Chapter 23

Mailot’s features tightened into a grimace, and a defeated sigh escaped him.

Haa.

According to the spymaster’s current intelligence, the domestic climate within the East Wing remained fiercely precarious.

Is Lady Airi stirring up more chaos?

Ever since taking her marriage vows, the ambitious woman had systematically drawn her entire maternal bloodline into the household estate. She had packed the political ranks so densely with loyalists that even a steel needle could not have passed through the barricade unnoticed.

“Does this sudden interest concern Lord Marsas?” Felon asked, his deep voice cutting unexpectedly into the strategy session.

As a military commander, Felon was one of the few men who had witnessed the explosive disturbance in the royal inner courtyard from its chaotic beginning.

While operating within the treacherous palace grounds, Lucien adhered rigorously to a meticulously predetermined script. The unpredictable mage’s violent intervention had badly muddled the conclusion, but Lucien’s spontaneous decision to provoke Bastian publicly had deviated entirely from their established plan. More alarming still, their liege had casually invoked the name of Lord Marsas, a powerful nobleman entirely unaffiliated with their faction, and had spoken with the loaded familiarity of an old acquaintance.

The implied threat was unmistakable. Bastian’s wife, the formidable Lady Airi, was Lord Marsas’s youngest and most beloved daughter.

“To a certain and carefully calculated extent,” Lucien conceded.

“If it would serve your immediate strategy, we can initiate covert contact with Lord Marsas. Our operative Loren currently holds a position in Oullet,” Felon offered, plainly eager to put his assets to use.

“Stand down.” Lucien dismissed the proposal with a wave. “That clumsy approach is not what I am after.”

Leaning over the edge of the sprawling desk, Lucien allowed his gaze to wander. One quadrant of the enormous walnut surface, broad enough to serve comfortably as a man’s bed, held an ornate gaming board. Fashioned from two interlocking varieties of dark exotic wood, it could accommodate several forms of strategic play. Small, intricately carved cavalry figures used for the Tiris war game currently occupied its checkered squares, though Lucien had scattered far more pieces across the battlefield than the official rules allowed.

“I have no interest in acquiring Lord Marsas himself,” Lucien explained, his eyes absently following imaginary troop movements across the wooden grid.

The southern patriarch was certainly a tempting prize. As a supreme feudal lord, Marsas held absolute dominion over the most fertile and life-sustaining granaries in the south. He also commanded Oullet’s fearsome military forces without facing the slightest meaningful political opposition. Nevertheless, tactical survival required one to abandon prizes that could not be conquered.

“I need only apply enough targeted pressure to turn Bastian and his esteemed father-in-law slightly against one another.” A cruel smile touched Lucien’s mouth. Alliances between ambitious sons-in-law and their powerful fathers-in-law seldom remained harmonious forever.

Playing with the carved military pieces as though absorbed in deep contemplation, Lucien carefully nudged a crimson cavalry figure shaped like a mounted knight toward the perilous edge of the board.

Felon followed the miniature execution with narrowed eyes. “Do you truly believe the Oullet cavalry charged into the courtyard that day without Bastian’s explicit consent?”

“Perhaps they did. Perhaps they were merely playing their assigned roles.” Lucien withdrew his pale hand from the doomed figurine and looked up. “Whatever the truth, my dear sister-in-law will undoubtedly possess the missing information.”

Mailot seized upon the directive at once. “I will prioritize an investigation into her movements.”

“Proceed, but exercise caution. There is no immediate urgency.” Lucien dismissed the matter with a fluid wave.

Invading another nobleman’s domestic sphere was a comparatively trivial concern on his enormous chessboard. The truly pressing catastrophes were always the ones involving the insidious filth festering within his own heavily fortified home.

A darker and far more parasitic thought forced its way to the surface of his mind.

It was hardly a new revelation. In truth, the sickening suspicion had haunted the murky depths of his thoughts since the previous afternoon, leaving him uncertain whether acting upon such paranoia constituted prudent leadership.

“And permanently exile that bastard from my sight.”

The venomous order escaped before cold reason could silence it. A brief tremor of psychological discomfort passed through Lucien’s chest, but he had no intention of retracting the decree.

Jolted from his meticulous notes, Mailot blinked. “Which specific bastard, Your Highness?”

“The incompetent sentry assigned to guard our captive mage.”

A heavy frown distorted Mailot’s features.

Lucien clearly did not mean Eydric, the seasoned veteran who had taken over the surveillance detail as a desperate emergency measure. He referred solely to the soldier who had stood watch immediately before the mage’s so-called miraculous escape.

Though the man held the rank of a common infantryman, Commander Felon had kept him among his elite soldiers for years. Had the guard not demonstrated unwavering trustworthiness, no officer would ever have entrusted him with the supervision of such a volatile magical asset.

Suspecting treachery, the command staff had subjected the soldier to a grueling private interrogation after the disastrous breach.

“I suddenly felt dizzy,” the guard had stammered, sweating beneath the inquisitor’s stare. “It was like an enormous wave of vertigo. I assumed I had locked my knees from standing too long, so I tried to lean against the stone wall and catch my breath. After that, everything went black. I swear I remember nothing else.”

“Did you consume any unusual food or drink before your watch?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Regulations strictly prohibit us from putting anything in our mouths while standing an active post. I may be an ignorant grunt, but I am not suicidal enough to break that law.”

Throughout the brutal questioning, the infantryman had displayed the raw, genuine indignation of an innocent victim. Felon, who bore the crushing professional responsibility for his subordinate’s catastrophic failure, and Mailot, who always sensed an unsettling undercurrent whenever their liege discussed the mage, had both withdrawn into the dark labyrinth of their private suspicions.

Lucien, utterly deaf to their political anxieties, found himself consumed instead by the memory of that suffocating cell.

He pictured the barren stone walls, the solitary cot, and the single wooden chair. He remembered the captive’s split, chapped lips and the horrifying question that continued to linger: what was the ultimate price of absolute submission?

Reason dictated that the desperate mage had somehow slipped free of his restraints and used a dormant spell to render the heavily armed guard unconscious before staging his dramatic escape. It remained the most logical and strategically sound explanation.

But what if magic had nothing to do with it?

The captive’s frantic and pathetic protests about his complete inability to access his mana had carried a disturbingly authentic terror.

Paranoia surged back to claim Lucien’s mind, wrapping itself around his thoughts with thick, suffocating pressure.

If even the smallest possibility existed that the guard had willingly yielded to the prisoner’s carnal or financial temptations, allowing such a traitor to remain among their ranks would be an act of supreme idiocy.

“Rotate the worthless bastard to the outer perimeter, arrange a permanent transfer to the borderlands, or impose whatever disciplinary measures you consider appropriate.” Lucien’s voice cracked through the chamber like a whip. “Just ensure that I never see his pathetic face inside this castle again.”

Felon bowed his head, accepting the absolute command without resistance. “I will personally guarantee his removal, Your Highness.”

The instant the unyielding order left Lucien’s lips, the crushing pressure around his skull began to recede.

I should have severed that vulnerability yesterday, the very moment suspicion first poisoned my thoughts.

Had he acted with his usual ruthless efficiency, he might have spared himself the torment of enduring that fucking dream again.

***