Chapter 5: The Confession
The Griffin’s Roost had been a bust. Not a total bust—the lamplighter’s cousin had been eager to talk, his words spilling out like overfilled ale—but the description of the man with the catching step remained frustratingly vague. Average. Forgettable. A ghost in well-made boots. The only solid lead was a name, whispered with a nervous glance at the door: Kaelen. Not the twin, but a common enough name in the lower city.
Frustration was a sour taste in Theron’s mouth as he, Cassian, and Isolde marched back through the palace’s lesser-used corridors. The urgency from the night before had curdled into a grinding determination. They needed to report the name, scant as it was, and decide the next move. The Royal Office was the obvious place; their father would be there, likely with their mother, planning the next very public, very aggressive display of regal paranoia.
“A name. One name,” Theron grumbled, pushing a hand through his hair. “In a city of thousands.”
“It’s a thread,” Cassian said, his voice low. “You pull it, you see what unravels. I’ll start with the guild registries. Smiths, fletchers, anyone who works with fine metal or has a reason to hide a blade.”
“I’ll come with you,” Isolde said. “Two sets of eyes. We can—”
They reached the heavy oak door of the Royal Office. No guards were posted at this hour; Alaric hated the implied weakness. Theron, without breaking stride, pushed the door open.
The scene inside was not one of political strategy.
Alaric had Lyssandra cornered against the far wall, near the great map table. One of his massive hands was braced against the stone by her head, the other was locked around her wrist, pinning it above her. Her slate-grey gown was rumpled, the laces at the neck torn open, revealing the sharp line of her collarbone and the unmistakable, fresh bruise of a bite mark on her throat. Her head was turned away, her copper hair disheveled against the stone.
“—absolutely not, you barbarian,” she was gasping, but there was no fear in it. It was pure, heated annoyance. “This is a public place! Anyone could walk in! Don’t you even think about it!”
Alaric’s laugh was a low, predatory rumble that vibrated in the quiet room. “Since when do you care about an audience?” He leaned in, his mouth hovering near the bite mark. “You staged a coup in our bedroom.”
“That was calculated,” she hissed, trying to twist her wrist free. He didn’t budge. “This is just you being incapable of containing a base impulse for five minutes!”
“You made the impulse,” he growled, and his free hand slid down, bunching the heavy fabric of her skirt. He began to lift it.
Theron stopped dead just inside the doorway, his brain stuttering to a halt. The frustration of the failed mission evaporated, replaced by a dizzying wave of shock and acute discomfort. This was… this was different from the charged tension in their chambers days before. That had been a revelation, a seismic shift in his understanding of their relationship. This was visceral. Primal. And it was happening in the office, in the middle of the day.
Beside him, Cassian made a sound like a choked cough and looked sharply at the floor, his spy’s composure utterly shattered.
Isolde, however, let out a loud, exasperated sigh. She strode into the room, letting the door thud shut behind them.
“Father! By all the gods, put her down!”
Alaric didn’t startle. He didn’t even look up from Lyssandra’s throat. He went very still for a second, then slowly, deliberately, turned his head. His gray eyes glinted with something darker than amusement. “Get out.”
“No,” Isolde said, planting her hands on her hips. She pointed a finger at him, an act of sheer bravery that made Theron’s own blood run cold. “You cannot just… manhandle the Queen in the Royal Office! This isn’t your private apartments! Have you lost your mind? You cannot tarnish Mother’s virtue like this where anyone could see!”
A slow, terrifying smile spread across Alaric’s face. He didn’t release Lyssandra. “Her virtue,” he repeated, the words dripping with mockery. “Is that what you’re worried about, little hawk?”
“I’m worried about basic decorum!” Isolde shot back, advancing another step. Her cheeks were flushed with anger, not embarrassment. “She is the Queen of the entire realm, not your… your personal hunting trophy! You have a council who walks in here! Ambassadors! What if it had been Vorlan who walked in? How would you explain that? ‘Pardon the interruption, just asserting my conjugal rights against the map of the eastern trade routes?’ It’s obscene!”
Theron watched, frozen, as his father’s smile didn’t waver. He expected the explosion. The roar. The moment where Alaric would shove Lyssandra aside and turn his terrifying focus on his daughter for such a blatant, disrespectful challenge.
It didn’t come.
Alaric listened. He kept Lyssandra pinned, but he tilted his head, actually seeming to consider Isolde’s tirade. A low chuckle escaped him. “Vorlan would probably faint. Improve the council’s efficiency.”
“This isn’t funny!”
“It’s a little funny,” Alaric murmured, his eyes flicking back to Lyssandra’s face. She had stopped struggling. She was watching Isolde, a strange, unreadable expression in her gray-green eyes.
Isolde was on a roll. “You can’t treat her like this! She’s not some tavern wench you’ve dragged into an alley! She’s Mother! She deserves respect, especially from you! This is… it’s crude!”
Alaric’s grip on Lyssandra’s wrist finally loosened. He didn’t shove her away. He just let go, lowering his hand from the wall and taking a half-step back, though he still loomed over her. He looked at his furious daughter, and to Theron’s utter, world-altering disbelief, he shrugged. A casual, almost sheepish motion.
“She started it,” Alaric said, like a boy caught stealing apples.
Lyssandra smoothed her torn bodice with practiced calm, not looking at any of them. “I most certainly did not. You were bored because the tax reports were tedious.”
“You breathed in a provocative manner.”
“I breathed.”
Isolde was not appeased. “You’re impossible! Both of you!” She turned her scowl on her mother. “And you! Don’t just let him! You have a voice! Use it to tell him to act like a civilized person for once in his life!”
Lyssandra finally met her daughter’s gaze. “I did. He finds my annoyance… motivating.”
Cassian and Theron stood by the door, forgotten. They shared a single, stunned glance. Theron felt the solid ground of his understanding of his father crack and shift. If he, Theron, had ever spoken to Alaric like that—interrupting him, finger-pointing, shouting about crude behavior and virtue—he’d be picking his teeth up off the floor. Probably with a broken arm for good measure. Cassian would be dangling from a balcony by his ankles.
Yet here was Isolde, in full flight, scolding the undefeated king like he was a misbehaving hound, and he was… taking it. He was accepting it. Grudgingly, with a mocking smile, but he was letting her words land. He was even offering a defense.
It wasn’t about the words, Theron realized with a jolt. It was about the person saying them. Isolde, who had his face. Isolde, who he’d said was the first to truly hook his addiction. He wouldn’t strike her because, in some fractured, profound way, seeing her spirit—his own wildness reflected back at him through her mother’s eyes—was more compelling than his own pride.
Alaric reached out and casually tugged one of Isolde’s loose curls. “Finished your lecture, General?”
Isolde swatted his hand away, but the fight was draining out of her, replaced by flustered confusion. “Someone has to have standards in this family.”
“Standards are boring,” Alaric said, but he finally turned fully away from Lyssandra, his attention finally landing on his sons by the door. The playful light in his eyes hardened into pragmatic sharpness. “The Griffin’s Roost. What did you find?”
The whiplash was severe. Theron had to clear his throat. “A name. Kaelen. That’s all.”
Alaric nodded as if they’d delivered a full dossier. “Cassian. Guild registries. Now. Isolde, go with him. Theron, you’re with me. We’re paying a visit to the Master of Coin. Vorlan’s been skimming. Let’s see if his nerves make him twitchy about other things.”
It was a dismissal and a redistribution of orders, the king reasserting himself seamlessly. The moment of shocking intimacy and the ensuing familial scolding were closed, like a book snapped shut.
As Cassian and Isolde turned to leave, Isolde threw one last, warning look at her father. He winked at her.
Out in the corridor, walking quickly toward the registry archives, Cassian let out a long, slow breath. “I thought he was going to rip her dress off right there.”
“He might have,” Isolde muttered, her anger now spent, leaving her looking weary.
“And you just… shouted at him.” Cassian shook his head, a flicker of something like awe in his expression. “He listened to you.”
Isolde shrugged, but her shoulders were tense. “He listens to Mother. Really listens. That’s just… how it translates sometimes.” She glanced at her brother. “Don’t ever try it.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Cassian said, fervently. He looked back toward the office door. “It’s a different set of rules. For her.”
Back in the office, Theron watched his mother finish re-lacing her gown, her fingers steady and sure. Alaric was already rolling up the tax reports, his mind clearly on the hunt ahead.
Theron understood now, with brutal clarity. The garden, the ecosystem his mother tended. He and Cassian were plants to be pruned and guided. Isolde was something else. She was the storm seed that had fallen within the walls, wild and undeniable, and their father wouldn’t dream of cutting her down. He’d just let the wind of her fury blow through, and enjoy the chaos it stirred in her mother’s calm, green eyes.
“Stop staring, Theron,” Lyssandra said, not unkindly, as she fastened the last lace. “We have a man with a catching step to find.”
But the image was burned into Theron’s mind: the submission that wasn’t submission, the scolding that wasn’t punished, the brutal, exclusive language of a obsession that had its own strange, forgiving dialect. And he knew, for the first time, exactly where he stood outside of it.
And he knew, for the first time, exactly where he stood outside of it. The understanding was a cold, clean thing in his gut. It sharpened his focus as he followed his father through the palace’s administrative heart, away from the charged silence of the office.
“Vorlan’s been skimming,” Alaric had said. The statement hung between them, simple as a drawn blade.
They found the Master of Coin in his counting house, a windowless room that smelled of dust, ink, and the faint metallic scent of handled coin. Lord Vorlan was a narrow man, all sharp angles and nervous fingers. He looked up from a massive ledger, his watery eyes widening at the sight of the king filling his doorway.
“Your Majesty,” Vorlan stammered, scrambling to his feet. A quill rolled from the desk. “Prince Theron. An unexpected honor.”
Alaric didn’t bother with a greeting. He walked to the desk, picked up the ledger, and glanced at a random page. He held it up. “Explain the discrepancy in the granite quarry tariffs. The one you’ve hidden in the column for road-mending donations.”
Vorlan’s face went the color of old parchment. “A discrepancy? Surely not, Sire, my clerks are most diligent—”
“Your clerks aren’t the problem.” Alaric dropped the ledger. It hit the desk with a slap that made Vorlan jump. “You are. You’ve been funneling silver through three false vendors for, what, eighteen months? The math is lazy, Vorlan. It insults me.”
Theron watched, leaning against the doorframe. He saw the calculations flicker behind Vorlan’s eyes—denial, fear, the desperate search for an escape route that wasn’t there.
“A misunderstanding, my king! If there is an error, I will personally audit—”
“You’ll personally sit in a cell while my son audits your intestines,” Alaric corrected, his voice conversational. He picked up a silver coin from a counting tray, flipping it absently. “But I’m feeling generous. I want the name of the blacksmith’s client. The one who paid for a very special blade. You know the one.”
Vorlan’s jaw worked. “I… I deal in ledgers, Sire, not blades. I have no knowledge of any blacksmith.”
“You deal in secrets,” Alaric said, taking a slow step closer. “That’s what money is. You know who moves it in whispers. Who paid for quiet, exquisite metalwork without a palace stamp.”
“I swear to you—”
Alaric’s hand shot out, too fast to follow. He didn’t strike Vorlan. He simply grasped the man’s shoulder, his fingers digging into the fine wool of his doublet. He leaned in close. “The man with a catch in his step. You will give me a name before the noon bell, or I will let my queen borrow you. She’s been wanting to test a new formulation. One that targets the bladder first.” He paused, his gray eyes utterly devoid of mercy. “You pissed yourself in council last week from mere fear. Imagine the spectacle with actual chemical encouragement.”
Theron saw the moment Vorlan broke. It wasn’t dramatic. It was a quiet deflation, a leak of all resolve. The man’s knees buckled slightly, the king’s grip the only thing holding him up.
“Rist,” Vorlan whispered, the word smelling of bile. “Baron Rist. Of the Amber Hills. He… he has an old lance injury. It pains him in the damp. He walks with a hitch.”
Alaric released him. Vorlan stumbled back against his desk.
“Rist,” Alaric repeated. He tossed the silver coin in the air, caught it, and pocketed it. “See? Generosity. Your skeleton remains your own. For now.” He turned to leave, then glanced back. “And Vorlan? The missing quarry silver. In my coffers by sunset. All of it. Don’t make me come back here. I dislike the smell.”
They left the Master of Coin slumped over his ledger, a man already composing his own resignation letter in his head.
In the corridor, Theron matched his father’s long stride. “That was efficient.”
“Fear is a lever,” Alaric said, not looking at him. “Apply pressure to the right weak point. He’s a miser, but he’s not a fighter. The threat of pain, especially undignified pain, works better than the promise of execution.”
“Would Mother really have poisoned him?”
Alaric finally looked at Theron, a quick, sidelong glint. “She would have diluted something harmless to smell awful and stained his smallclothes. The effect would have been the same.” A faint, proud smile touched his mouth. “Her theater is always meticulous.”
They rounded a corner toward the family’s private wing. The tension from the office, from the confrontation with Vorlan, began to bleed from Theron’s shoulders. They had a name. A baron. It was a real thread to pull.
The door to the royal apartments was already ajar. Alaric pushed it open.
Dorian, the royal physicker and their father’s oldest—and perhaps only—friend, stood in the center of the sitting room. He was examining a vial of Lyssandra’s amber-colored headache tincture, holding it up to the light from the window. He turned as they entered.
He took in Alaric’s focused energy, Theron’s alert posture, and the lingering ghost of violence in the room. A calm, knowing smile spread across his weathered face.
“Oh,” Dorian said, his voice dry as autumn leaves. “You finished earlier than I expected. The Vorlan business must have been simpler than you thought.”
Alaric snorted, dropping into a large chair. “We were interrupted.”
Dorian chuckled, setting the vial down carefully. “You shouldn’t lie to a physician, Alaric. We both know that at your age, regardless of the activity, things tend to last a lot less time than they used to.”
Alaric stared at him. A slow, dangerous grin replaced his look of regal irritation.
Theron decided immediately that his presence was no longer required, and took a step back toward the door.