The official audit began immediately.
Kaelen had spent the afternoon confined to his cold tower, allowing Seraphina the time to establish her command presence and conduct her initial empirical assessment. He knew precisely what she would find: a garrison on the brink of collapse, documented by forged records that confirmed its desperation, its magical assets nonexistent, and its political value zero.
Seraphina summoned him to the quartermaster's hall shortly after the sun began its perpetual, slow dip toward the horizon. The hall was now transformed. A massive, central iron stove blasted heat, creating an island of warmth in the ruined fortress. Imperial Swords stood guard at every entrance, their Mana-Sensitive Shields placed prominently, their green lights bathing the room in an oppressive, magical certainty.
Seraphina sat at a salvaged, massive oak table, surrounded by meticulously ordered stacks of Varrick's falsified reports and Jarek's reorganized supply logs. She wore a simple, unadorned uniform beneath her cloak, suggesting efficiency over rank.
A single, high-ranking officer, a Silverblood named Commander Lycus, stood behind her, his face impassive.
Kaelen entered, supported by his cane, moving with the slow, labored gait of a man who found every step an effort. He consciously exacerbated the tremors in his hand, clutching the head of the cane tightly.
"Your Highness," Seraphina greeted him, her voice lacking any honorific warmth. It was the detached formality of a magistrate addressing a petitioner. "Please be seated. I require your confirmation on the initial audit findings."
She did not wait for him to settle into the rough wooden chair offered.
"The logistical assessment confirms that Stonehaven is currently operating at eighteen percent capacity for winter stores and twenty-five percent personnel capacity. Furthermore, Captain Varrick's records indicate no significant magical practitioners among your fifteen-man complement, and my Shields confirm no active ambient cultivation or defensive enchantments of any meaningful tier."
She tapped the documents with a clean, gloved finger. "This suggests the Empress's initial belief that this post is politically motivated exile, not militarily viable is accurate. Do you dispute this accounting, Prince Alaric?"
Kaelen adopted the persona of the broken Prince, the one who saw the world through a lens of aristocratic grievance and self-pity. He did not meet her eyes, instead focusing on the condensation freezing on a window frame behind her.
"Dispute it, Lady Seraphina?" Kaelen managed a weak, bitter laugh that ended in a forced cough. "Why would I? The truth is precisely as you see it. I am a noble sent to die on the Empress's whims, and Stonehaven is merely the stage for my slow, inevitable consumption by the North."
He leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially, adding a layer of aristocratic pettiness to his defeat.
"It is far easier for the Empress to dissolve the Silverblood alliance through my death than through a political repudiation of our contract. She has found the most efficient solution. You, Lady Seraphina, are simply here to sign the death certificate."
Seraphina watched him closely. This was the expected response: resentment, humiliation, and a correct, if self-serving, analysis of the political situation. It was tragic, but predictable.
"Your resignation to fate is noted, Your Highness. However, my duty is not to confirm political gossip, but to assess tactical risk. The continued presence of an Imperial Prince, regardless of his physical state, presents a target. You are, by default, an asset of the state. I require a full accounting of the Harpy-Fiend attack you survived two weeks ago."
Kaelen rubbed his temple, simulating the headache of his supposed illness. "The account is simple, Lady Seraphina. I was cultivating—or attempting to, as Varrick's sensors surely confirm—when the creature attacked. It was an accident. I was lucky. I used the only remaining reserve of arcane power I had access to, which, as your sensors confirm, is now exhausted. I am spent. The creature is dead. The details are messy and irrelevant. I was a desperate animal fighting for its miserable life."
He made the explanation sound entirely emotional and localized, carefully avoiding any mention of the deliberate, cold calculation that led to the Harpy-Fiend's demise. The explanation confirmed Seraphina's assumption: the Prince was an unstable wild card whose survival was pure luck, not competence.
She moved on, her expression softening slightly in practiced, feigned sympathy, preparing to deliver the final, crushing blow.
"Then, let us be frank, Your Highness. If your recovery stalls, and the garrison continues to operate at a deficit, my recommendation will be to dissolve the contract on the grounds of Non-Viability of Strategic Command. This is a clean, defensible legal position that saves both our houses from prolonged embarrassment. Do you have any final argument as to why the Silverblood house should maintain its alliance with an heir who is, by his own admission, waiting for the inevitable?"
Kaelen lifted his head, his eyes finally meeting hers. The look was still infused with bitterness, but now, a flicker of something far colder and older ran beneath the surface… the Arch-Mage's professional contempt for political naivety.
"Why should you care, Lady Seraphina?" Kaelen repeated the question, his voice dropping another octave, forcing her to lean in slightly to catch the low, strained sound. "You should not care about me, the worthless pawn. You should care about what the Empress is doing with the pieces she has moved elsewhere."
He paused, collecting his thoughts as if dragging them up from a feverish depth, his body shivering visibly in the sudden, manufactured cold of his performance.
"The Silverblood house requires two things for its continued prosperity: secure northern ports for the winter fleet deployment, and reliable access to deep-veined Ironwood from the Western Marches for hull construction. You know this."
Seraphina's posture shifted immediately. Her duty was the strategic and financial defense of her house, and Kaelen had just moved the conversation from his personal humiliation to her core economic interest.
"Continue, Your Highness," she said, her voice now edged with professional inquiry.
"The Empress and Prince Darius have, for months, been quietly engineering the financial collapse of the two primary shipping guilds controlling the Ironwood timber routes in the Western Marches," Kaelen stated, the Arch-Mage's memory of the Empire's massive and shifting economy providing the perfect, devastating detail. "They are using proxies in the Royal Exchequer to issue predatory, high-interest stabilization loans that they know cannot be repaid by mid-winter."
He waved his hand dismissively, as if the matter were beneath his aristocratic notice. "Why? Because they want to break Silverblood's virtual monopoly on that raw resource. If those two guilds fail, the supply shifts to three minor Northern Barons, all of whom are privately leveraged by Prince Darius's creditors. By spring, the price of deep-veined Ironwood will rise thirty percent, and the Silverblood fleet construction will stall. You will arrive at the Capital next month only to find that your house's primary strategic resource has been weaponized against you, disguised as a common market correction."
Commander Lycus behind Seraphina stiffened visibly. This was not the rambling of a sick prince; this was precise, high-level financial intelligence that required access to the Royal Exchequer's private audit ledgers, information guarded with lethal secrecy.
Seraphina's face remained neutral, but the sapphire intensity in her eyes intensified. "Do you have proof of these loans, Your Highness? Names, dates?"
Kaelen shook his head slowly, the weak movement reinforcing his illness. "No. I am a sick prisoner here, Lady Seraphina. I only know that before I left the Capital, I heard Lord Elam, the man who stole Sergeant Jarek's pension, bragging to the Imperial Banker about the 'timber correction' that would soon bankrupt a certain 'haughty northern house.' You see, my misfortune is a distraction, allowing the real rot to flourish elsewhere."
He had masterfully linked the micro-injustice of Jarek's demotion by Lord Elam to the macro-economic threat of Ironwood control, creating a seamless web of political corruption.
He then dropped the second, more dangerous piece of bait. One designed to tap into Seraphina's military background.
"But the Ironwood is merely money. More concerning is the Northern Border Command itself," Kaelen continued, his focus shifting back to the massive, soot-stained map on the far wall. "The Empress's obsession with capturing the Dreadlord is costly and stupid. The Dreadlord is a static variable; he is a shield, not a sword. The true risk is the power vacuum created by the Arch-Mage's death and the subsequent purging of his veterans."
Seraphina leaned back, her body language still closed, but her mind now working furiously. She was a general's daughter; she understood military doctrine.
"The purge was necessary to secure the Capital after the Arch-Mage's treason, Your Highness."
"Treason, yes," Kaelen conceded with a shrug of his thin shoulders. "But look at the map, Lady Seraphina. The Empress dismissed or exiled every commander with experience in coordinated, large-scale counter-attacks. She replaced them with nobles who have zero operational history, only court loyalty. The entire eastern flank, from the Glacier Pass down to the Fork River, is now commanded by Prince Darius's old friend, Baroness Elsinor."
He let the name hang there, a name that meant nothing to Varrick but was loaded with meaning to a Silverblood strategist.
"Baroness Elsinor is famed for her court dresses, not her siegecraft," Kaelen finished, his tone dripping with the sarcasm of a noble who knew better. "She is a political choice. And she is operating on a two-month-old intelligence report that grossly underestimates the recent consolidation of three major Skitter-Fiend Hives deep within the Glacier Pass. She believes they are scattered packs; they are, in fact, an organized, migratory swarm. If she is attacked, her troops will break formation within the first hour. The only thing preventing a full breach of the eastern border this winter is the fact that the Dreadlord is acting as a predictable, heavy counter-weight."
Kaelen let the implications sink in. He wasn't just complaining about political failures; he was predicting an imminent, massive military disaster on the eastern frontier based on secret knowledge of enemy deployment.
He paused, resting his head against the back of the chair, panting slightly as if the effort of talking had completely exhausted him.
"Stonehaven is a miserable pile of stone, Lady Seraphina. But it is politically irrelevant. The Ironwood route is a knife aimed at your house's financial throat. The eastern border command is a disaster waiting for the first blizzard. If you want to dissolve our contract, you have my full blessing. But you should leave this fortress immediately and use your three days to investigate the true threats the Empress is happily creating to distract from her own domestic power grabs."
He stared blankly into the middle distance, playing the part of the defeated Prince who had just spitefully tossed his most dangerous information onto the table, convinced it wouldn't save him anyway.
Seraphina did not speak for a full minute. She glanced at Commander Lycus, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head; this information is too specific to be dismissed. She then looked back at Kaelen, her face a mask of calculated neutrality.
The Sixth Prince was a political and physical washout, but the strategic mind operating behind the mask of fever and weakness was utterly terrifying. His assessment was precise, holistic, and, most damningly, impossible for a man exiled to obtain. He had not offered a plea; he had offered a chillingly accurate summary of the Empire's greatest vulnerabilities.
"Your information is… noted, Prince Alaric," Seraphina finally stated, her voice returning to the flat professionalism of command, but now subtly charged with a new current of interest. "My assessment was based on tactical readiness and magical progress. You have instead presented a case for political necessity and strategic intelligence."
She collected her papers slowly, her eyes never leaving him.
"The terms of the contract are still three days, Your Highness. But I find that the scope of my investigation has expanded. I will begin dispatching covert scouts to the Western Marches and the Eastern Glacier Pass immediately to confirm your assertions."
Seraphina stood, her imposing height emphasizing the shift in power dynamic. She was no longer just the divorce attorney; she was the investigator.
"Your illness will be protected for the duration, Your Highness. I will not have my primary source of... disgruntled intelligence collapsing before I can confirm the veracity of these claims."
She dismissed him with a curt nod, the meeting over. Kaelen rose slowly, leaning on his cane, playing the part to the very end. As he walked toward the door, he allowed himself a single, inward smile.
Seraphina was hooked. The Silverblood Ultimatum was now on hold, replaced by the strategic priority of uncovering the truth behind the Arch-Mage's calculated bait. His plan was proceeding precisely as designed.
The worthless pawn had just maneuvered the Queen onto a new chessboard.