordered the information kept quiet until they could trace the sources."
Seraphine's entire body goes still.
Lord Croft. The Prime Minister. The man from the outline. The man who holds power behind the throne. The man who gives quiet orders and does not allow direct information to reach the king.
Which means the king is being isolated from the truth. Which means someone he trusts is lying to him. Which means the danger is not just outside the palace anymore.
It is inside. And it is very close.
"Sera." Mira's voice is urgent now, though still whispered. "There is something else. I found records in the laundry. Uniform records. There have been new soldiers brought into the palace guard in the last week. Soldiers no one recognizes. They have Lord Croft's personal seal on their orders, not the king's. I think—"
The door opens.
Seraphine and Mira both go absolutely silent. A guard appears, looking in with a perfunctory check. He sees nothing unusual — just a lady changing for bed and a servant folding towels. He nods and closes the door again.
When his footsteps fade down the corridor, Mira moves quickly.
"I have to go," she whispers. "If I am found in your room, it will raise questions. But Sera, listen to me. We need to move faster. Your father is still a threat. The foreign powers are still a threat. And I think—"
She stops abruptly, listening to something Seraphine cannot hear.
"Someone is coming," Mira says. "I have to leave. The servants' passage is through the wardrobe. But Sera, you have to trust me on this. The king does not know what Croft is doing. And Croft is preparing something. I can feel it."
Mira steps into the wardrobe and slides something open — a hidden door that Seraphine has never noticed. But before she disappears completely, she grabs Seraphine's hand.
"Be careful who you trust," Mira whispers. "And when I give you the signal, you need to decide if you are going to give the king the truth or use it to protect yourself."
Then she is gone, and Seraphine is alone again.
There is a knock at the door.
"Enter," Seraphine calls, her voice perfectly steady even though her mind is racing.
Captain Renn Solace opens the door. He looks at her carefully, as if assessing whether something is wrong. His eyes move to the folded towels, to the wardrobe door, to her face.
"The king requests your presence in the library," he says formally. "He has information he wishes to discuss with you about your father's associates."
Seraphine's breath catches.
The king is about to tell her something. About her father. About the plot. About something that Captain Renn clearly knows is important enough to interrupt her evening for.
But now Seraphine knows something the king does not know. Something critical. Something about soldiers with Croft's seal. Something about weapons in the gardens. Something about a Prime Minister who is keeping information from his own king.
And she has to decide, in the next moment, whether she is going to tell Darian the truth.
Or whether she is going to use what Mira has found to protect herself instead.
"Of course, Captain," she says, standing to follow him. "I am happy to help the king with his investigation."
As she walks down the corridor toward the library, Seraphine realizes that she has crossed a line. She is no longer simply trying to survive the next thirty days. She is now caught between forces far larger than herself. Forces that are moving in the shadows. Forces that are positioning pieces on a board she is only now beginning to understand.
And the king — the man who holds her life in his hands — may be one of the most dangerous pieces on that board.
Or one of the most vulnerable.
She will not know which until she looks him in the eye and decides whether to save him or save herself.