Chapter 84: Silence Was the Price

Lucian’s eyes traveled upward slowly from where he knelt, starting at a pair of black boots, then the hilt of a sword etched with House Sarnel’s crest. He didn’t need to see the face above it to know exactly who had planted themselves at his side, voice already raised.

Elder Burrel, here already. I don’t have much time left before they drag me out of this room.

He kept talking anyway, fast, running straight over whatever Burrel was demanding of him.

"Your Majesty. I know how this looks, how little sense it makes with nothing to back it. I have no proof of what’s coming, not yet. But I swear to you, before everyone in this hall, that what I’m doing right now has nothing to do with the empire’s politics."

He meant every word of it.

Whatever history sat between himself and Princess Helia, whatever anyone assumed his motives were, none of that had any place in what he was trying to say. He was speaking for the sake of every life in this room, and every life that wasn’t.

"And I want to say one more thing, to everyone here. I am not, and have never been, the kind of man who takes back something he’s already given away."

He said it looking directly at Rhaiven and Helia, and the shock on both their faces told him neither had expected him to go this far. Helia’s face had gone tight with fury, color rising all the way to the tip of her nose, her eyes fixed on him from across the room as though he’d come within a breath of announcing, to the entire hall, exactly who had truly built that Relic.

"Kaelyn." Helia’s voice cut toward him, sharp as a blade. "How is Lucian even here? Isn’t he supposed to be barred from this residence? Isn’t he still serving your Patriarch’s punishment?"

"About that..." Kaelyn’s voice faltered.

He had every reason to hesitate. He’d been one of the first to know Lucian was anywhere near this house tonight, sworn to silence by Jeanne, the same way she’d bound Elder Meron. Jeanne had promised him it wouldn’t touch his engagement in the slightest, had given him a reason good enough to let it go.

But watching Lucian now, in the middle of the single most important night of his own life, Kaelyn understood he’d never imagined anything like this. Whatever loyalty had kept his mouth shut for his sister’s sake felt, in this moment, like it had cost him far more than it was worth, and he regretted now not having simply told his father the truth from the start.

Because Lucian, who had stayed silent through everything leading up to this, showed no sign of stopping, not until the Emperor himself abandoned the idea of that expedition.

Every person in this room with something riding on tonight’s plan going forward felt that same cold spike of fear now, the fear that it might all be about to collapse.

From across the hall, Kaelyn’s eyes found Elder Burrel, standing closest to Lucian, and held there, a silent, unmistakable signal: drag him out, now, and let the real punishment wait until later, somewhere private.

Burrel caught it instantly, and understood exactly what was being asked of him.

He gave the order, and House Sarnel’s guards closed in.

Hands pressed down on Lucian’s shoulders from behind, forcing his neck to bow, his arms wrenched backward hard enough to tear a grunt from his throat. He fought it with everything he had, bracing his whole body against the pull, refusing to be moved.

"Your Majesty! The Nightkeeper will truly rise if we force our people into that forest!"

It was the second time he’d said that name aloud, in front of this entire hall.

This time, it reached Varka, who hadn’t once turned his full attention toward the boy before now. He did now, sharp and sudden.

Because Varka knew something almost no one else in this room did. The figure everyone feared most had never actually died, not the way the stories told it. What the realm believed, what every common subject across the empire had been taught to believe, was that the Crimson ancestor had fallen, struck down for good by the heroes who’d faced him.

The mockery started again almost immediately.

"Get that blind fool out of here already, he’s raving that the Nightkeeper’s still alive."

"Obviously whoever’s controlling that thing is just some leftover descendant of the Crimson clan. If this were truly the living Nightkeeper’s own doing, he wouldn’t bother with a handful of Dark Beasts. He’d send thousands, all at once, and tear this whole continent apart."

Lucian felt something close to nausea listening to it, disgust and fury tangled together at how easily they dismissed the one truth that actually mattered. The Nightkeeper was not fully dead, and the deep, inherited fear running through every noble house and the crown itself was exactly what had kept that fact buried for so long.

"You’re all fools!" Lucian’s voice tore out of him, raw. "If you’re willing to believe the Crimson clan is controlling these Dark Beasts, why can’t you believe the Crimson ancestor himself could be the one standing behind it?!"

SWOOSH!

A fork cut through the air and opened a line across his cheek before he could so much as flinch.

It struck the torn red carpet just past his face and buried itself there, hard enough to score a crack into the marble beneath, a hair’s width from where his throat had been a moment before.

His heart slammed against his ribs. This hadn’t been a warning shot. Had the angle drifted even slightly, it would have gone through his throat instead of his cheek.

But the cut wasn’t what truly wounded him. It was the man standing in front of him, the one who’d thrown it, and what that man said next.

"Patriarch. Stop."

Elder Meron’s hand closed around Cassius’s arm, holding it in place. Cassius had swallowed his own shame in front of the entire hall for as long as he could, and his hand had already closed around a second fork, ready to send it straight into his son’s face.

"How much further do you intend to carry this madness, embarrassing this family with your ravings?"

His voice dropped lower, colder, each word landing like a blow of its own.

"Has exile taught you nothing at all? That you are the one child in this household who isn’t merely a burden, but a disgrace?"

The entire hall fell utterly silent, watching it unfold.

"I am deeply disappointed in you, Lucian. You talk far too much, and you cannot prove a single word of it, not in a moment this important to everyone else in this room."

Lucian said nothing. There was nothing left to say. He had no other way to stop what was already happening.

The method he’d chosen to keep them from entering that forest had failed completely, and he felt the full weight of that now, a bitter, useless regret at ever having opened his mouth at all. He knew, with absolute certainty, that the words burning behind his eyes had been no illusion. But knowing it and proving it were two entirely different things, and like Cassius had just said in front of everyone, he had nothing. Even if he tried to name Rhaiven as one of the architects behind all of this, he had no evidence to drag the man into the light with him. And after tonight, after everything he’d just done, even the truth, backed by real proof, would be nearly impossible to make anyone believe.

He knelt there in silence, unable to find a single word to answer the laughter and contempt pouring over him from every side.

Cassius drew himself back under control and turned to the assembled nobility, offering a formal apology to everyone present, the crown included, for his son’s conduct.

He promised, in front of all of them, that House Sarnel’s punishment would be severe.

"Elder Meron. Restrain him. Announce to everyone here that Lucian’s status within House Sarnel has been stripped, effective immediately. And I am ordering you to place him in confinement, for his disrespect toward His Majesty."

A wave of shock passed through the hall at how suddenly House Sarnel had chosen to disown one of its own, in front of the entire assembled nobility, without a moment’s hesitation.

Elder Meron looked at Cassius as though he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. He tried, more than once, to urge Cassius to reconsider, to take even a moment longer before a decision this final.

It changed nothing.

Without another word of argument, House Sarnel’s guards lifted Lucian between them and began hauling him toward the door.

Then, from somewhere at the far end of the hall, a voice rang out, sharp enough to stop the guards mid-stride.

"Are you certain of what you just said, Cassius?"

Cassius, already turning to retake his seat, spun back toward the voice that had called his name. Whatever he saw there stopped him cold, his whole body going rigid with something far past surprise.

"You... how is this possible..."