The bells of Thornleigh Palace tolled in their sonorous bronze voices, each peal shivering through the alabaster colonnades and spilling into the frost-sweet air like the measured breath of some ancient colossus. The courtyard lay spread beneath the pale, wintry sun — a vast expanse of cobblestones polished by centuries of carriage wheels and the discreet steps of silk-shod nobility.
From the shadows of the gilded gates rolled forth a carriage lacquered to a black-lustre sheen, its wheels sighing over the stones as if reluctant to disturb the morning's stillness. Upon its crest gleamed the argent sigil of house Blackwood, all ivy-wound swords and coronets, catching the light with a cold, imperious fire.
The door was drawn open by a liveried footman, his gloves a white as unyielding as frost, and down from the dim, velvet interior descended Lady Katherine virelle — her heels touching the cobble with the grace of moonlight alighting upon a quiet lake. Her gown, the colour of pale chrysanthemums under snow, moved like whispered secrets about her ankles. Jewels lay upon her throat not as mere ornaments, but as if the stars themselves had lowered their crowns to rest upon her skin.
Beside her, emerging with the quiet authority of a man accustomed to both command and scrutiny, stood Seraphim castellan, her husband — tall as a cathedral spire and robed in shadowed navy, the gold embroidery at his cuffs smouldering faintly like embers banked within a hearth. his gloved hand extended for hers, a gesture as precise as a military salute yet softened by something unspoken.
Together, they began their progress across the courtyard toward the yawning bronze doors of Thornleigh. The palace itself loomed ahead — a leviathan of stone and history, every arch and cornice singing in the language of empires. Its windows, tall and narrow as cathedral confessionals, seemed to watch their approach with a kind of cold, imperious awareness, as though the building itself were a witness to every treachery and triumph within its walls.
The air was rich with the mingled scents of oiled leather, distant lilac gardens, and the faint iron tang of the frost. Courtiers and high-ranking officials, their silks whispering like autumn leaves, stood poised along the marble steps, their eyes following Lady Katherine's ascent with the quiet hunger of those who measure the strength of a rival's shadow.
And still the bells tolled — not with haste, but with the patient inevitability of fate itself, as if to remind Thornleigh that every step across its threshold was but another stitch in the vast, unending tapestry of its intrigues.
The air was taut, as though the very tapestries that hung within the grand vestibule might tremble under the unspoken accusations that drifted between the assembled nobles. Faces were carefully schooled into masks of composure, yet in their eyes flickered the same question — Who among us wields the unseen blade? Who stains our court with these assassinations?
As she passed, courtiers bent ever so slightly, some with genuine respect, others with the brittle courtesy of those who feared to be noticed. The marquis's presence compelled them to part as though she were a prow cutting through darkened waters, leaving eddies of murmured titles and reverent nods in her wake.
Within the great court hall — its columns rising like the ribs of some ancient cathedral — the hush was near-sacred. The light from the high windows painted the marbled floor in long, gilded shafts, yet the warmth could not dispel the frost of unease that clung to the air.
There, near the dais, stood Duke Alexandrino, a figure of elegance marred by the faintest crease of concern upon his brow. Lady Katherine advanced with the elegance of a drawn rapier — graceful, but carrying the threat of consequence. Her gloved hand lifted, a gesture both polite and precise.
"My lord," she began, her voice a silken thread woven through the tense air, "it grieves me to speak thus in this hall, yet I must. My nephew — August — has been poisoned."
The words, though softly spoken, fell upon the court like a peal of iron bells. Heads turned, the hush deepened into stillness, and in that moment it seemed even the golden chandeliers leaned lower to hear the reply.
The duke's face shifted with a flicker of astonishment, the kind that is too swiftly mastered to be fully read. "First the others… and now him?" His voice was low, yet it bore the weary weight of a man whose hands could not dam the flood. "two noblemen slain by shadowed blades and rops… and now your kin stricken by poison." He exhaled, the sigh heavy with the sense of a kingdom unraveling thread by thread. "I don't know how to keep pace with this—this unholy litany of murder."
Katherine's gaze, bright as tempered glass, did not waver. "You will keep pace," she said, her tone swelling with an anger that was as regal as it was dangerous. "You will not let this pass into whispers and dust. He is my only boy in this godforsaken universe—the last star in my sky—and I will not have his light stolen by some faceless viper slithering in your court."
Her hand, gloved in lace, pressed against the carved arm of a chair, as if steadying herself against the violence of her own emotion. "I demand justice, Your Grace. I demand that the viper be dragged from whatever shadow he inhabits, and that his head be struck from his neck before the sun next sets. If it takes every guard, every spy, and every oath in this palace—so be it. But I will have him found."
Around them, the courtiers exchanged glances, their fear writ plainly in the darting of eyes and the tremor of still hands. For in her words, they heard not mere grief, but the tolling of a bell that might summon the reckoning upon them all.
"My lord Duke," she began, her tone gilded with a restraint that trembled beneath the weight of fury, "this affront to my blood shall not be smothered beneath the polite silences of court. I demand—not plead—that every stone of this palace be overturned, every shadow hunted to its root. There are vermin afoot, and I will have their names writ in confession before the sun dares rise again."
The Duke Alexandrino's gaze, sharpened by years of statecraft, flickered—just for a breath—to the frost-laced windows where the winter light lay like thin silver over glass. He could not confess aloud the unease threading through his chest, nor the peculiar pattern to these attacks, for the truth—if truth it could be called—was a tapestry far darker than any courtier's whisper.
"My lady," he replied, low and measured, "be assured, this will not pass into dust unavenged. I shall draw my hounds from every quarter of the realm. Not a soul will pass through these gates unmarked."
But Katherine leaned closer, the hem of her gown whispering like restless surf, her eyes—hard as polished tangerine—holding his own with an almost imperial claim upon his conscience. "Then swear it," she pressed, "upon your honour, upon your name, that you will follow this trail to the bone."
For a moment, the Duke's breath clouded between them, the chamber heavy with a silence that felt almost sentient. Somewhere beyond those walls, an unseen design tightened its threads—drawn by hands neither dared to name.
The palace doors did not open so much as they surrendered.
Two great slabs of carved oak swung inward on hinges that groaned like ancient chains, the sound carrying through the vaulted hall until even the murmuring of silk and the clink of glass stilled.
Caldris Rheyne stepped across the threshold.
Light from the high arched windows caught on his hair—silver-grey, almost metallic in its sheen—falling loose to his shoulders, as though no courtly ribbon had dared restrain it. His eyes, a tempestuous steel, swept the hall with the wary fury of a man long accused and longer condemned. Behind him moved another figure, tall as a wraith and twice as silent, a cloak falling in black, heavy folds. The mask he wore was split clean down the middle—white on one side, black on the other—its expression unreadable, its gaze fixed only on his master's back.
Whispers began at the edges of the room, as brittle as frost crackling underfoot.
"It cannot be—"
"After all these years—"
"He dares—"
Nobles, once lords of poise, forgot themselves in the suddenness of his return. Fans snapped shut with startled cracks, gloves twitched at fingers, and one minor baron's wineglass trembled until it bled crimson onto the marble. Caldris moved forward regardless, each step echoing in the hush like a judge's gavel striking wood.
From her place near the dais, Lady Katherine felt her heart give an unsteady jolt. The last time she had seen that face, there had been smoke in the air and a body on the cobblestones.
The guards shifted, hands at hilts, but before they could advance, the Duke—tall, unbending, his gold signet glinting—lifted one ringed hand. The motion froze them where they stood.
"Let him speak," the Duke said, voice deep enough to fill the hall without need for force.
Caldris stopped at the foot of the dais. For a moment, the light fell just so, illuminating the sharp lines of his face—neither aged nor softened by time, only weathered like steel that had refused to rust. His words, when they came, cut with the same temper.
"Years I have kept to the shadows," he began, his tone low but carrying. "Years of accusation without proof, of whispers curdling into verdicts. And yet—here I stand. Tell me—" his gaze swept the hall, pinning each noble like a hawk's talon on prey, "—if this slaughter were my doing, would I be fool enough to walk into your teeth by my own will?"
A ripple of unease moved through the crowd. Some nobles looked to one another as if the question had loosened something they dared not admit.
The Duke's eyes narrowed—not in suspicion, but calculation. "No man courting survival would," he conceded, the faintest shift in his posture acknowledging the truth in Caldris's words.
Somewhere in the back, Katherine exhaled, though she did not know if it was in relief or the first stirrings of dread. Because if Caldris spoke the truth… then the one truly guilty was still free.
And in the shadow behind him, the masked servant tilted his head, as though listening to something none of them could hear.
Across the marbled expanse of the court, where whispers curled through the air like pale serpents seeking a warm ear, every noble seemed to breathe suspicion and perfume in equal measure. Jewelled sleeves brushed against gilded chairs; fans snapped open and shut in the soft warfare of gossip. Their voices, hushed yet venomous, wound around one name only—Caldris Rheyne.
And yet, among the silks and brocade, there lingered one figure whose satisfaction coiled in the shadows like a cat in sunlight. His smile was the kind that knew the ending to a tale long before the first act had begun. Though his attire was the mirror of nobility—velvet lapels, a ring heavy enough to anchor a lesser man—his blood did not share their heraldry. He was no lord, no count, no bearer of crest; only a fox dressed in the plumage of the very hens he stalked.
The warm light caught him as if in sly conspiracy, glancing along the high arc of his cheekbone before vanishing into the cowl of his collar. Every movement of his gloved hands was deliberate, as though each gesture were part of a greater stagecraft only he could see. From behind the mask of polite interest, his eyes drank the spectacle—Caldris Rheyne standing defiant beneath the vaulted ceiling, the Duke's hand raised like a commandment, the gathered court swallowing their own surprise in bitter drafts.
Here, in this grand hall of veiled daggers and perfumed lies, he was a spectator and an architect both. Let them whisper, he thought. Let their tongues sew tapestries of blame and scandal. For him, unlike them, he did not simply watch the play—he had written half of the script.