The silence in the tent was a third presence, a suffocating weight that pressed down on Caldan, crushing the air from his lungs. Theressan's words, his brother's inconvenient truths, echoed in the void, a poison seeping into the cracks of his fractured world.
He stared at the name on the scroll. Lady Irevya Maelthorn.
His aunt. Auren's mother. A woman whose public face was one of gentle grief and unwavering loyalty.
But the court was a place of masks. He knew that better than anyone. He himself wore one every day, a carefully constructed facade of cold indifference to hide the raging inferno within. What mask did his aunt wear?
He remembered her, years ago, doting on a young Auren, her eyes alight with a fierce, almost desperate ambition. He remembered the whispers that had always followed her, rumors of secret meetings with powerful lords, of a bitterness that her son had been passed over in the line of succession. He had dismissed it all as the petty gossip of a jealous court.
