The morning’s peace was broken by a cry that carried through the upper floors of the de Vaillant estate. It lacked the concussive properties of an explosion, but it managed to arrive at almost everyone in the manor at the same time.
Moments later, Laila found one of the lesser servants rushing up to her with panic in their face.
“Madame la Duchesse, His Grace requires your presence in his council chambers immediately.”
“Requires?”
“He was unfortunately very specific about that word, madame.”
Laila walked towards the council chambers at exactly the pace that communicated urgency to the servants and unhurriedness to her son. Whatever had captured his anger could stand some time to cool before she arrived.
She was therefore the last to arrive, and the scene that greeted her was chaos. Maximilian was pacing behind the head of the table, a letter with singed edges in his fist. Lambert, having faced down the entire Church yesterday, looked faintly bored. Wylan was seated at the far end but wasn’t quite present. He seemed to be smouldering for a different reason.
“I found him in the study,” Lambert said. “I thought this warranted the council room.”
“What’s he burned this time?” Laila said, and sat down.
“This.” Maximilian pushed the letter across the table toward her. “Custodial claim. For Aurora.”
Laila read the letter. She did not read it quickly.
Mirembe Ankhara. Legal Notice of Custodial Claim. The language was precise, formal, and had clearly been assembled by someone who charged by the clause. It referenced the excommunication, which had been dismissed, though the letter appeared not to have received that particular piece of news. It closed with a paragraph about a mother’s sacred duty that Laila read twice, the second time more slowly than the first.
Laila set the letter down. Her hand was steady, but her voice was not.
“She stood before an ecclesiastical court under compulsion and called her own daughter a monstrous half-blood. She said, under oath, ‘I have no daughter.’” Laila looked at Maximilian. “I was there. I heard her say the words. And now she has the audacity to claim a mother’s sacred duty?”
“Sanctimony as a legal instrument,” Lambert said. “She’s cloaking selfishness in faith.”
“She abandoned Aurora once.” Maximilian had not stopped pacing. “She forfeited her right to moral high ground the moment she chose to leave. Now she thinks she can dictate terms?”
“She abandoned my niece.” It came from the far end of the table, and Laila paused. Wylan’s hand had drifted, perhaps unconsciously, to his flintlock Diplomacy. It told you everything you needed to know about Wylan’s approach to negotiation. “From what I hear, she’s holed up in the family estate near the southern edge of the noble quarter. I just want to talk to her.”
“Because your disputes rarely involve words, Wylan.” Laila’s voice carried no room for negotiation. “If you step onto her estate uninvited, they’ll be within their rights to deny you entry. Or worse.”
“This is a legal matter now,” Lambert said. “Some restraint might be advisable. The court is unlikely to appreciate a bonfire demonstration.”
Wylan sighed theatrically. “Fine. We’ll play it your way. For now.”
“Besides,” Lambert continued, “we do have the Pontifex and Valère on side. Mirembe must know the political reality of this is unlikely to favour her.”
Maximilian stopped pacing. “That’s awfully cynical of you, Lambert. Whatever happened to the court of reason?”
“We did.”
The room absorbed that.
“So she has no legal claim over Aurora?” Maximilian said. Some of the heat had left his voice.
“She has a legal claim,” Lambert said. “But given her theatrics at court, I do not give it credence. She called her own daughter a monstrous half-blood under compulsion. No advocate worth their fee would put her on the stand after that.” He folded his hands. “Aurora is here. She is with us. She is in the care of her father. Time is on our side.”
“We do still have R?zvan’s boon,” Wylan said. “Just pointing that out. Let’s see how desperate she is when the other side’s counsel can’t walk in the sun.”
Lambert looked at him. “You want to resolve a custody dispute with vampires.”
“I want to resolve it with options.”
“That is not a legal strategy,” Lambert said.
“No, Wylan.” Laila’s voice was quiet. “All that will do is create more pain, and it’s not going to help Aurora.”
“Yeah, well. I wouldn’t mind it personally. She’s already caused this family a lot of grief.”
“If Mirembe wants a war,” Maximilian said quietly, “she’ll learn what happens when you threaten a de Vaillant child.”
“We are going to keep her,” Laila said. “But to do that, we need to show any court that Aurora is in a stable, loving household with capable—”
From somewhere beyond the council room door, something heavy and enthusiastic passed at speed. Three sets of stone footsteps, one very small voice shrieking with delight, and the combined protests of Greta and Divina in pursuit. “Mustard, you put her down!”
Laila waited for the corridor to quiet.
“With guardians,” she continued, “who maintain a household that is not currently being terrorised by its own statuary.”
“They’ve been alive for two days,” Wylan said. “They’re still learning.”
“They’re learning faster than you did,” Laila said. “That’s what worries me.”
? The de Vaillant household budget for incidentals had been revised upward three times in two days. The head of housekeeping had submitted her resignation twice.
Laila turned back to Maximilian. “Why the council chambers? Mirembe’s claim is audacious, but you don’t call a council for a custody letter.”
“Because that’s not the only matter at hand,” Lambert said.
Maximilian reached for the remaining documents and set them on the table. The first, a letter sealed in verdigris wax, he pushed toward Wylan. “This is for you. From Soraya.”
Wylan’s hand was on it before Maximilian had finished the sentence. “Soraya?” He turned the letter over, already reading the symbol pressed into the wax.
The second, Maximilian placed in front of Laila. “And this is intelligence from Gawain. On the whereabouts of Isabella.”
Laila’s composure, which had survived Mirembe’s letter and Wylan’s pistol and Maximilian’s fire, did not survive that sentence. She snatched the letter from the table.
She read it in silence, and the room gave her that.
“How long have you known about this?” she said to Maximilian.
“Since this morning. Gawain came to my study before dawn.”
“Gawain came to you.”
“Through a closed window. He delivered the intelligence and left the same way.”
Laila looked at the letter again. “Isabella has been captured. She’s being held at Undertow Keep, a siren prison near the Black Trench.” She glanced at Maximilian. “Off the coast of Fairhaven.”
“Fairhaven,” Wylan said, looking up from the Soraya letter. “That’s where the egg went.” He set the letter down. “I always said she could be too direct.”
“And when does she ever listen to us?” Laila said.
“This seems pretty bloody important, though.” Wylan’s voice was flat. “We drove her to abscond with Voltari in the middle of the night.”
“She chose to go,” Maximilian said.
“She chose to go because staying had become harder than going.” Wylan looked at his brother. “I wasn’t the one who pushed her away.”
The room went very still.
“Nobody pushed her away,” Laila said. “Isabella made her choice. But she made it because this family was in no position to offer her an alternative. We were on trial. We were excommunicated. We had a vendetta over our heads.” She paused. “That is on all of us.”
Lambert was looking at his hands.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“How long has she been there?” Lambert asked.
“Days. Perhaps a week. The intelligence only reached Gawain last night.”
Laila did the arithmetic. A week. They had been in the Sepulchre. They had been at the Champ de Soleil, watching Valère pull the sun from the sky while her daughter sat in an underwater prison.
“We go after her,” Laila said.
Maximilian stopped. “Are you sure? She left on her own terms.”
“We just went through the worst time to keep this family together, and right now, we are not whole.” Laila’s voice was steady and final. “I’m going to get my daughter back.”
Not sister. Not operative. Not the siren she had taken in as a political arrangement two decades ago. Daughter.
Wylan set the Soraya letter down. Lambert’s hands unfolded. Maximilian said nothing. The decision had been made.
“If she was taken by the Court of the Undertow,” Wylan said quietly, “and the ship went down in the same waters, the sirens likely have the egg as well.”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“Guillaume has a shipping company and ties to Captain Voltari,” Laila said. “We should speak to him about a ship.”
“If the de Vaillants are seen to be recruiting a ship, it sends the wrong signal,” Maximilian said. “It looks like we’re trying to leave while the pressure is on.”
“Then we’ll ask him about a discreet ship.” Laila looked at Maximilian. “I know he has some of those.”
Wylan picked up the Soraya letter again. He had broken the seal at some point during the Isabella discussion, and something in it had pulled him back.
“Soraya is describing a process,” he said. “Something to do with dragonborn creation. The notation is dense, and parts of it are encoded. I’ll need time.” He looked up. “But if the egg is what we think it is, this letter may tell us what to do when we find it.”
“Then we leave as soon as we can,” Laila said.
“We can’t just leave,” Maximilian said. “I’ve had a dispatch from L’Orsienne this morning. The King is asking whether the Pharellian City Watch can handle the disturbance, or whether he needs to deploy le Maréchaussée.”
“When did this arrive?” Laila said.
“With the morning’s correspondence. It’s addressed to the Duke of Pharelle, requesting an assessment.”
“Requesting.” She looked at him. “That’s not a request. That’s Lucian telling you he’s considering it and giving you one chance to say it’s handled.”
“I know what it is.”
“Then you know what happens if you’re not here to reply. Le Maréchaussée don’t ask questions, Maximilian. They arrive, they establish order, and the definition of order is whatever the King says it is. If the Duke of Pharelle is at sea when that letter goes unanswered, it doesn’t look like absence. It looks like the city’s lord abandoned his post.”
Maximilian said nothing.
“And half the houses in the city have written to us since yesterday,” Laila said. “The same people who maintained a careful distance during the excommunication are suddenly very interested in proximity.”
“I’ve been sorting their letters all morning,” Maximilian said. “The second pile is always the largest.”
“They’re recalculating. A few weeks ago, we were persona non grata. Now they’ve seen Valère publicly endorse our family’s position, and every minor lord in the city is working out what that means for their alliances.” She paused. “That’s useful. But it’s fragile. Those houses didn’t stand with us when it was difficult. They’re standing with us now because it’s convenient. If we vanish, the calculation reverses overnight.”
“Let it reverse,” Maximilian said. “I didn’t need their support during the excommunication. I don’t need it now.”
“Yes you did,” Laila said. “And it nearly broke us. We survived the excommunication because we fought on every front simultaneously, and even then it was closer than any of us would like to admit. We cannot afford to burn goodwill we haven’t finished earning back.” She paused. “You may be the Duke of Pharelle, but I had hoped the lesson you took from these past two weeks is that this doesn’t make you invulnerable, nor immortal.”
A soft pause.
“That was your father’s mistake.”
Lambert broke the silence.
“Valère’s consolidation is moving faster than I anticipated. The Aurarch proclamation is everywhere. Leaflets, banners, preachers in the squares.”
“Aurarch,” Wylan said, without looking up from the Soraya letter. “What is that, exactly? I do wonder why divine figures always seem to need mortal titles in the first place.”
“A gilded crown filed down to fit a smaller head. Aurarch is just Sun King in fancier words.” Lambert paused. “But titles are the least of it. We know what Valère is doing. We’ve known since Theodora explained the mechanism. The Church was built as an engine of belief, designed to reshape how an entire nation understands the divine. And at the Champ de Soleil, we gave him Caliburn back.”
“Valère isn’t consolidating power. He’s completing a project that has been centuries in the making. Every leaflet, every sermon, every banner declaring the Aurarch — it’s not propaganda. It’s liturgy. He’s steering the belief of a nation toward a vacancy he intends to fill.” Lambert was quiet. “Esteban is Pontifex, but Valère installed him. The institution I was ordained in, the theology I preached — it was all built to serve this. And now the architect has his sword back, because we gave it to him.”
“Then why do you still serve it?” Wylan asked.
Lambert looked at his brother.
“Because if I don’t, who does? The old guard traditionalists are paralysed. The younger clergy are flocking to Valère because he represents something that feels like purpose. Both sides are watching to see where I land, because my position after the Champ de Soleil is conspicuous.” He paused. “I endorsed Esteban. That wasn’t conviction. That was damage control. The clergy know it. If I leave Pharelle now, I cede the ground to Valère’s people entirely. Whatever resistance exists within the Church loses its most visible figure.”
“You endorsed him because the alternative was worse,” Laila said.
“That has been my governing principle for some time now.”
“You can’t leave,” Laila said to Maximilian.
“No,” Maximilian said. “I can’t.”
Laila looked at him. He had not argued. He had not reached for a sword or offered to burn something. He had simply said no, I can’t.
“Now you’re being a Duke,” she said, “instead of playing the part.”
“I’m the Duke. The King’s letter requires the Duke’s reply. The nobility needs the Duke’s presence. And Aurora needs her father here, not at sea, if Mirembe decides to press her claim.”
“I’m going,” Laila said. “Isabella needs me.”
“Then Lambert and I are coming with you,” Wylan said.
Lambert nodded.
“We should bring Divina,” Wylan said. “If Guillaume’s ship needs work, she’s more useful at sea than managing the household.”
“And she’s not politically entangled,” Laila added. “That matters if we need to move quietly.”
She looked at Maximilian. “Will you be all right here?”
“I’ve had more than my own fair share of running this household of late, Laila. Besides, I have Elariana to manage affairs of security. I have Cedric to help manage the day-to-day affairs. I have Percy—”
“To manage your personal affairs,” Wylan said.
“Wylan!”
“What about the Church?” Laila asked Lambert, once the room had settled.
“Esteban can probably take care of the Church in my absence. He is Pontifex, after all.” Lambert straightened in his chair. “Besides, every faction in the Church is watching to see what I do next. If I stay, I become a piece on their board. If I leave on a mission, I’m unavailable for their machinations. There’s a certain freedom in being at sea.”
Laila nodded.
“And our allies?” Lambert said. “Valère and the vampire court. If we disappear without notice, they’ll draw their own conclusions.”
“Valère is busy building a republic,” Laila said. “He won’t notice three members of a noble family leaving the city, and I’d rather he didn’t. The fewer people who know where we’re going, the safer Isabella is when we get there.”
“And Seraphina?”
“The same applies. I don’t want either party knowing our movements.”
Wylan set the letter down. “I’d like to visit the court before we leave.”
Laila looked at him.
“We’ll be gone for days, possibly weeks,” Wylan said. “I’d like to see Augustine.”
The room did not comment on this, though it clearly wanted to.
“Wylan, the entire point of leaving quietly—”
“I’m not asking to send a diplomatic envoy. I’m asking to visit before we go. We can write to Seraphina while we’re there — let her know we’ll be away, nothing more. It’s courtesy, not intelligence.”
Laila weighed this. She could see the argument forming behind Wylan’s careful phrasing, and she could see the one he wasn’t making.
“Fine,” she said. “We visit the court. We keep it brief, and we keep the details vague. Where we’re going, why, and for how long stays in this room.”
Wylan nodded. “Thank you.”
“When?” Maximilian asked.
“As soon as Guillaume can arrange a ship,” Laila said. “I’ll speak to him tomorrow.”
Maximilian looked at his mother, his brothers, the table that seated twelve.
“Come back,” he said.
Laila gathered the letters from the table. The charred custody claim she left on the oak, where it could smoulder in good company.
“Watch your fire,” she said, and the council room door closed behind her.
Laila’s study had accumulated the evidence of a working evening. Charts on the desk, intelligence reports weighted down with a teacup that had gone cold an hour ago, and a bread roll that Cedric had placed with quiet optimism.
Lambert closed the door behind him and took the chair opposite without being offered it. This was not their first late evening over maps.
“Show me what we’re working with,” he said.
Laila turned the chart so they could both read it. The western coast past Gallia’s territorial waters: trade routes thinning, depth markings growing more optimistic than the waters deserved, and then a point where the cartography gave up entirely.
“Fairhaven,” she said, tapping a small island to the north. “Fishing community. Trade hub at the harbour, not much beyond it. It’s where Navarro was last sighted, and it’s the closest port to the Trench.”
“How close?”
“Close enough to gather intelligence. Not close enough to see it.” Her finger moved south. “The continental shelf drops away here. The currents pull everything down. That’s the Black Trench.”
Lambert studied the blank space on the chart. “And the Keep?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t have a precise location. What I have is second-hand — traders who’ve been near it, a few accounts from people who were released.” She pulled a separate sheet from under the chart. “It’s built into a rock wall, deep. The ocean floor, or near to it. The location itself is the primary defence — you can’t reach it unless you can travel underwater.”
“Which we can’t.”
“Which we can’t. Yet.” Laila set the sheet down. “The Keep itself is built into the rock, so the physical structure is sound. But on top of that, there’s a magical barrier. Designed to detect arcane and theurgical power.”
Lambert leaned back. “Detects it how? Proximity? Active use?”
“I’m not certain. The intelligence isn’t that specific. What I do know is that prisoners are given relative freedom inside. They’re not in cells. They don’t need to be.”
“Because there’s nowhere to go.” Lambert looked at the chart again. “So Isabella has movement within the Keep, but any rescue attempt using magic announces itself the moment it crosses the barrier.”
“Yes.”
“Which means my theurgy is a liability.”
“It means we need to understand the barrier better before we commit to anything. That’s what Fairhaven is for. We go there first, we gather what we can, and we plan the approach from solid ground instead of secondhand reports.”
? Prison architects had long debated the relative merits of walls, moats, and guards. The Court of the Undertow had settled the argument by putting the entire facility at the bottom of the ocean, which was generally considered unsporting.
Lambert nodded slowly. “And the egg? Are we assuming the sirens have it?”
“If Navarro’s ship went down in those waters, it’s likely. But I don’t know that for certain either. Navarro himself was last sighted near Fairhaven. Whether he’s still there, whether the ship actually sank, whether the cargo survived — those are all gaps.”
“So we’re working two objectives with incomplete intelligence on both.”
“Welcome to my entire career.” Laila paused. “There’s one more thing. Reports of something large in the waters near the Trench. Ships damaged. Tentacle attacks.”
“A kraken.”
“Possibly. Possibly connected to the sirens, possibly independent. If it’s guarding the approach to the Keep, that’s another layer we have to get through. If it’s territorial and separate, there might be a way to use one problem against the other.”
“Or there might not.”
“Or there might not.” Laila pulled the chart back toward her. “Which is why Fairhaven comes first. We don’t sail into the Trench blind. We go to the island, we find what Navarro knew, we learn the waters, and then we decide how to reach the Keep.”
She was quiet for a moment, studying the blank space where the cartography ended.
“We’ll need Guillaume,” she said. “He has the maritime connections we don’t. A ship, crew, someone who knows those waters.”
“Do you think he’ll help?”
“He’s family. And he’s been waiting for us to ask.” She folded the chart. “I’ll go to him tomorrow. Early. Before the city wakes up and starts watching us again.”
Lambert stood. “I’ll be ready.”
“Lambert.” He paused at the door. “Get some sleep. You look like you haven’t in days.”
“I haven’t.”
“I know. That’s why I’m telling you.”