The morning after Seraphina ended their marriage in front of everyone, the Vessant estate felt strained. People moved carefully, as if waiting for something to fall apart. Couriers had stopped arriving. No invitations. No sealed letters. No summons to court. The silence was a message.
Alaric remembered the scene in the palace gardens. It played on a loop in his mind. He had reached for her, not with care, but with the assumption that she would still play her part. She'd stared him down with a look colder than anything he'd ever seen. Her words were sharp. Final. Then Thalion had stepped between them. When Alaric leaned in to kiss her, the prince didn't hesitate. One shove sent Alaric staggering back several steps. He caught himself, barely, the back of his heel catching on a garden stone.
The murmur of the court was immediate. Dozens of courtiers watched him struggle for balance. His robes were wrinkled. His pride wasn't intact. And Seraphina? She didn't even look back. She'd walked away with Thalion at her side, leaving Alaric standing alone.
He pushed himself to his feet and stormed out of the garden with what little dignity he had left.
He stumbled into his study, brushing mud off his boots and shaking petals from his cloak. He leaned on the window frame, staring at his reflection. His face was pale, jaw tight. The frost on the glass mirrored the tension building in his chest.
He started pacing. Each step felt like dragging weight behind him. The mirror caught his reflection again, sunken eyes, a jaw that wouldn't unclench. She had humiliated him. In front of all of them. The nobles who once bowed their heads. The sycophants who praised him in whispers. He had offered her a future. One she was meant to be grateful for.
Instead, she tore it apart.
He pressed both hands to the desk, knuckles white. "She was supposed to hold it together with me," he muttered. "Not burn it down."
He looked at the letter again, the one warning him of the hearings. Witnesses stepping forward. Names surfacing. Liars. Cowards. People he once gave power to.
His voice dropped lower. "They all want to see me fall. But I gave them this system. I built the alliances. And now they think they can tear it away with a few signatures and a headline?"
He opened the desk drawer. Inside was a fading map of his connections across the Empire. Names were already crossed out in red. Favors revoked. Deals burned. The ones that remained wouldn't hold under pressure.
He squeezed his eyes shut. For a second, he let the silence press in.
"No. I'm not done."
"They want everything," he said.
A click sounded behind him. Evelyne entered in a wet robe. She smelled of lavender. She stepped over spilled ink and broken glass. Her gaze scanned the wreckage of the room before settling on him.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she said.
"It's not over," he replied. He ran a hand through his hair. "I'm getting the Wound of Othren from the family vault. It's our leverage."
She raised an eyebrow. "No one's used it in ages, but every Vessant knows what it can do."
"Then we use it against them."
"At what cost?" she asked.
He walked to the far wall and pressed a hidden seam. The marble panel slid open with a grinding sound and kicked up a small cloud of dust. He pulled out a black box covered in silver runes.
He opened the lid and saw the obsidian crystal. He touched it, and the hearth fire went out. The room got cold. A pressure built in the air, like a storm waiting to break.
"Time," he said. "Disruption."
Evelyne said nothing. Her arms were still folded, but she had taken a step back.
"We lose witnesses," he added, closing the box.
She looked at him. "That's murder."
"Call it strategy," he said. "The noose is already tightening."
She hesitated now. Not out of fear, out of calculation. Evelyne had stayed by his side long enough to know how many lines had already been crossed. She knew what this meant. If they succeeded, she'd share the power. If they failed, she'd hang next to him.
"You're sure it'll work?" she asked.
Alaric nodded. "It worked for them. A long time ago. They don't talk about it now, but my grandfather warned me once. Said it consumed more than it gave. Said we buried it because we weren't ready to pay what it demanded."
"And now?"
"Now I'm ready to pay."
He slid the box back into the niche and sealed the panel. The dust in the air hung longer than it should have, like the room itself had changed.
That evening, they moved through the estate. Alaric gave orders to staff in clipped tones. Servants avoided his eyes. In the courtyard, documents were fed into a fire that burned higher than it should have. Cook Harlan packed his bags and left in tears, whispering something about broken promises. Captain Drost gathered the guard and led them away without asking questions.
In the kitchen, pans clattered to the floor without anyone touching them. A maid cried when she found her needle bent in half. A pair of seamstresses refused to stitch the Vessant crest.
In the library, a scribe noticed red markings appearing on old family records that hadn't been touched in years. A clerk quietly rolled up a scroll, locked her desk, and didn't return the next morning.
In the guard barracks, sparring drills were halted after one of the soldiers collapsed from exhaustion despite a full night's sleep. Another claimed he saw shadows moving in the reflection of his blade.
The household felt thinner by the hour. The Vessant name still held weight, but it no longer felt solid.
As the last torch went out in the courtyard, an agent slipped into the palace through a side door. He moved quietly through empty halls to the throne room. Under the dais, he lifted a panel and placed the box inside a hidden niche. The velvet beneath the throne was damp with condensation, as if the stone itself was sweating. He sealed it and left. The relic would remain dormant for now. But it pulsed faintly, waiting.
Back in the vault beneath the estate, Alaric and Evelyne reviewed the plan:
Disband the guard and send them far away.Remove anyone who might talk.Destroy all records that link him to the hearings.Kill the witnesses. Their deaths will charge the relic.Let the artifact's effect activate under the throne after two days.Relocate every artifact and cursed item. Nothing stays behind.
"If he fails?" Evelyne asked.
"We won't know him," Alaric said.
They packed the relics into reinforced crates, sealed with rune-burned iron. Two servants, silent and pale, loaded them into the waiting carriage. By morning, the Vessant capital estate would stand empty. They would relocate to their ancestral stronghold in Vessant territory. Whatever came next would happen far from the Crown's watchful eye.
Later that night, Alaric stood alone in the study. The air still hadn't warmed. The fire remained out. The map on the desk had more names crossed out.
"Let them try to hold it together," he said.
Evelyne answered from the doorway, "We'll tear it apart."
She stayed a moment longer, then left without another word. Behind her, the study remained still. Alaric looked at the sealed wall. In two days, the Crown would learn what it meant to underestimate a Vessant.