The hallway outside Queen Ciara's chambers felt noticeably colder once Manik stepped into it. He eased the door shut behind him, keeping one hand on the handle until the latch clicked into place without making a sound. Only then did he allow himself a slow breath. His pulse still hammered from what he'd uncovered, but years of watching nobles hide their true feelings from one another made it easy enough to smooth his expression into practiced indifference.
The photographs remained tucked safely beneath his jacket, pressed close enough that he could feel their edges whenever he breathed. Paulio. Brennda. A forgotten branch of Arthur's family. Queen Ciara had hidden them for a reason, and until Manik understood that reason, nobody else was going to learn what he'd found. Least of all Sonya. She was clever enough to connect pieces that didn't belong together, and curious enough to pull on every loose thread until the whole tapestry unraveled. This secret was too valuable to risk.
A voice interrupted his thoughts.
"Manik."
He looked up without flinching. Sonya stood several paces away, her arms folded tightly across her chest. She wasn't smiling. Her narrowed eyes moved from his face to the door behind him, then back again, studying him with the same quiet suspicion she reserved for puzzles she hadn't solved yet.
"What are you doing outside Mother's room?"
"Walking."
"Outside Mother's room."
"I don't remember that hallway being restricted."
"You were inside."
"No."
She held his gaze for several long seconds. Neither sibling seemed interested in looking away first. The silence stretched until a servant carrying folded linens quietly chose another corridor rather than walk between them.
"You lie badly," Sonya said at last.
"I lie efficiently."
"No, you don't."
A faint smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth.
"You reached that conclusion quickly."
"I've had six years of practice."
That almost earned her a smile, but Manik stopped it before it reached his face. Giving Sonya too much satisfaction was rarely worth the effort.
She stepped closer, not invading his space but close enough to notice the fine layer of dust clinging to one sleeve of his jacket. Her eyes lingered there for only a heartbeat.
"You've been rummaging through something."
"I've been walking through an old palace."
"That's not the same thing."
"It is if the palace is dusty."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I don't particularly care what you believe."
The blunt answer earned the reaction he expected. Sonya's eyebrows drew together, less offended than irritated that he refused to play along. Most people argued when accused. Manik simply denied everything until the conversation became too exhausting to continue.
"You found something."
"I found furniture."
"Something important."
"That's your assumption."
She clicked her tongue impatiently.
"You always get like this when you're hiding something."
"And you always assume every unanswered question belongs to you."
"It usually does."
"No. It usually becomes your problem because you refuse to leave it alone."
For a moment neither of them spoke. They had argued like this often enough that the servants passing nearby barely acknowledged it anymore. Royal siblings disagreed. These two simply did it with unusually sharp edges.
Sonya glanced at the door again.
"I'm going in."
Manik moved before she finished the sentence, stepping sideways just enough to block her path without making the gesture obvious. His movement was smooth, casual, almost absent-minded, but Sonya noticed immediately.
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"The reason you won't move."
"I'm standing."
"You're in the way."
"Coincidence."
She stared at him.
He stared back.
"You really expect me to believe that."
"I've noticed you ask that question a lot."
"Because you give terrible answers."
"They're good enough."
"For everyone except me."
"Exactly."
That answer lingered between them longer than either expected. Sonya understood what he meant. He lied to strangers because he had to. He lied to nobles because it was useful. When he lied to her, it meant he had already decided the truth was more dangerous than whatever argument they were having now.
She didn't like that conclusion.
"I'll find out eventually," she said quietly.
"I know."
"You'll slip."
"Maybe."
"And when you do—"
"I'll deal with it then."
She studied him for another long moment before exhaling through her nose.
"...Fine."
The word sounded less like surrender and more like a promise to continue later.
"We should find Mother."
"That's where I was going."
"You weren't."
"I am now."
Sonya turned without waiting for him, already heading down the corridor. Manik remained where he was for another second, watching the closed door behind him.
The chest was still inside.
Broken.
Open.
Impossible to hide if Queen Ciara returned before someone cleaned the room.
A flicker of concern crossed his face before disappearing just as quickly.
Too late to worry about that now.
Adjusting his jacket to make certain the photographs remained hidden, he followed after his sister at an unhurried pace. They walked side by side without speaking, close enough to appear united to anyone watching, yet leaving just enough space between them to remind each other that trust, even between twins, was something earned rather than freely given. Neither noticed the streak of dust still clinging to Manik's sleeve.
Behind them, the door to Queen Ciara's chambers remained closed.
Inside, the shattered chest lay exactly where it had fallen, its carefully hidden contents scattered across the floor, waiting for the moment someone else realized that one forgotten member of the royal family had just stepped back into history.
-------
The palace corridors grew exponentially quieter the closer the twins came to the western audience wing, a place where the architecture itself seemed designed to suppress sound. The typical, frantic bustle of servants carrying freshly pressed linens and stacks of sensitive, parchment-heavy documents slowly evaporated, leaving behind a vacuum that felt heavy and suffocating.
Where there were usually lines of palace guards, there was now an eerie, unnatural emptiness, save for the oppressive weight of the high ceilings and the afternoon light, which spilled through the stained-glass windows in harsh, jagged beams of color that looked like dried blood upon the marble floor.
Even at six (almost) years old, Manik noticed the difference; his instincts, sharp and twitchy, sensed that the very gravity of the wing had shifted. Important, life-altering conversations happened here, the kind that weren't meant for ears—even royal ears—to catch. People lowered their voices here without being told; it was as if the walls themselves were listening, waiting to report back to a master who wasn't currently present.
Sonya walked beside him, her small arms folded tightly across her chest, her posture rigid enough to snap. She hadn't forgotten the tension of the morning, and she never did; she possessed a memory like a steel trap. Every few moments, her eyes drifted toward the front of Manik's jacket, scanning for some hidden sign, some evidence of what he had been hiding, before returning to the hallway ahead. She wasn't asking questions anymore, which, to Manik's calculating mind, was somehow worse. It made him trust her even less. Silence from Sonya usually meant she was spinning a web of theories, and thinking was dangerous in a palace where the truth could get you exiled.
"So," she finally said, the word hanging in the sterile air like a threat.
Manik sighed, his gaze fixed on the ornate carvings of the doors ahead, refusing to look at her. "I was wondering how long that would last before you broke the seal."
"You still have something. I can see it in how you're holding your shoulders."
"I have shoes," he countered, his voice flat. "And they fit quite well, thank you for your concern."
"You know what I fucking mean, Manik."
"I do."
"And?"
"And nothing."
She stopped walking and gave him a look that was as flat and cold as a winter tombstone. "You've become insufferably irritating."
"I've always been irritating, Sonya. You're just noticing now because you're bored."
"Not professionally, you haven't."
A tiny, involuntary smile tugged at one corner of Manik's mouth before he smoothed it away. "I'll take that as a compliment to my craft."
"It wasn't."
"I know."
The conversation died as quickly as it had begun. Neither of them felt any need to fill the silence; their relationship had never been one of warmth or gentle childhood play. It was a partnership of necessity. They trusted each other when the political winds turned foul, but affection was a currency they spent only in the rarest, most private moments—and even then, only with the stinginess of misers.
Ahead, the heavy oak doors of the western wing loomed. There were no guards stationed there today. Instead, standing like sentinels in the foyer, were three of the palace's most senior advisors: Patch, his expression uncharacteristically blank; Sir Armand, whose hand rested on the hilt of his sword with a confident, if somehow still twitchy energy; and Buns, who looked as if she were trying to make herself invisible. They weren't performing their usual duties. They were simply standing there, statuesque and silent, their eyes tracking Manik and Sonya with a mixture of pity and profound, unadulterated terror. They didn't bow; they didn't offer the standard royal greeting. They just stared, their faces pale, as if watching children walk into a den of wolves.
The advisors' presence was a scream for help that they were too frightened to vocalize. The hall smelled faintly of ozone and old dust, suggesting that wherever Ciara was, it was not the palace's standard audience chamber—the western wing was merely the gateway to something else, something far removed from the royal household.
"Something happened," Sonya muttered, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Look at them. They're waiting for us to die."
Manik didn't answer. He simply reached for the heavy oak doors. They groaned in protest, swinging inward with a slow, agonizing creak that echoed through the empty hall like a death knell.
The room beyond was an expansive, shadowed chamber, but it was almost entirely empty. The chairs surrounding the long, mahogany meeting table, which usually hosted the kingdom's greatest minds, stood where they had been left, scattered and haphazard.
Several untouched cups of tea rested on silver trays, the steam long since vanished, replaced by a stagnant chill. One cup had been knocked onto its side, leaving a dark, amber-colored stain across the polished wood, resembling a spreading bruise.
The atmosphere was not respectful; it was thick with the residue of a trauma that had seemingly rewritten the laws of the room.
Then, Manik found his mother.
Queen Ciara sat alone near the head of the table. At first, he barely recognized her. She looked... smaller. It wasn't a physical change, but a collapsing of her very presence. The proud, iron-willed posture she always carried, the one that had held a kingdom together through fire and frost, had evaporated. Her shoulders slumped beneath the heavy weight of her royal cloak, and both hands rested, limp and lifeless, in her lap. She wasn't crying, and that, somehow, made the sight ten times worse. Her eyes, usually sharp enough to cut glass, were glazed over, staring unfocused at the tabletop as though she were still looking at someone who had already left the room, or perhaps, someone who was standing right behind them.
The room felt unnaturally cold, as if the life had been siphoned out of it to sustain a conversation that hadn't been meant for mortal ears.
Sonya stopped walking, her breath hitching in her throat. "...Mother?"
Ciara didn't answer. Not immediately. The sound of her daughter's voice seemed to reach her as if from across a vast, impossible distance, pulling her back into the present with the reluctance of a drowning person returning to the surface. She blinked once. Then again. Finally, she slowly lifted her head.
Manik had never seen that expression before. It was an atlas of human misery: deep exhaustion, a raw, jagged grief that hadn't yet found a name, and a profound disbelief that the world had continued to exist after the foundation had been pulled out from under it. And beneath all of that—the thing that made Manik's stomach turn—was fear.
It wasn't the panicked, shallow fear of a woman facing an assassin or a political coup. It was the quiet, hollowed-out fear that only manifests after one has stared into the eyes of someone—or something—capable of unraveling the very fabric of their reality. It was the look of someone who had seen the bottom of the abyss and had the misfortune of realizing the abyss was looking back.
Sonya took an uncertain, hesitant step forward, basic horror dawning on her, her hand reaching out but not quite touching the table. "...Mother? Did he—"
This time, Queen Ciara managed a faint smile. It was the weakest, most brittle expression either of her children had ever seen, a grimace that looked like it cost her every ounce of her remaining strength. She didn't look at them as the Queen of the realm; she looked at them as a woman who had just realized that her status, her crown, and her power were nothing more than props in a play written by someone else.
In that moment, both twins understood the same devastating, unspoken truth.
Whatever had occurred in that room, whatever had transpired between their mother and Arthur, it was the end of an era.
The woman sitting before them was not the woman who had entered the room an hour ago. She had gone in a ruler, and she had returned as a survivor of a catastrophe that no one else had yet realized had taken place. They stood in the silence, the weight of the advisors' stares burning into their backs, fully aware that their lives—their legacy, their safety, their very understanding of the world—had been permanently, irrevocably altered by the man they hadn't even seen.
Ciara had not returned from that meeting unchanged. She hadn't returned at all.
-------
The silence in the audience chamber was so profound that it felt physical, a thick shroud settling over the twins and the ruin of their mother. Sir Armand D'Collette, his face still bearing the raw, almost puffy evidence of the day's violence, finally stepped forward, his boots clicking with a hollow, rhythmic monotony against the stone.
He did not look at the bruised and battered Queen; he looked only at the two children of her, his eyes weary with the weight of a thousand secrets he was no longer forcing himself to keep out of guilt.
"You should not have come here, Your Highnesses," Sir Armand began, his voice a gravelly monotone that lacked its usual courtly grace. He glanced toward the shadowed corner where the crown lay, then back to the twins, his expression tight with a mixture of shame and grim resignation.
"What you see is the inevitable conclusion of a long-standing debt. Your mother, Queen Ciara... she believed that history was a script she could write, and that she could steer the currents of the world without being pulled under by them if she stayed in the dark long enough. She was wrong. She was dragged out into the light. She played games with forces that do not recognize crowns, and she bargained with shadows that have finally come to collect their due."
Sonya stared at her mother, her small hands almost trembling at her sides, but Sir Armand stepped between them, his presence blocking their view of the broken monarch.
"She wasn't defeated by an army," Sir Armand continued, his voice dropping to a harsh, hushed register. "She was dismantled. The man who did this—the man who is coming—he doesn't really want the thronez at least I don't think so. He wants the architectural blueprint of your entire lives. He has spent years waiting for this exact moment of weakness, for the precise second when the illusion of our security would finally shatter under the weight of its own rot. He has allies, he has methods, and he has a vision for this kingdom that leaves absolutely no room for the old guard to exist. He is not a conqueror, young ones. He is an architect of the void, and we have just watched him draft the final page."
Manik's mind raced, his survival instincts screaming, but before he could formulate a response, the heavy oak doors he had just entered suddenly vanished from their hinges.
The sound was not a creak, but an explosive, splintering crash that rocked the entire foundation of the western wing, sending clouds of ancient, choking dust billowing into the chamber. The chamber light was instantly swallowed by a silhouette that loomed in the threshold, framed by the chaos of a broken entrance.
And who else but Arthur was there to stand in the center of the doorway?
His posture radiating a terrifying, casual ease. Behind him, the figures emerged into the fading afternoon sun: Victoria, her head tilted at that jarring, sickening mechanical angle, her eyes bright with a manic, unbridled curiosity; Dr. Julian Ivo Kintobor, his face it's usual warm, but still intellectual calculation, his gaze sweeping the room like a surgeon preparing for a possible emergency vivisection; and finally, Lord Abraham Tower and Snively, dragged along in their heavy, clanking restraints, looking like nothing more than discarded, wretched cargo.
Arthur didn't speak, but he didn't have to. He stood there, surveying the wreckage of the throne room—the scattered papers, the broken crown, the broken Queen—and a slow, sharp, and utterly wicked smile split his face. It was a smile that didn't just mark a victory; it celebrated the absolute, gleeful annihilation of the world Manik and Sonya had always known.
He leaned against the jagged frame of the door, his eyes locking onto the twins with the chilling, predatory warmth of a master closing a trap that had been set for years.
"Good evening," Arthur purred, his voice smooth as glass. "I trust we haven't missed the best part of the show yet."