Chapter 41: A Not-So-Secret Operation

Lioren blinked at him, momentarily at a loss for words. Around them, the pastry shop carried on as usual, filled with the sweet aroma of baked goods and warm spices.

Seeing the sheer shock on the Duke’s face, Xavion leaned back, putting some distance between them before returning to his seat at the table. He settled into his usual composed posture, as calm as ever.

It took Lioren a good three seconds to blink his brain back into working order. He swallowed hard, shifting his weight from one boot to the other, his green hair bobbing slightly as he tilted his head.

"Wait," Lioren blurted out, dropping the breezy, peacocking act entirely. "You... you already knew?"

"I believe everyone sitting at this table was well aware that someone had been trailing us."

Lioren’s head snapped toward Evelia and Therin so quickly that, for one glorious moment, the rest of his body struggled to keep up.

Evelia didn’t even look up from her plate. She was delicately buttering the corner of a honeyed bun, her eyebrows raised in a look of supreme, unbothered superiority that practically screamed ’Obviously, you idiot’.

Beside her, Therin was busy using a tiny silver fork to nudge a stubborn candied chestnut across his saucer. The aide glanced up for half a second, offered Lioren a brief, sympathetic shrug that carried zero actual helpfulness, and went right back to calculating the sweet’s structural integrity.

"If you noticed a man breathing down our necks for four solid hours, why didn’t you say anything earlier?"

Xavion set his teacup down with a quiet clink against the saucer.

"Because I saw no reason to cause a panic over an unconfirmed shadow," Xavion explained smoothly. "We visited so many shops, too many stalls, and a crowded street performance. It is entirely possible to cross paths with the same idle citizen three or four times purely by coincidence. I wanted to observe his movements first. I needed to see whether he was merely an overly curious local, a pickpocket looking for a loose purse, or someone with a genuine purpose before making a scene."

He looked up, meeting Lioren’s wide-eyed stare with a dry look that said the answer should have been obvious.

"And frankly," Xavion added, a faint, almost invisible twitch touching the corner of his lips, "I spent years commanding troops, Your Grace. My magic may be gone, but half my eyesight is quite intact. Failing to notice someone tailing me would make all that experience rather pointless, wouldn’t it?"

So much for my grand, heroic secret operation, Lioren thought to himself, a wave of profound, ridiculous embarrassment washing over his chest.

He’d gone to all the trouble of executing a flawless alley cornering, putting on a terrifying display of northern interrogation, getting his clothes ruined, sprinting three blocks to buy an expensive coat he didn’t even particularly like, and Xavion had basically been watching the stalker the entire time like a man watching a lazy dog trotting down the road.

Still, Lioren consoled himself, the boutique trip hadn’t been entirely pointless. He certainly wasn’t going to sit across from his betrothed with fresh blood splattered across his chest like a butcher on slaughter day. Bloodstains were a dreadful look for an outing like this, even if Evelia insisted his new coat made him look like a low-level tax clerk.

Xavion, however, didn’t seem particularly interested in Lioren’s fashion dilemma. He took another sip of tea before adding, "Though, I don’t believe the man was following us by coincidence now."

Evelia tapped her silver spoon against the rim of her cup, her gaze bouncing between Lioren and Xavion. Whatever had happened in that alley, she wasn’t about to let it go unexplored.

"So, Lioren," Evelia chimed in, her tone dripping with sweet, dangerous malice. "Since we’re all being so wonderfully open and honest now... what, precisely, did you and Caldrin do with our little shadow?"

Lioren instantly snapped his boyish, innocent smile back into place, flicking his wrist dismissively as if he were brushing away a pesky horsefly.

"Oh, nothing at all to fret over, dear sister!" Lioren beamed airily, taking two breezy steps closer to the table. "We simply had a delightful little chat! Played a charming, brief game of questions and answers down in the alley. Very educational for everyone involved! All in all, the entire matter has been completely settled. The poor fellow won’t be following us around the market again anytime soon."

He paused, a tiny, slightly unhinged giggle slipping past his lips before he could stop it. "In fact, I reckon if that rat still feels like chasing after us tonight, he’ll have to try crawling on his forehead!"

Standing two paces behind Lioren near the shop entrance, Caldrin let out a low, quiet cough, staring intensely at a beam in the ceiling as if he had suddenly taken up a deep passion for architecture. He looked entirely determined to pretend he didn’t exist.

Evelia narrowed her eyes, giving her brother a long, slow look that clearly communicated she didn’t buy his ’harmless chat’ story for a single second.

Xavion, meanwhile, kept his gaze fixed on Lioren in quiet, analytical silence.

He didn’t press for details. He didn’t ask what kind of ’game’ involved Lioren coming back smelling faintly of iron grease and wearing a completely different set of clothes. He had spent enough time around military men and border lords to know what a ’little chat’ in a dark alley usually looked like when someone drawn steel on a Grand Duke. The encounter had been violent, swift, brutal, and thoroughly decisive.

Before the silence at the table could turn awkward, Caldrin took a single step forward, clearing his throat again in a more official capacity.

"The prisoner has been secured," Caldrin reported in a low, even tone meant only for the table. "He’s currently being transported under heavy cover directly to the lower cells at the Roscaire estate. The guards have their orders."

"See? Just as my capable captain said, everything is under control!" Lioren declared, clapping his hands together with a sharp, triumphant SNAP that startled a young couple at the neighboring table.

The couple stopped halfway through sharing a pastry and stared at him, but Lioren paid them absolutely no attention.

"Right!" Lioren announced, pulling out the empty chair beside Xavion and sliding into it with dramatic flair. "We are not going to let some nameless, incompetent street rat ruin a perfectly good day out! I haven’t even had my fair share of the honeyed buns yet, and I refuse to return home on an empty stomach."

He reached out, casually snagging the last spiced pastry off the center plate and taking a large, enthusiastic bite, humming happily as the almond flavor hit his tongue.

The conversation around the window table slowly picked up its easy rhythm again. Evelia began complaining about the price of northern lace, Therin finally decided to purchase two boxes of candied chestnuts for the carriage ride, and Lioren spent ten minutes aggressively trying to convince Xavion that navy velvet was, in fact, the most regal color in the entire duchy.

Yet beneath the quiet clatter of porcelain tea cups and light laughter, Xavion’s mind remained elsewhere.

His eye drifted back toward the window pane, watching the cool mist roll off the nearby river and settle over the cobblestone streets.

A stalker in the central market wasn’t an impossibility, the capital was full of foreign eyes, local spies, and greedy informants looking to sell gossip to the highest noble house. But the precision of the man’s movement, the stubbornness with which he had trailed them through different districts... that required money. Real money. And professional backing.

Xavion took a slow breath, his fingers resting lightly against his cold teacup.

Who was he? Xavion pondered quietly, the cold, tactical gears of a former general turning silently behind his calm expression. A spy gathering information about the Roscaire family? An informant hoping to uncover something about the upcoming betrothal? Or someone who had recognized Xavion and wanted to know what the disgraced prince was doing so far from the palace?

Xavion glanced sideways at Lioren, who was currently laughing loudly at one of his own terrible jokes, a speck of sugar dusting his lower lip.

And that raised another question. Had the man been interested in Xavion all along, keeping track of the disgraced prince who had suddenly become engaged to one of Werestia’s most powerful nobles? Or had his attention been on Lioren from the beginning, with Xavion merely happening to be at the Grand Duke’s side throughout the afternoon?

The two possibilities led to entirely different conclusions, and Xavion had no intention of settling on either without evidence. Until they questioned their prisoner, all he could do was wonder who had sent the man and what they hoped to gain from following them.