Chapter 474. Why Deny It? You Already Have Your Proof

Chapter 474: 474. Why Deny It? You Already Have Your Proof

Theron did not smile back. He didn’t even blink.

The king’s face remained as carved from granite as the throne he occupied, but beneath that stillness, William could see the minute tremor in the king’s jaw, the suppressed rage of a sovereign who had been playing a game of honor against a man who played only for blood.

Theron gave a single, curt nod to Albert. The motion was precise, almost mechanical.

Albert rose, his face pale but determined, and began laying the documents across the dark oak table. He moved with agonizing deliberation, each sheet of parchment snapping against the wood like the crack of a whip in the suffocating silence.

One by one, the evidence was spread out in a damning, undeniable line: ledger after ledger, correspondence after correspondence, each one a thread in the web of Delmore’s treachery.

When the final page came to rest, the king finally spoke. His voice was low, stripped of its usual royal timbre, vibrating instead with a raw, controlled fury that seemed to make the very air in the Hall of Accord grow cold.

"We have evidence," Theron said, each word measured like a death sentence, "that the famine eight years ago, the crisis that claimed thousands of our people and left our children starving in the streets, was no natural disaster."

"It was no cruelty of weather or failure of harvest." His eyes locked onto Alden’s with the intensity of a blade finding its mark. "The Kingdom of Delmore engineered it... Deliberately."

"You manufactured a catastrophe to destabilize our people, all to bind us in a debt we could never possibly repay."

"You didn’t want a trade partner, Delmore... You wanted a slave kingdom."

A silence descended upon the hall that was absolute. It was the kind of silence that precedes a landslide—heavy, pressurized, and terrifying.

Even the guards seemed to hold their breath, their lungs burning with the effort of remaining motionless.

William leaned forward almost imperceptibly. His eyes never left Alden’s face.

He had been studying the prince for weeks, learning the subtle tells: the way his left eyelid flickered when he lied, the way his breathing changed when he was cornered. He was waiting for the inevitable reflexive flinch, the aborted breath, and the moment where the prince’s composure wavered before he could launch into his rehearsed, diplomatic denial.

He was waiting for the mask to slip before the lie was even spoken.

But the flinch never came. The denial never formed.

Instead, Alden Delmore laughed.

It wasn’t a burst of humor or a nervous reaction. It was a low, intimate chuckle, a sound devoid of warmth, hollow as a tomb, carrying the chilling satisfaction of a man who had been watching a predictable play unfold for hours.

It was the laugh of a predator who had been waiting for his prey to finally realize they were already caught.

He didn’t lean forward to defend himself. He didn’t reach for the documents.

Instead, he leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other with an infuriating, unhurried grace. His posture was loose, almost lazy, as if he were settling in for an evening of pleasant conversation rather than facing accusations of genocide and treason.

"Ah," Alden said, tilting his head slightly as he examined the documents with amused interest. "So you’ve finally found it."

His smile was slow, spreading across his face like blood seeping across ice. "I truly did wonder how long it would take your scholars to connect the dots..."

"I expected it months ago."

The silence that followed was absolutely suffocating, a pressurized void that seemed to suck the very oxygen from the room. The only sound was the faint, ominous patter of rain beginning to streak against the tall windows, each drop sounding like the ticking of a clock counting down to catastrophe.

Theron looked as though he had been struck physically. His eyes were blown wide with a raw, naked disbelief, his mouth parting slightly as if his brain were struggling to translate the atrocity he had just heard.

He had prepared for denials. He had prepared for outrage.

He had prepared for a diplomatic war. But he had not prepared for this: a man admitting to orchestrating the mass starvation of thousands with the same casual, bored indifference one might use to discuss the weather or a preference for vintage wine.

"You’re... you’re not denying it," Theron managed to choke out, his voice cracking like breaking glass.

"Why on earth would I deny it?" Alden asked.

His tone had shifted from amused to genuinely bored, as though the accusation itself was beneath his notice. He looked at the documents on the table as if they were nothing more than tedious homework.

"You clearly already have your proof."

"At this juncture, denial would be a performative waste of everyone’s time... And I’ve never had much patience for wasting time."

As Alden spoke, the last vestiges of the charming prince evaporated. The mask he had worn so perfectly at every banquet, every courtly dance, and every diplomatic function didn’t just slip; he tore it off deliberately, revealing the cold, calculating monster beneath.

There was a terrifying pride in his voice, a steady crescendo of arrogance that filled the chamber.

"The crisis was engineered, yes," Alden said, tilting his head as if reminiscing about a childhood fond memory. "My father designed the framework, mostly, though I contributed my share of the strategic planning once I was old enough to understand the mechanics of power."

He lifted his hand, beginning to count off his points on his fingers with the condescending patience of a tutor explaining basic arithmetic to a particularly slow child. "Celestial’s mana crystal veins are among the purest on the continent."

"My father has coveted them since before I drew my first breath..."

"Starving a kingdom into a debt it could never repay is, frankly, the most efficient method of resource acquisition."

"Why waste a single soldier on an open war when you can simply let hunger do the work for you?"

William’s blood ran cold. His hand moved instinctively toward the hilt of Aetherion, his muscles coiling like springs.

’This isn’t a prince,’ William thought, his inner voice venomous and sharp. ’This is a plague wrapped in silk.’

Alden was warming to the topic now, his eyes bright with a disturbing fervor, the way a craftsman might speak of his magnum opus.

"The dam was the truly elegant stroke of genius," Alden continued, a thin, cruel smile playing on his lips. "A minor structural weakness, introduced deliberately over several seasons."

"We ensured no single inspection would ever detect it just enough to remain plausible as ’wear and tear.’"

"When the dam finally gave way, the resulting flood was perfectly positioned to strike your richest agricultural valleys."

"And the cherry on top?" His smile widened, revealing teeth that seemed too white, too perfect. "A few well-placed payments to your own corrupt officials."

"We ensured the grain reserves you did have never reached the starving masses."

"By the time anyone thought to ask questions, the crisis had already done its work."

He leaned forward slightly, his eyes locked onto Theron’s horrified expression.

"And then, when your people were at their most desperate, broken, and dying, my father’s ’generous’ aid arrived."

"To your starving peasants, we didn’t look like conquerors..."

"We looked like miracles."