Chapter 131 - House Montferrand Falls

Chapter 131: 131 - House Montferrand Falls

Adrien studied Vikir more closely. The man rarely let himself look rushed, and the sweat at his temples together with his uneven breathing was enough to pull every eye beneath the pavilion toward him.

"What happened, Vikir?"

Vikir took one more breath before answering. "House Montferrand has fallen."

The words landed over the table with surprising weight. Even Ariane, animated about Aetherion only moments earlier, went completely quiet.

The Montferrands were one of the great families of Valleroy. They had never matched the strength House Clairmont once held under Alaric, though they remained one of the kingdom’s major powers, with territory, soldiers, wealth and influence gathered across generations. Hearing that such a house had fallen was not something anyone could take in casually.

Adrien leaned back.

Directly, the collapse cost Clairmont nothing. If anything it pulled a potentially hostile piece off the board, since Montferrand had been drifting farther from Crown control for years, operating on its own terms and treating royal authority as something increasingly distant.

Evelyne spoke first. "That’s unexpected. How long ago did you hear?"

Vikir had recovered enough to stand straight again. "Not long. I was in one of the Crown cities handling what you asked of me when the news started spreading. I came back as quickly as I could once I realized what had happened."

Adrien stayed quiet a moment while the name dragged an older memory forward. Estienne Montferrand. He remembered Oathday clearly enough. When the great families gathered to sign the Royal Register, Estienne had avoided looking at him almost deliberately. No greeting or acknowledgement, nothing at all.

At the time Adrien had marked the reaction because it felt too intentional to ignore, and whether it came from guilt, fear or plain dislike he still could not say.

After everything that had happened since, the chance that Montferrand had taken part in the conspiracy against House Clairmont no longer looked remote, and now the people at the head of that family were gone.

"Their territory is fairly close to ours, isn’t it?" Adrien asked. "Near the Crown city you went to when we needed support for the mercenary prisoners."

Vikir nodded. "Yes. Their lands are not far from that region."

Adrien looked out at the garden beyond the pavilion. The fall of a Great House always sounded distant until its borders sat near enough for roads, merchants and soldiers to overlap with your own.

"It sounds like somebody discovered things the Montferrands would’ve preferred remained buried."

"That appears to be the case."

Adrien turned back to him. "So the entire house is gone?"

"Not exactly."

That drew Evelyne’s attention as well, and Vikir went on. "The Montferrand name remains. The head of the family has changed, and control is being transferred to a secondary branch. The entire main branch has been sentenced."

The phrasing mattered. A Great House did not simply vanish because one branch was condemned, since its lands, titles and obligations still had to continue under somebody, especially with thousands of people living beneath that name.

What had fallen was the line that ruled Montferrand until now, and for a family that size the rest of the kingdom would treat it as a collapse regardless.

The secondary branch would inherit far more than estates. They would take on soldiers who served Estienne, officials appointed by the old leadership and whatever distrust the Crown now carried toward the name.

Ariane frowned. "All of them?"

"Everyone directly implicated, from what I heard. I don’t know the exact number yet."

Evelyne’s expression hardened instead of softening. "A secondary branch taking control means they may have helped the Crown. They could’ve turned on the main family once they saw an opportunity to inherit everything."

"That’s possible," Vikir said. "I haven’t confirmed it."

Ariane looked between them. "What does something like that mean for us?"

Adrien answered before Evelyne could. "For us directly? Not much. Their territory isn’t ours, and the Montferrand family still exists. There’ll be a restructuring, new people taking positions, probably changes to soldiers and administrators, but Clairmont doesn’t lose anything because of it."

He paused. "If anything, one more old power that might’ve been hostile to us has been weakened."

Evelyne gave a slow nod. "They had it coming."

Nothing in her voice wavered.

Adrien glanced at her and understood it well enough, since Evelyne had lived through the destruction of House Clairmont from inside the family. If Montferrand had played even a small part in what happened to Alaric and then profited from the collapse, she had no reason to mourn anyone wearing that name.

She turned back to Vikir. "The other Great Houses will be watching this closely now. If one main branch can be removed and replaced, every family with something to hide will start wondering whether they’re next."

Adrien had already arrived at the same conclusion. Montferrand falling mattered well beyond Montferrand. Duverne, Bellafort, Falkenrath, Rossignac and every other great family would hear the same news, and some would call it justice while others read it as a warning.

Anyone tangled in what happened to Clairmont might start burning evidence, changing allies or moving before the Crown reached them.

"How did it happen?" Evelyne asked. "Do you have anything concrete?"

Vikir hesitated briefly, plainly sorting rumour from what he actually knew. "The Crown has had people in that city recently. At first nobody knew why. Apparently they were investigating something they already had information about."

"So this wasn’t sudden."

"No. From what I’ve heard, the investigation has been going on for quite some time. They weren’t searching blindly. They knew what they were looking for."

Adrien’s eyes narrowed, because that changed the picture entirely. Somebody had already held enough evidence to start digging into one of the kingdom’s Great Houses without alerting it.

Whoever gave that order had moved slowly, kept the work quiet and waited until there was enough to bring down the whole main branch in a single stroke. That took authority, and it took patience.

Evelyne rested one hand against the table. "The King?"

Vikir shook his head. "No."

Everyone looked at him.

"The order didn’t come from King Osric. The entire investigation was authorized and directed by the First Heir."

Adrien’s expression shifted at once, since only one person fit that title.

"Aurelian."