The parlour held the soft crackle of fire and the studied hush of people arranging themselves for performance. Cedric had seen to the transition with his usual precision: wine on trays, chairs positioned to suggest intimacy while ensuring no conversation went unheard. Above the mantle was the final resting place of Alexios’ sword, hung in its ceremonial mounting, polished personally, a sacred duty to never let it tarnish. The duke may have passed, but his blade still had standards to maintain.
Lambert was near Calderon by the time the Legate had settled.
The Legate had planted himself by the fire, certain warmth was his by divine right; his sharp gaze fixed on Lambert the moment he approached.
“I confess myself surprised,” Calderon began, his tone sharpened to a point and aimed squarely at Lambert’s credentials. “Madame de Vaillant’s decision to appoint you as House Chaplain is... curious. It suggests an unconventional perspective on suitability.”
Lambert gave him composure. “I trust you understand my dedication to the teachings of Invictus, Legate. I believe I am more than prepared to serve my family in this role.”
“You might be prepared to serve your family, but are you suitable to serve House de Vaillant?” Calderon did not blink. “This house requires a chaplain who can navigate delicate matters. Someone with the wisdom to know when certain truths are best left unspoken. Someone... seasoned.”
Maximilian materialised at Lambert’s shoulder before he could respond with something he would regret, bearing a glass of wine and a smile that could have graced commemorative portraiture.
“Legate Calderon. I trust you’re finding the arrangements to your satisfaction?” He pressed the wine into Lambert’s hand. The gesture was pure younger brother: assured, proprietary, and entirely unrequested. “I couldn’t help but overhear. You were discussing our chaplaincy arrangements, I believe?”
Calderon’s expression shifted, recalibrating. Addressing an Inquisitor was one thing; addressing a duke required genuflection of an entirely different order. “Your Grace. I was merely expressing the Church’s interest in ensuring House de Vaillant receives appropriate spiritual guidance.”
“How thoughtful.” Maximilian’s smile didn’t waver. “Though I should mention that Lambert’s appointment was my decision, not my mother’s. The Church’s interest is noted, of course. But House de Vaillant’s ecumenical affairs remain precisely that.” He paused, letting the warmth drain from his voice without ever losing the smile. “Ours.”
“The position of House Chaplain represents more than ceremony, Your Grace.” Calderon’s voice found its footing again. “Surely you understand that such positions carry... weight.”
“Weight.” Maximilian tilted his head. “You mean regarding enlightenment, or regarding who sits in which pew?”
Calderon’s expression flickered. He had not expected the young duke to grasp the subtext quite so quickly. “The Church offers only assistance. Should you reconsider—”
“We shan’t.” Maximilian raised his glass in a gesture that was simultaneously a toast and a dismissal. “But do enjoy the evening, Legate. The port is excellent.”
He withdrew. The skirmish was won; lingering would only diminish it. Lambert watched him go, wine glass untouched, grateful for a brother who knew when to materialise.
? The Church of Invictus maintained that this was a mischaracterisation, though they kept remarkably detailed seating charts.
Thaddeus had claimed a chair by the hearth, port in hand, and settled in. He intended to defend both positions until forcibly removed. Wylan hovered nearby, working up to a question.
“Professor,” Wylan began, “what was it like working with Soraya? As a colleague, not a subject.” He hesitated; aware he was circling something. “She was my mentor for a while, but I only ever saw her as a teacher. And Father never seemed particularly interested in my work, so I never understood what drew him to hers.”
Thaddeus swirled his port, his expression softening. “She was remarkable. Brilliant, certainly. Also entirely unwilling to explain anything in terms a mere academic might comprehend.” He smiled ruefully. “I once asked her how transmutation functioned. She told me I was asking the wrong question, then spent twenty minutes describing the Bore of Chance in terms that made my headache for a week.”
Thaddeus took a long draught of port. The memory required fortification.
Wylan’s eyes brightened. “She tried to explain it to you? Most luminaries won’t even attempt that with outsiders.”
“She tried. I’m not sure ‘success’ is the word I’d use.” Thaddeus shook his head. “Soraya had a gift for making the incomprehensible sound tantalisingly close to comprehension, then snatching it away at the last moment. Your father found it amusing. I found it maddening.”
“Professor.” Wylan’s voice carried a gentle warning. “You know how we feel about that word. ‘Maddening’ becomes ‘madness’ becomes ‘mad science,’ and then suddenly we’re all one laboratory fire away from torches and pitchforks.”
Thaddeus raised his hands in concession. “Point taken. Frustrating, then. Deeply, persistently frustrating.”
“Frustrating is fair.” Wylan allowed the concession with a small nod. “And I don’t blame you for feeling that way. But it’s not incomprehensible; that’s the part I want you to understand. The Bore of Chance has laws. They’re just not accessible to everyone.”
Thaddeus raised an eyebrow. “Then it’s not truly a science, is it? Science is reproducible. Anyone with sufficient training and equipment can verify a chemical reaction or calculate an orbital trajectory. What you’re describing sounds rather more like gnosis.”
“Artifaction has schematics,” Wylan said. “Diagramma has codes. Everything documented, everything reproducible — by those who’ve seen the Bore.”
Thaddeus frowned. “I’ve read published alchemical formulae. I’ve seen the schematics.”
“And could you have written them? Before you saw the Bore?” Wylan waited. “The knowledge transfers. The comprehension doesn’t.”
“Science for the initiated, then.” Thaddeus chose his words more carefully this time. “Inaccessible to the rest of us.”
“Which is probably why Soraya never explained anything to your satisfaction.” Wylan’s tone softened. “It wasn’t rudeness. Just economy. Why spend an hour explaining something that will only sound like gibberish to someone who hasn’t seen what you’ve seen?”
Thaddeus leaned forward. “What was it like? Soraya would never say.”
Wylan’s grin faltered, just for a moment. “Imagine staring into something that stares back, except it’s not malevolent. It’s indifferent, and somehow that’s worse. Everything you thought was fixed, every law you trusted, suddenly becomes negotiable.”
“Negotiable how?”
“You see patterns that shouldn’t exist, connections that make perfect sense until you try to explain them, and then they dissolve like dreams.” He shrugged, the grin returning. “Most alchemists come back from their first glimpse either enlightened or slightly unhinged. The best ones are both.”
“And the practice itself?”
“Potions, mostly. Distillations that make the body remember being something else for a while. But the real work is the lapis.” Wylan tapped his chest. “Synthesise one of those, and all kinds of interesting things become possible with transmutation.”
“Such as?”
Wylan’s arm extended across the width of the settee, retrieved the port decanter from the side table, and returned without him leaning forward at all.
He refilled Thaddeus’s glass.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Thaddeus absorbed this. “Your father never talked about your alchemy. Nor, come to think of it, did he really reflect on Soraya’s.”
“He wouldn’t have.” Wylan turned his glass in his hands. “I only broke through the year before he died, and I spent most of that time directly under Soraya’s tutelage. There wasn’t...” He paused. “There wasn’t enough time. To show him what I was becoming. To see if he’d care.”
He looked down at them.
“And that,” Thaddeus said, his voice gentler now, “is a shame. He had a curious mind, your father. But he could be singular in focus, fixated on his goals, often at the cost of curiosity about other things.” He paused. “Soraya understood him, I think. Better than most of us did.”
Wylan’s gaze drifted. “Do you know what happened to her? After he died?”
Thaddeus shook his head slowly. “She vanished. No word, no warning. One day she was corresponding about reagent stability, the next...” He spread his hands. “Gone. I assumed grief, perhaps. Or that she knew something dangerous and chose to disappear.”
He stared into the fire for a moment, then shook himself. “Soraya’s disappearance was one of many mysteries your father left behind.” He swirled his port. “His patronage put me inside the Umbra itself. That was how we became friends, you know. His money and my curiosity, pointed at the same darkness.”
“What exactly is the Umbra?” Wylan asked. “Academically speaking.”
Thaddeus’s demeanour brightened at the question. “The Umbra is an otherworldly plane, an abyssal realm that exists alongside our own. Dungeons are something else entirely. Small pocket realms that attach themselves to our world but operate by the rules of whatever domain spawned them.” He glanced meaningfully at the assembled family. “Rather like family secrets. Hidden in plain sight, but infinitely more dangerous when disturbed.”
“Dungeons are linked to monstrous forces,” Thaddeus continued, noting Calderon’s attention. “Each one different. Alexios, as duke, took particular interest in understanding them. What drew them here. What might be done about them.”
“It was the attack, you understand, that changed everything for him.” Thaddeus’s voice dropped. “Ten years ago, when Aeloria came for Notre Reine.”
Across the room, Lambert and Isabella turned their heads.
“He was always interested in Aeloria,” Thaddeus continued, “but his interest was largely distant. Academic, even. When she attacked his own city, and it became clear there were cultists here still loyal to her...” He shook his head. “Let us say I have never seen a man so dreadful in his convictions.”
“He was a paladin.” Isabella had drifted closer, her approach so gradual it might have been continental drift. “Convictions are what drive them. Empower them.”
“Yes, yes, I do not mean to insult the memory of the late Duke.” Thaddeus raised a hand. “But that conviction scared me at times. He was convinced he could develop a weapon from the Umbra. One that would bring Aeloria down.”
Wylan leaned forward. “Did he?”
Lambert had materialised at the edge of the conversation, his arrival as silent as his sister’s. “I came across some correspondence of his.” A pause, precise. “Reading between the lines, there were suggestions he found something. But nothing conclusive.”
Isabella turned from Thaddeus. “Lambert. You shouldn’t be snooping on things like that.”
“Come now, Isabella.” Lambert’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I won’t have you lecture me on not ‘snooping.’”
“Sorry—you said there were dragon cultists?” Wylan looked between them. “I’ve heard of them, but no one ever really seems to talk about them. Are they just fanatics?”
“Possibly.” Thaddeus steepled his fingers. “Alexios swore to eradicate them from Pharelle, to root out any of Aeloria’s followers who remained. It’s hard to say whether they were fanatical or simply nostalgic for a different reign. Fanatics and loyalists look much the same when you’re on the receiving end of their devotion.” He paused. “I suppose that bitterness might have been why His Grace forgot to invite her to Aurora’s Emberlight.”
“As much as I hate to be the dragon’s advocate,” Lambert said, “I must, for the record, put down that Aeloria’s attack was not without reason. News was everywhere at the time that her egg had been stolen — and worse, that the Church was behind it. If true, it was foolish to assume she wouldn’t come for it. I was vocal about it at the time. Not that anyone listened.”
Thaddeus looked between them. “I recall at the time, the two of you made rather loud news yourselves. Running straight into the conflagration without consideration of your own lives.”
“Front line,” Isabella said, her voice flat. “Both of us.”
Thaddeus looked from one to the other and had the good sense not to fill it.
“It’s how the Inquisition found me.” Lambert’s tone matched hers. “Surviving a dragon’s wrath while keeping civilians alive attracts attention.”
“People first.” Isabella’s gaze went distant. “Always people first—”
“—the city can be rebuilt. Lives cannot.” Lambert finished. “I remember you saying so.”
The room was quiet.
“She knew exactly where to strike and what to spare,” Lambert said quietly. “A dragon’s fury, yet surgically precise. Someone told her where the egg was hidden. Someone guided her wrath.”
Thaddeus nodded. “Alexios believed the answers lay in the Umbra itself. That maybe in the darkness there might be a weapon that would suffice against a dragon.” He spread his hands. “I thought it an obsession born of grief. Now, I wonder if he saw more clearly than any of us.”
The fire crackled, performing its function with the quiet reliability of a servant who had long since stopped expecting thanks. Across the parlour, her children had drifted into Thaddeus’s orbit, drawn by talk of dragons and cultists and their father’s obsessions. Laila let them go. The discussion of Pharelle’s history and Alexios’ secrets could occupy them for now; she had more immediate concerns.
Vivienne d’Aubigne coiled into the chair beside her, patient as a viper in sunlight.
The Countess had been needling her all evening: each comment a blade looking for a gap, perfectly calibrated to sound innocent to anyone listening, yet carrying just enough edge to draw blood. Laila had given her nothing, but the effort of holding still under it was exhausting.
“Such a fascinating household you maintain,” Vivienne observed, her gaze following the animated discussion by the hearth. “Scholars debating the nature of shadow. Children reminiscing about dragon attacks. One almost forgets this is meant to be a memorial.”
“Grief takes many forms, Countess.”
“Indeed, it does.” Vivienne smiled. She knew exactly how unwelcome she was and found the knowledge nourishing. She smoothed an invisible crease from her gown. “Alexios collected such interesting friends. Scholars, adventurers, eccentrics of every stripe. One wonders what drew him to such... unconventional company. When he had perfectly respectable obligations to attend to.”
“My husband had broad curiosities.”
“Curiosities.” Vivienne let the word hang. “Such a gentle term for a man who spent his final years chasing shadows and consorting with academics rather than attending court.” She gestured languidly toward Thaddeus. “But then, some men prefer the company of books to the company of their betters.”
“And yet here you are, Countess, gracing us with your presence despite such humble company. One might almost suspect you of slumming.”
Before Vivienne could sharpen her next riposte, Alexisoix materialised at her elbow like a comet with social aspirations.
“Countess d’Aubigne,” he declared, executing a bow that was technically flawless and emotionally excessive, “I must confess that the firelight does remarkable things to your complexion. You positively luminance.”
“‘Luminance’ is not a verb, Monsieur Beaumont.”
“Then I shall petition the Académie to make it one. Language should serve beauty, not constrain it.”
Vivienne’s lips twitched. The closest thing to a smile Laila had seen all evening. “Flattery is a blade that dulls with overuse.”
“Then I shall endeavour to sharpen my wit instead.” Alexisoix leaned closer, radiating the absolute certainty that his charm was universal. “Tell me, Countess—what brings a woman of your stature to our humble gathering? Surely Pharelle’s entertainments pale beside the diversions of court.”
It was clumsy. It was obvious. And inadvertently useful.
Bless his transparent heart.
The reprieve lasted approximately forty seconds. Laila had counted.
Alexisoix, undeterred by Vivienne’s measured deflections, had somehow manoeuvred the conversation toward poetry. “The bards of the southern provinces have a saying, Countess—that beauty, like fine wine, improves with the terroir that shaped it. Tell me, what landscapes have had the honour of shaping you?”
“I don’t know,” Vivienne said, her tone light, almost careless. “I’ve always preferred the beauty of the Mountains of Auvergne myself.”
The words landed softly. Alexisoix, oblivious, launched into some comparison between mountain peaks and cheekbones. But Laila had stopped listening.
The Mountains of Auvergne.
Most people didn’t call those peaks ‘beautiful.’ That word required intimacy with a place.
Where Aeloria made her lair.
The opening was here.
Laila reached for her compact. The movement had been waiting all evening for the right moment, and this was it. The mirror caught the firelight as she tilted it toward her face, ostensibly checking for imperfections that did not exist. Her other hand found the pigment, ground fine as whispered secrets.
A dusting across her cheek. The gesture of a lady freshening her appearance. Exactly that, and nothing more.
The spell settled like silk against her senses, and Vivienne’s emotional landscape opened to her.
Cagey. That was the first note, sharp and immediate: Vivienne had said more than intended and was only now realising it. Her composure remained flawless on the surface, but beneath it churned the cold dread of an unforced error.
And beneath that, something else.
Love. Not the pale affection of political alliance or the calculated warmth of social climbing. This was devotion, fierce and unwavering, bending knees and bowing heads.
For Aeloria.
Laila closed the compact with a soft click.
The dragon cult. Lambert had told her there were operatives in the Gallian aristocracy. She had believed him. She had planned for it.
She had not planned for this.
Not the wife of the King’s representative. Not a woman who had dined at their table, who had attended Aurora’s nameday celebration, who had offered condolences over Alexios’ coffin with perfectly calibrated grief. Laila had held Vivienne as a suspect for three days. She had been right. That was not relief.
And if the cult had reached this far into Pharelle’s political machinery, how much further had it spread? The whispered rumours of the changeling conspiracy surfaced unbidden: the Dauphin replaced, the true heir spirited away, a man in an iron mask rotting in some forgotten dungeon. Laila had dismissed such tales as the fevered imaginings of bored aristocrats.
What else had she dismissed too readily?
Laila kept her expression neutral. “The mountains hold many secrets. One must be careful wandering too far from established paths.”
Let Vivienne interpret that however she wished.
“How true.” Vivienne smiled, satisfied she had landed her point. “How very true.”
Somewhere in the house, a bell chimed. The household had a schedule, and the household intended to keep it.