POV: Cassian Thornwell
Timeline: Day 1 – Evening, The Capital
The reports were wrong.
Cassian Thornwell set down the document he'd been reviewing for the third time and pinched the bridge of his nose, a rare concession to fatigue. The numbers didn't match. Someone had been clever about it—the discrepancies were small enough to escape casual notice, buried in columns of legitimate expenses. But they were there, patterns in the chaos that spoke of systematic embezzlement.
The question was: who benefited?
"You're still working."
Cassian didn't look up at Sir Raphael Dimitri's voice from the doorway. "Observant as always."
"It's past midnight, Cass." Raphael crossed the study without invitation, his boots silent on the thick carpet. The Knight Commander had a habit of moving like a predator even in friendly spaces—years of warfare had a way of writing itself into a man's bones. "Even you require sleep occasionally."
"Sleep is inefficient." Cassian made a notation in the margin, his handwriting precise and small. "I'll rest when this is resolved."
"That's what you said about the Pemberton affair. And the Blackwood investigation before that." Raphael dropped into the chair across from Cassian's desk, stretching out his long legs with the easy confidence of someone who'd earned the right to familiarity. "You're going to work yourself to death, and then who will the King rely on to solve his problems?"
"Someone less competent, presumably." Cassian finally looked up, meeting his friend's warm brown eyes with his own cool gray. "Was there something you needed, or did you simply come to lecture me about self-care?"
"Both." Raphael grinned, the expression transforming his scarred face from intimidating to almost handsome. "Princess Seraphina sent a message. She wants to meet tomorrow. Private audience, no record."
Cassian's attention sharpened. The King's sister rarely requested meetings, and when she did, they were never simple. "Did she indicate the subject?"
"Only that it was 'a matter of mutual interest and delicate political consideration.'" Raphael's tone made it clear what he thought of such circumlocution. "Which could mean anything from marriage proposals to assassination plots."
"Seraphina doesn't deal in marriage proposals." Cassian returned his attention to the reports, though his mind was already working through possibilities. "She's gathering allies for something. The question is what, and whether it aligns with the King's interests or her own."
"You assume those are different things."
"I assume nothing. I verify." Cassian made another notation. "Tell her I'll meet her at the private gardens, third bell after noon. And Raphael?" He looked up again, his expression hardening. "Have someone watch the approach. If this is a trap, I'd prefer to know before I walk into it."
Raphael's smile faded. "You think the Princess would betray you?"
"I think everyone would betray anyone given sufficient motivation." Cassian held his friend's gaze steadily. "The present company included, if the stakes were high enough."
"Charming worldview."
"Realistic worldview." Cassian returned to his work. "Was there anything else?"
Raphael was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was gentler than usual, almost careful. "There's a rumor going around the court. About you."
"There are always rumors about me. Specify."
"That you've been investigating House Ashford. That you're building a case against Lord Adrian."
Cassian's pen stopped moving. "Where did you hear this?"
"Multiple sources. The whispers started about two weeks ago, quiet at first, but they're growing louder." Raphael leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Is it true?"
"No."
"Then why—"
"Because someone wants people to think it's true." Cassian set down his pen with deliberate care. "Someone is laying groundwork, building a narrative. The question is why they've chosen House Ashford as a target, and why they're positioning me as the instrument of their destruction."
Raphael's expression darkened. "You're being framed."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps I'm being tested—someone wants to see how I'll react to being implicated in a scheme I'm not part of." Cassian stood, crossing to the window that overlooked the city. Valcrest sprawled below, a sea of lights and shadows. Somewhere in that sprawl, someone was playing a game with his reputation as one of the pieces.
He didn't appreciate it.
"What do you know about Lord Adrian Ashford?" Cassian asked.
"Minor northern nobility. Good reputation, manages his holdings competently, no political ambitions that I'm aware of." Raphael frowned. "Why would anyone target him? He's nobody."
"Nobody with something someone wants, presumably." Cassian watched his reflection in the dark glass—pale skin, dark hair, eyes that revealed nothing. He'd cultivated this image carefully: the cold duke, the king's calculator, a man without weaknesses. It was armor, and like all armor, it was also a prison. "The northern holdings have been disputed territory for generations. Multiple noble houses claim historical rights to various parcels of land."
"You think this is about a land grab?"
"I think it's always about resources, one way or another. Land, money, power—the specifics change, but the pattern remains." Cassian turned back to face Raphael. "I want you to investigate quietly. Find out who's been making inquiries about the Ashford properties. Check land records, marriage contracts, anything that might indicate someone positioning themselves to benefit from House Ashford's potential fall."
"And if I find something?"
"Then we'll know who's really behind this. And we can decide how to respond." Cassian returned to his desk, his mind already cataloguing possibilities and counter-moves. "In the meantime, I'll accept Princess Seraphina's invitation. Perhaps she'll reveal something useful."
Raphael stood, but he didn't leave. "Cass, if someone's trying to frame you for destroying an innocent family—"
"Then they miscalculated." Cassian's voice was cold, precise. "I've built my reputation on being thorough and accurate. Any investigation attributed to me will be scrutinized for that accuracy. If Lord Ashford is innocent, it will be provable. And when it is, the suspicion will fall back on whoever manufactured the accusations."
"Unless they're clever enough to make it look convincing."
"Then I'll have to be cleverer." Cassian met his friend's eyes. "I didn't survive this long by being predictable, Raphael. Whoever is playing this game will learn that soon enough."
Raphael nodded slowly. "Just... be careful. The closer you get to the truth, the more dangerous the people protecting it become."
"I'm always careful."
"No, you're always calculating. That's different." Raphael headed for the door, pausing at the threshold. "Get some sleep, Cass. Even weapons need maintenance."
He left before Cassian could respond.
Cassian stood alone in his study, surrounded by papers and evidence and the careful architecture of a life built on control. Raphael's words echoed uncomfortably: Even weapons need maintenance.
Was that what he'd become? A weapon, wielded by the King, aimed at problems that needed eliminating?
The thought should have bothered him more than it did.
He returned to his desk and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper. In careful script, he began making notes:
House Ashford—northern holdings, approximately 15,000 acres. Primary value: timber, some mineral rights, strategic location for border control.
Lord Adrian Ashford—age 48, married to Celeste Ashford (née Whitmore), two children. Reputation: honest to a fault, competent administrator, no known debts or scandals.
Question: Why target a minor noble house? What makes them worth destroying?
Question: Who benefits from their fall?
Question: Why implicate me in their destruction?
He stared at the questions, his mind turning them over like puzzle pieces. There was a pattern here, he could feel it. Something larger than a simple land dispute, more complex than jealousy or revenge.
Someone was orchestrating something, and they'd made the mistake of using his name to do it.
That was unacceptable.
Cassian pulled over the reports he'd been reviewing earlier—the ones with the subtle discrepancies. He'd been investigating them as part of a routine audit of crown expenditures. But now, with fresh eyes, he noticed something.
Several of the problematic expenses were connected to properties in the north. Specifically, properties adjacent to Ashford lands.
His pen moved quickly, underlining connections, drawing lines between data points. A picture began to emerge—not complete, but suggestive. Someone had been quietly acquiring properties around the Ashford holdings for the past three years. Small purchases, nothing that would draw attention individually. But together, they formed a pattern of encirclement.
Someone was positioning themselves for consolidation.
And if House Ashford fell, if their lands were seized by the Crown and then auctioned off to pay for their alleged crimes...
Whoever had been buying up surrounding properties would be perfectly positioned to acquire the Ashford lands at a fraction of their true value.
It was elegant. Ruthless. And it required someone with significant capital, political influence, and patience.
Cassian's mind supplied a short list of candidates. At the top: Marquess Julian Everhart.
He sat back, fingers steepled, thinking.
Everhart had risen quickly in the King's favor over the past several years. Charming, cultured, always helpful. The kind of man who made himself indispensable through small favors and careful alliance-building. Cassian had never trusted him—the Marquess was too smooth, too perfectly calibrated.
But suspicion wasn't proof.
He needed evidence. Hard, irrefutable evidence that would connect Everhart to the land purchases, to the rumors about House Ashford, to the attempt to implicate Cassian in a manufactured investigation.
And he needed it before whatever scheme was in motion reached its conclusion.
Cassian glanced at the clock. Half past midnight. In six hours, he had a meeting with the King to discuss border security. In twelve hours, he'd meet with Princess Seraphina. In between, he needed to sleep, review three separate reports, and somehow find time to investigate a conspiracy that was using him as its unwitting instrument.
He should have been tired.
Instead, he felt energized in a way he hadn't experienced in months. Years, perhaps. There was a clarity to having a real problem to solve, something more complex than routine administrative investigations.
Someone had made him a player in their game without his consent.
He intended to make them regret that decision.
POV: Evangeline Ashford
Timeline: Day 2 – Morning
Evangeline woke before dawn, her mind already racing.
She'd dreamed of the scaffold again—that final moment when Cassian Thornwell's eyes had met hers across the crowd. But in the dream, instead of dying, he'd spoken. A single word that echoed as she woke: Why?
She pushed back the covers and crossed to her desk, where Helena's cousin's letters lay scattered like tea leaves waiting to be read. She'd gone through them twice yesterday, but now she examined them with fresh attention, looking for patterns rather than facts.
The cousin—Mary, her name was—wrote about court life with the slightly detached bemusement of someone who observed the nobility without being part of it. But between descriptions of menus and complaints about difficult guests, there were observations that mattered.
The Duke received a delegation from House Pemberton last month. They left looking pale and shaken. Two weeks later, Lord Pemberton was arrested for embezzlement. The evidence, they say, was provided by the Duke himself.
Princess Seraphina visited the Duke's residence again yesterday. Third time this month. The staff thinks it's romantic, but I'm not so sure. They speak too seriously for courtship, and the Princess always leaves looking troubled.
The Marquess Everhart seems to visit frequently as well, though never when the Princess is present. Interesting, that. The Duke receives him cordially but never warmly. I get the sense he doesn't trust the Marquess, though he's too polite to show it.
That last observation made Evangeline sit up straighter. If Cassian didn't trust Everhart, perhaps he wasn't the willing participant in the conspiracy she'd assumed.
Perhaps he was being used, just as she had been.
The thought was uncomfortable, unwelcome. It complicated the clean narrative of revenge she'd been constructing. Monsters were easier to fight than victims.
But she couldn't ignore the evidence. Not if she wanted the truth.
A knock at her door interrupted her thoughts. "Miss Evangeline? Are you awake?"
Helena. Evangeline crossed to admit her, finding the maid carrying a breakfast tray and looking concerned.
"Your mother asked me to check on you. She said you had nightmares—she heard you crying out in your sleep."
Evangeline hadn't realized she'd made noise. "I'm fine. Just bad dreams."
"The same ones as yesterday?" Helena set down the tray and studied her face. "You look like you haven't slept at all."
"I slept enough." Evangeline poured herself tea, grateful for something to do with her hands. "Helena, your cousin Mary—does she ever mention anything about the Duke's past? About what made him... the way he is?"
Helena frowned thoughtfully. "She mentioned once that he keeps his late fiancée's portrait in his private study. No one's allowed to clean that room but him."
"His fiancée died, didn't she? An accident?"
"So they say." Helena's expression suggested she had doubts. "But Mary heard from one of the older servants that the lady in question—Lady Isolde Brennan—was found in the river. They ruled it an accident, saying she slipped on the rocks. But Lady Isolde was an expert horsewoman and swimmer. She knew those grounds perfectly."
"You're saying it might have been suicide."
"I'm saying it's odd." Helena straightened the tea service unnecessarily, not meeting Evangeline's eyes. "And I'm saying that the Duke changed after her death. It became colder, more isolated. Mary said the old servants remember him being different before—still serious, still brilliant, but warmer. More human."
Evangeline absorbed this, fitting it into the growing picture of Cassian Thornwell. A man marked by tragedy, who'd built walls so high even he couldn't see over them anymore. A man who'd perhaps learned the hard way that emotional connection was dangerous.
It didn't excuse his role in destroying her family.
But it explained him.
"There's something else," Helena said quietly. "Mary's latest letter arrived yesterday, after you went to bed. I thought you'd want to see it immediately."
She pulled a folded paper from her apron pocket. Evangeline took it, noting the date—written just three days ago.
Dearest Helena,
The most extraordinary thing has happened. The Duke has been asking questions about House Ashford—Lord Adrian specifically. He wanted to know if I'd heard any gossip about investigations or accusations. When I said no, he seemed... relieved? It was odd.
Then yesterday, he had Sir Raphael conduct a private inquiry into property purchases in the northern territories. Very hush-hush. The Knight Commander looked grim when he reported back.
I think something's brewing. Something political and dangerous. The Duke has that look he gets when he's hunting someone—cold and focused. But this time, I'm not sure he's the hunter. He might be prey.
Do be careful if you hear anything about House Ashford down there. I have a bad feeling about all of this.
Your loving cousin,
Mary
Evangeline read the letter twice, her heart beating faster with each word.
Cassian was investigating the conspiracy against her father. He was aware someone was using his name, and he was trying to find out who.
Which meant he was innocent.
Which meant she'd spent five years hating the wrong person.
Which meant—
"Miss Evangeline?" Helena's voice was concerned. "You've gone pale. What is it?"
Evangeline set down the letter carefully, her hands shaking. "Everything I believed was wrong."
"I don't understand."
How could she explain? That she'd died believing Cassian Thornwell destroyed her family, only to return and discover he might have been another victim in the same game? That she'd wasted her last years seeking revenge against a man who'd never actually harmed her?
"The Duke," Evangeline said slowly, "isn't the villain. He's being framed, just like my father will be. Someone's orchestrating both their downfalls simultaneously."
Helena's eyes widened. "Marquess Everhart."
"It has to be." Evangeline stood, pacing the length of her room. Her mind was racing, rearranging everything she thought she knew. "He benefits from both. With Father destroyed, he can acquire our northern holdings. With the Duke discredited, he removes the King's most effective investigator—the one person who might have uncovered his schemes."
"And you were going to seduce the Duke to destroy him," Helena said quietly. "But if he's innocent—"
"Then I need to warn him." Evangeline stopped pacing, her decision crystallizing. "I need to get to the capital immediately. Not in three weeks—now. Before Everhart's plans advance any further."
"Your father will never allow it. Not without explanation."
Helena was right. Evangeline couldn't simply announce she was traveling to the capital alone. She needed a reason, a pretext that wouldn't raise questions.
Her mother's voice drifted up from downstairs, calling for someone. Her mother, who had prophetic dreams. Who saw the future in fragments and was desperate for someone to believe her.
An idea formed, audacious and risky.
"What if Mother invited me to visit her sister in the capital early?" Evangeline said slowly. "What if she had a dream—a premonition—that convinced her I needed to be there sooner rather than later?"
"You want to manipulate your mother's gift?" Helena looked skeptical. "That seems—"
"I'm not manipulating it. I'm channeling it toward the truth." Evangeline met Helena's eyes. "My mother knows something's wrong. She dreams of disaster. What if I give her permission to trust those dreams? What if I ask her to use her gift to protect this family?"
It was a gamble. But Evangeline was learning that sometimes the only way forward was through truth, however carefully deployed.
"I'll need your help," Evangeline continued. "We need to make this seem natural, not forced. Can you plant suggestions with the other staff? Mention how the Ashford ladies sometimes take early trips to the capital for the season? Make it seem like a normal thing to do?"
Helena considered, then nodded slowly. "I can do that. But Miss Evangeline—what will you do once you reach the capital? If the Duke is innocent and being framed, how will you convince him to trust you? A minor noble's daughter approaching him with conspiracy theories will sound mad."
"I'll need proof," Evangeline said. "Evidence that connects Everhart to the land purchases, to the rumors, to everything." She thought of Thomas's lessons yesterday. "And I'll need to be careful. Strategic. I can't approach the Duke directly—that would be too suspicious. But I can position myself where he'll notice me. Where I can demonstrate that I understand what's happening and that I might be useful."
"You're still planning to seduce him," Helena observed. "Just for different reasons now."
"I'm planning to become his ally." Evangeline corrected. "Whether that requires seduction remains to be seen."
She crossed to her wardrobe and began pulling out dresses, assessing them with new eyes. She'd been planning to dress attractively but modestly, to present herself as intelligent but non-threatening. Now she needed to project something different: competence, capability, someone worth noticing for reasons beyond romance.
"Helena, do you think it's possible to love someone and hate them at the same time?"
The maid looked up from where she was refolding linens. "I think it's possible to feel a great many contradictory things about a person, especially when you don't know them as well as you thought you did. Why?"
Evangeline touched the letters from Mary, thinking of the cold duke who kept his dead fiancée's portrait in his study. The brilliant investigator who'd been marked as a weapon against her family. The man she'd spent her last years destroying, only to discover he might have been the one person who could have saved them.
"Because I think that's what I'm about to do," Evangeline said quietly. "Spend a great deal of time with someone I thought I knew, only to discover I knew nothing at all."
"That sounds exhausting."
"It sounds necessary." Evangeline turned away from the wardrobe, her expression hardening with determination. "We have three weeks until the official start of the season. But I'm not waiting three weeks. I'm going to convince my parents to let me leave within the week. And once I'm in the capital, I'm going to find out exactly what Marquess Everhart is planning."
"And then?"
"And then I'm going to stop him." Evangeline met Helena's eyes. "By any means necessary."