The palace was unusually still the next morning. No one spoke much. Servants moved a little faster. Guards checked the same halls twice. The silence wasn't peace. It was tension, the kind that prickled at the back of the neck.
Seraphina sat at her desk in her private chambers, turning a folded message over in her hands. The parchment was creased from repeated handling, but her eyes kept going back to the same lines. Hidden between lines of ink inventory, in her informant's coded hand, were three names.
All three witnesses who testified against Caelan were dead.
The tavern server. The merchant. The stable boy.
The official reports listed suicide. But Seraphina knew better.
No alarms. No struggle. No signs of distress before the night they died. All three gone within hours of each other, without triggering so much as a whisper through the normal channels. Too neat. Too quiet.
It wasn't justice. It was erasure.
She stared out her window, lips tight. The sun barely pierced the frost-laced glass. There was no comfort in the view.
They had lied, yes. Sold their testimony. But they didn't deserve to be erased. No one did.
She stood and crossed the room, folding the parchment again, slower this time. A footman passed outside her door, and she heard the hitch in his step. People were scared. Of what, they didn't know. But the palace could feel when something had shifted beneath its surface.
She tucked the message into her satchel and left the room without calling for guards.
That afternoon, she met Thalion and Caelan in a locked chamber behind the eastern wing. The guards had been placed farther out, and no servants were allowed past the outer threshold. Caelan locked the door behind them, checked it twice.
She set the note on the table. "All three are dead. Suicide, they say."
Caelan scanned the names. His expression didn't shift much, but his jaw tensed. "No warnings?"
"None. Just vanished. The report was scrubbed. My informant had to bribe two scribes just to confirm the deaths."
Thalion studied the paper, then leaned back in his chair. "Too clean. Executed without noise. They were silenced."
"This wasn't damage control," Caelan said. "It was removal. Whoever ordered this didn't care about perception. They wanted them gone, and they wanted it fast."
Seraphina nodded. "We can assume this wasn't the end. Just the next phase."
They moved quickly.
Thalion requested court movement logs and had two aides vet Crown Guard rosters. One of them hesitated, nervously looking over their shoulder before obeying. Seraphina pulled registry access lists and flagged names tied to movement orders. Her contact in records almost shut the door in her face until she mentioned her mother's name. Caelan returned to the guard towers and spoke with men who had worked the night of the witness transfers. One claimed he hadn't seen anything. Another wouldn't meet his eyes.
They reconvened late that evening.
Seraphina went first. "Three officers signed the witness movement documents. All have quiet side ties to House Vessant. Private retainers. Special favors."
Thalion tossed a bundle of parchment onto the table. "Same three names appear on unrelated approvals. Security shifts. Permit changes. They've been inside this whole time."
Caelan laid out a map. "The route for the tavern server passed directly through a checkpoint run by a Vessant-affiliated guard. A replacement took over that night, claimed royal approval. No one verified it."
Thalion narrowed his eyes. "We never issued that order."
"No," Caelan said. "And the original guard has gone missing."
Seraphina looked between them. "Then it was never just about framing Caelan. It was about undermining me. My alliances. They meant to destroy more than a man. They meant to dismantle my standing in court."
Thalion rubbed his jaw. "We stopped them mid-play. But they'll try again."
Caelan added, "Then we find someone who hasn't vanished. Someone who knows."
Seraphina flipped through another folder. "Jorik Vane. Escort assigned to the tavern server. Still unaccounted for. But his absence hasn't been confirmed as death."
Thalion said, "If he was eliminated, they'd make a show of it. This silence means he's either running or hidden."
"Or being held," Caelan said. "He's a liability either way."
They agreed to scatter again. Before they left, Seraphina sent word to her team. Lyria was tasked with tracing public records that might have been quietly altered. Amara would observe foot traffic outside the palace archives. Dorian stationed himself outside the witness dormitory routes, watching for patterns or disappearances. Siran would shadow one of the aides tied to a falsified permit, silent as ever.
"Tell me if anything smells wrong," Seraphina had said. "No heroics. Just watch. Report."
They nodded. Each knew the stakes without needing to hear them repeated.
Thalion would put quiet feelers out through palace archivists and minor clerks. Seraphina would speak with her oldest contact in the records office. Caelan would return to the tavern and search deeper.
The next evening, they returned, one by one.
Thalion had unearthed something unexpected. "A string of legal reversals involving House Vessant, stretching back five years. Merchants, landowners, even military appeals. All flipped without cause halfway through. Same names. Same hidden hands."
Seraphina had confirmed that tribunal records were being rewritten. She secured unofficial transcripts before the changes finalized. Her contact begged her not to return.
Caelan had found a barmaid who remembered a man in guard uniform giving quiet orders in the alley behind the tavern. The man didn't match anyone on official rotation. No insignia. No paperwork. The barmaid hadn't told anyone until now. She was scared.
It was enough. Before the meeting, Lyria had delivered a folded slip of paper into Seraphina's hand. A fourth name, one that had been on a relocation order but removed at the last second. Siran confirmed the signature was forged.
Even those in the shadows were doing their part.
They met again, this time in Seraphina's rooms. The table was covered in maps, logs, testimonies.
Seraphina stared at the spread. "We put this out, they'll come harder."
Thalion said, "Then we make it public enough that it can't be erased. Partial disclosures. Just enough to force an inquiry."
Caelan added, "We push now. Before the next body drops."
She nodded slowly. "We name the right players. We let the rest rise to the surface on their own."
They began writing the first draft of war.
And this time, they weren't waiting for permission.