The Great Hall, still smelling faintly of beeswax and last night's wine, had been transformed once again. The silken banners were gone, replaced by a stark, utilitarian dread. This was no longer a ballroom; it was a tribunal.
Lysander sat upon his simple throne, the picture of glacial authority. I sat beside him, not on a lesser chair, but on one of identical height and make. My posture was a mirror of his: back straight, hands resting calmly on the carved arms, my face a mask of cool impartiality. We were two judges, a united front of ice and calculation.
Before us, at a table groaning under the weight of ledgers and scrolls, sat Baron Hoff. He was a man unraveling. His florid face was pale and sheened with sweat, his fingers leaving damp prints on the vellum as he desperately shuffled papers. Flanking him were Steward Valerius and a sharp-eyed, severe woman I recognized as the Keep's head archivist.
The audience was select but potent: Marquess Stonewall, a grim statue of judgment; Earl Frostforge, watching with the analytical eye of a man who understood the flow of resources; and Captain Killian, a silent promise of enforcement.
"The figures from the autumn harvest, my Lord Baron," Valerius intoned, his voice dry as dust. "Your records indicate a yield of two thousand bushels, taxed at the standard rate." He slid a ledger across the table. "The receipts from the Merchant's League, however, show purchases from your estate totaling twenty-five hundred bushels at that time. A rather… prolific five hundred bushels that seems to have escaped both the soil and the tax rolls."
Hoff mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief. "A—a clerical error, I assure you! My former granary master was tragically inept!"
"Tragically, he agrees with you," I said, my voice cutting through the stuffy air like a scalpel. All eyes snapped to me. I kept my gaze on Hoff, a slight, cold smile on my lips. "In his extensive confession to Captain Killian, he was quite specific about the orders he received to maintain two separate ledgers. One for your eyes, and one for the Duke's."
I let the words hang in the air. This was the villainess, not as a sneering caricature, but as a precise, intellectual force. I was not here to shriek accusations; I was here to present an irrefutable case.
Lysander did not look at me. His focus was entirely on Hoff, a predator watching its prey stumble. "Explain the discrepancy, Hoff," he commanded, his voice devoid of all warmth.
"Slander!" the Baron blustered, his jowls quivering. "The word of a convicted thief against mine! This is an outrage! I will not be spoken to in this manner, especially not by a—a Southron interloper who understands nothing of our ways!"
It was the wrong move. A direct attack on me, a challenge to Lysander's publicly declared favor.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Lysander didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"You will," the Duke said, the words soft and deadly, "address the Duchess with the respect her title and her intellect demand. Or I will have Captain Killian remind you of your place. The choice is yours."
Killian took a single, deliberate step forward. The message was clear.
Hoff deflated like a pierced wineskin.
I seized the moment, not with malice, but with chilling logic. "Let us move past the missing grain, my Lord Baron," I said, as if offering him a lifeline. "A tedious matter. Let's discuss the more interesting numbers. The silver." I picked up a single sheet of paper from the archivist's pile. "The payments from a certain southern merchant, one Alistair Croft, no relation to our esteemed Baroness, for 'consultancy fees.' Fees that curiously coincide with the dates of the missing grain shipments and are deposited in an account in a capital bank under the name… 'Florian Hoff.' Your second son, I believe?"
The color drained completely from Hoff's face. He hadn't expected this. He'd thought we would be chasing bushels of wheat, not following silver trails across the kingdom.
"How did you…?" he whispered, his eyes wide with terror.
"The world runs on information, Baron," I said, setting the paper down with a quiet finality. "I simply know how to read it."
Lysander finally moved. He rose from his throne, a slow, deliberate unfurling of power. He walked around the table until he stood behind Hoff's chair, looking down at the man's balding head.
"Treason is one thing," Lysander murmured, his voice a whisper of frost in the silent hall. "Stupidity is another. You stole from me. You lied to me. But your greatest sin, Hoff, was thinking you could hide your avarice behind the skirt of a 'Southron interloper.' You underestimated my wife. And for that, there is no forgiveness."
He placed his hands on the back of Hoff's chair, leaning down so his words were for the Baron alone, but we all heard them.
"Your titles are forfeit. Your lands are now mine. Your personal assets are confiscated to repay what you have stolen." He paused, letting the utter ruin sink in. "But I am not a wasteful man. I will grant you and your family your lives. You will be escorted to a small holding on the Northern Ridge. You will live out your days there, as a freeholder. A reminder of what happens when loyalty is bartered for silver."
It was a punishment far worse than death for a man like Hoff. A complete and total reduction to nothingness. Stripped of everything, exiled to the harsh, remote edge of the world he had tried to cheat.
Hoff began to weep, great, ragged sobs of despair.
Lysander paid him no more mind. He turned to me and offered his arm. The hearing was over.
As we walked from the hall, the stunned silence of the other lords ringing in our ears, he spoke, his voice for me alone.
"You eviscerated him," he said, a note of dark awe in his tone.
"You provided the stage," I replied, my hand resting lightly on his arm. "I merely spoke the lines."
He stopped just outside the door, in the empty corridor. He turned to face me, his stormy eyes searching mine.
"You were magnificent," he said, and this time, the words were stripped bare of strategy and performance. They were simply true.
He didn't kiss me. He did something more profound. He raised my hand—the one that had held the damning evidence—and turned it over. He pressed his lips to my palm, a kiss of reverence for the mind that had wielded the weapon, for the cunning that had secured his victory.
It was a kiss that acknowledged the villainess and cherished her. It was the ultimate taming—not by breaking her spirit, but by valuing it so completely that she chose to wield her sharpness only for him.
"The seat is yours, Elara," he vowed against my skin. "Now and always."
And as the sound of Baron Hoff's broken sobs echoed faintly from the hall, I knew our partnership was sealed not in romance, but in the ruthless, glorious aftermath of a shared conquest. This was the love story that sold.