Chapter 10: The Duke's Reply
The silence in the scriptorium was a physical thing, thick with the dust of old words and the acid scent of Nadia’s fury. It pressed against her ears, muffling even the sound of her own breathing. She held the quill not like a lady, but like a knife, her knuckles white against the dark feather.
Finn stood by the leaded glass window, a statue cut from storm-light. He hadn’t moved since reading the notes. The paper detailing Nadia’s own ‘procedure’—Corbin’s clinical terms, the suggested ‘final step’ that had been faked—lay on the desk beside her, a patient. His gaze was fixed on the gray world outside, but she knew he wasn’t seeing it. He was mapping routes to Ashford in his mind, calculating lines of attack.
She finished the letter. The words were spare, surgical. No salutation.
I possess the ledger from The Laughing Rabbit. I have Corbin’s notes, including the transaction for Maria. I know everything.
Withdraw your candidacy for the Imperial Treasury. Publicly confess your malfeasance by week’s end.
If you do not, the warrant will bear the Empress’s seal. I will deliver it myself.
She didn’t sign it. Her name would mean nothing to him. The truth was the only signature that mattered.
The wax was a deep crimson, the color of old wine… or drying blood. She heated it over a candle flame, watched it drip and pool on the folded parchment. She pressed the simple signet ring Finn had given her for mundane correspondence into the soft medium. It left a plain, impersonal mark. A seal of office, not of family.
“It’s done,” she said. Her voice was hoarse.
Finn turned from the window. The movement was slow, deliberate. The controlled predator was gone. In his eyes was something raw and foundational, a fault line in a continent she’d only glimpsed as solid ground. He walked to the desk, picked up the note about her, his touch oddly gentle on the vile paper.
“He watched,” Finn said. The words were quiet, but they vibrated in the still air.
She blinked. “What?”
“Corbin’s notes. ‘The Duke observed the initial suturing to ensure the work met his standard.’” Finn’s thumb brushed over the sentence. “He didn’t just order it. He watched them sew his daughter shut.”
The fact landed between her ribs, a cold, precise puncture. She had known he was in the manor. She had assumed he was in his study, distant, abstracted. But he had been there. In the room. Watching.
A sound escaped her, not a sob, but a short, sharp exhale, as if she’d been struck in the stomach. Her vision swam, the shelves of books tilting. The malnourished ache in her bones flared, a phantom pain from that day.
Finn was beside her chair in two steps. He didn’t touch her. He braced his hands on the desk, caging her in, his head bowed. “Look at me.”
She forced her eyes up to his. The gray was molten, swirling with a violence that should have terrified her. It didn’t. It matched the conflagration inside her.
“We send the letter,” he said, his voice a low, relentless scrape. “It’s the smart move. It uses the law. It breaks him politically.” He paused, inhaling slowly. “But understand this. If he so much as hesitates, if he sends one more veiled threat, if he looks at you wrong when we see him next… the law is done. I am done playing. I will take him apart. Not as a prince. As a man.”
It was not a knight’s vow. It was something darker, more intimate. A promise of soil under fingernails and personal ruin.
She believed him utterly.
“I want to be there,” she said. “When he reads it.”
A faint, grim shadow of approval touched his eyes. “Then we don’t send a courier. We deliver it. In person. Now.”
He straightened, folding the damning notes back into the waxed packet. “We need leverage beyond paper. The ledger itself. Corbin said he kept a copy for insurance. We have the notes, but the ledger has the payments, the client list. It has ‘A.L.’”
“The Laughing Rabbit only had copies of notes,” she said, rising, her legs steady beneath her. “Corbin was too careful to leave the main book somewhere so obvious.”
“Then it’s somewhere obvious to him.” Finn’s mind was working, shifting from fury to strategy. “A man like that… he needs to see his treasure, to touch it. He wouldn’t leave it in a bank. It’s in his residence.”
“The guards took him to the palace dungeon,” Nadia said, a new thread of urgency pulling tight. “If he thinks he’s been betrayed, if he hears we were at The Rabbit…”
“He might have contingencies. Someone to destroy it.” Finn was already moving toward the door. “We have to get to his rooms before his fear outruns his greed.”
Corbin’s personal chambers were in a respectable but not wealthy district, a tall, narrow house squeezed between a tailor and an apothecary. The imperial guard stationed outside, a young man named Evard, snapped to attention at the sight of Finn.
“Your Highness. He’s been taken, just as you ordered. The residence is sealed.”
“We’re entering,” Finn said, not breaking stride. “Stand watch. No one in or out.”
The door yielded to the guard’s key. The inside smelled of dried herbs, lye soap, and an underlying sweetness that made Nadia’s nose wrinkle—laudanum.
It was a fast, ruthless search. Finn went through the main room, overturning cushions, feeling for loose floorboards. Nadia stood in the center, turning slowly. This was Corbin’s private mind. Neat, ordered, sterile. A bottle of amber liquid and a single glass on a side table. Medical texts perfectly aligned on a shelf. No personal trinkets. No loved one’s portrait.
A man with nothing to love but his own security.
“It’s not here,” Finn called from the bedroom. “Too obvious.”
Her eyes landed on the hearth. It was a small, clean fireplace, laid with fresh kindling but no ash. Too clean. She walked over, knelt, and ran her fingers along the interior bricks. One, near the top right corner, wobbled.
“Finn.”
He was beside her in an instant. He dug his fingers around the brick and pried it out. Behind it was a cavity, and inside, a flat, iron strongbox, no larger than a ledger.
No lock. Just a simple latch.
He lifted it out, placed it on the floor, and opened it.
There it was. A bound book of good-quality parchment, worn at the edges. Beside it, a small pouch that clinked with coin, and a few folded letters. Finn ignored the money. He lifted the ledger, opening it to a random page.
Columns of dates. Descriptions. Initials. Sums.
His finger traced down a page, then stopped. He went very still.
“A.L.,” he read aloud. His voice was flat. “Payment for services rendered to the Duke of Ashford. Detail: surgical alteration, female. First procedure.” He turned a page. “Second payment. Same client. Detail: post-procedure examination and confirmation.” Another page, his finger jabbing down. “Third. Same client. Detail: consultation for identical procedure, subject: Lady Maria Ashford.”
Nadia’s stomach turned. Seeing it listed so baldly, like entries for grain or livestock, made the air too thin.
Finn kept flipping, his movements becoming sharper. Then he stopped near the back. The entries here were newer, the ink darker.
“Here,” he breathed.
She leaned in. The entry read: A.L. Retainer for ongoing discretion and future services. Significant sum. And below, in a different, messier ink, as if added later: Threatened cessation. Client dissatisfied. Recommending permanent solution for original subject. Awaiting authorization.
“The permanent solution,” Nadia whispered. The words from the tunnel tavern. My job is to clean up the mess when quiet costs extra.
Finn closed the ledger with a soft, definitive snap. “We have him. This is the authorization. He was waiting for your father’s final go-ahead to have you killed.”
The room seemed to tilt around the strongbox. The laudanum smell was suddenly suffocating.
Finn gathered the box, tucking the ledger under his arm. “We go now. To your father’s townhouse. We end this.”
The Duke of Ashford’s city residence was all pretentious limestone and manicured ivy, a mask of stability. Finn didn’t bother with the front entrance. He strode to the service gate, Nadia at his shoulder, his coat still draped over her like a banner.
A startled footman tried to block them. “Sir, the Duke is not receiving—”
Finn looked at him. The man’s words died. He stepped aside.
They found the Duke in his study, a room that tried to smell of leather and wisdom but just smelled of stale port. He was at his desk, reviewing papers, his spectacles perched on his nose. He looked up, irritation smoothing into practiced paternal concern when he saw Nadia.
“Nadia? What is the meaning of this… intrusion?” His eyes flicked to Finn, taking in his plain clothes, the cut on his hand, the dirt. A faint distaste wrinkled his brow. “Prince Finnian. To what do we owe this… informal visit?”
Finn didn’t speak. He walked forward and dropped the iron strongbox onto the Duke’s meticulously organized desk. Parchment scattered. An inkwell wobbled.
“Open it,” Finn said.
The Duke’s face tightened. “I do not take orders in my own home, Prince or not.”
“Open it,” Nadia said. Her voice was clear, colder than the river mist. It made her father blink.
He looked from her to the box. A flicker of unease, quickly masked. He reached forward, unlatched the lid, and saw the ledger. His complexion turned the color of old cheese. He did not touch it.
“Where did you get this?”
“From the hole in Corbin’s wall,” Finn said, conversational. “He’s in the palace dungeon right now, singing. You should hear the tune. It’s all about you.”
The Duke’s jaw worked. He looked at Nadia, his eyes narrowing, the familiar calculation taking over—how to manage her, how to spin this. “Nadia, whatever lies this charlatan has told you—”
She stepped forward, placed her sealed letter on top of the ledger. “Those are my terms. Read them.”
He tore his eyes from the ledger, broke the seal, and read. His hand began to tremble. The paper rattled softly. When he looked up, the paternal mask was gone, replaced by pure, venomous fury.
“You vile, ungrateful creature. You would ruin your own sister? Your family? For what? Some girlish grievance?”
“Grievance.” Nadia repeated the word as if tasting something rotten. “You watched him stitch me.”
The bald statement hit the room like a slap. The Duke recoiled, his bluster punctured. For a second, there was only shock. His mute daughter was speaking, and talking back to him. She had found his secret and shoved it in his face. He scoffed, “Common procedure for some families. Others use chastity belts. I had to ensure you didn’t get… promiscuous. You know I needed you pure for marriage.” He gave a disgusting smirk.
Nadia shivered and trembled in anger. “You didn’t even let me leave my room. How would I have been promiscuous?” The words tumbled out on their own now, fueled by rage and a deep feeling of violation. “I slept on a cold dirty floor of straw in the attic. I never attended social events. I wasn’t even allowed to attend breakfast!” Nadia’s tears were coming hot and hard down her cheeks.
The Duke stared at her, his mouth a tight, colorless line. Her tears seemed to confuse him more than her words, as if grief was a language he’d never bothered to learn.
“Dramatics,” he finally muttered, looking away from her face as if it were a spoiled meal. “This changes nothing. You are my daughter. My property. I did what was necessary to protect an investment.”
Finn moved. It wasn’t a lunge, just a single, deliberate step that brought him around the side of the desk. He placed his scarred hand flat on the ledger, right over the entry about Maria. “Read this part out loud.”
“I will not be dictated to—”
“Read it.” Finn’s voice didn’t rise. It deepened, becoming the low rumble before an avalanche. “Or I will have the palace crier read it at the crossroads at noon. Your choice.”
The Duke’s eyes darted between them. He saw no bluff in Finn’s gray gaze, only cold certainty. He saw no yielding in Nadia’s wet, amber eyes, only a fixed and final judgment. His shoulders slumped, a fraction. He cleared his throat, a dry, uncomfortable sound.
“Consultation… for identical procedure. Subject: Lady Maria Ashford.” The words were barely audible.
“Louder,” Nadia said, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. The salt of her tears felt like a cleansing burn. “So the portraits can hear you.”
He flinched. He looked at the ledger again, his mind racing behind his eyes, seeking an exit that wasn’t there. “This proves nothing. Forgeries. Corbin is a disgraced criminal trying to save his own skin.”
“With your personal cipher?” Finn flipped the ledger open to the front, to a page of personal accounts. “A.L. paid for your mistress’s townhouse last spring. A.L. covered your gambling debts at the Silver Orb. The Emperor’s auditors will trace those ‘A.L.’ disbursements from your private coffers back to this book in a day. You’re finished.”
The color truly left the Duke’s face then. It was the financial thread that unraveled the tapestry. The mutilation was a sin, but embezzlement to cover it was a crime the Empire could hang him for.
He fell back into his chair, the fine leather sighing. The arrogance finally cracked, revealing the petulant, cornered man beneath. “What do you want? Money? An allowance? A larger title for your husband?” He directed this at Nadia, a last, desperate attempt to negotiate with what he understood. “Name your price to bury this.”
Nadia laughed. The sound was sharp, brittle, and utterly without humor. It startled even Finn. “I want you to walk into the Imperial Court tomorrow morning,” she said, her voice steady now. “You will renounce your treasury bid. You will cite a sudden, profound crisis of conscience. You will then retire to our country estate and remain there.”
“Exile,” he spat.
“Mercy,” Finn corrected, his hand still resting on the ledger. “Which is more than you ever showed her.”
The Duke’s eyes glazed with a trapped, animal panic. Then they focused on Nadia with a sudden, terrifying clarity. “And Maria? You would brand her a fraud, destroy her life, just to spite me?”
“Maria’s life is built on the same lie as mine,” Nadia said, the pity she might have once felt now ash in her mouth. “What happens between her and her Viscount is not my concern. But if you fail me, Father, everyone will know what you bought for her. The choice is yours. Save what’s left of your reputation and hers, or lose everything in a public trial.”
She saw the moment he broke. It wasn’t a dramatic collapse, but a subtle deflation, like a bellows losing its air. The cunning light in his eyes guttered out, replaced by a weary, hateful acceptance. He nodded, once, a stiff mechanical motion.
“Very well.”
“We’ll need that in writing,” Finn said, pulling a fresh sheet of the Duke’s own parchment toward him. “Your signed confession to the financial malfeasance. We’ll keep it. A… reminder.”
The Duke stared at the empty page as if it were his own death warrant. Slowly, he took up his pen. The scratch of the nib was the only sound in the room for a long minute. He signed with a flourish that looked pathetic now. He slid the paper toward Finn.
Finn scanned it, folded it, and tucked it inside his tunic, next to his heart. He closed the strongbox, the iron latch clicking with finality.
“The court convenes at ten,” Finn said. “We’ll be watching.”
He turned and offered his arm to Nadia. Not to steady her. As an alliance. She took it, her small, torn hand resting on the hard muscle of his forearm. They walked from the study without a backward glance.
The stunned footman held the front door open for them. The outside air, cold and smoggy, felt like a baptism.
They walked for a block in silence, the weight of the ledger in the strongbox between them. The morning city bustle felt surreal, like they’d stepped out of a tomb into a carnival.
“You were magnificent,” Finn said finally, his voice rough.
“I was terrified,” she corrected, a slight tremor returning to her limbs now that it was over. “But it felt… good. To speak. To him.”
He stopped walking, turning to face her beside a vendor’s cart piled with warm, greasy meat pies. The savory smell grounded her. “What he did… what he said in there…” Finn trailed off, the fury from the scriptorium resurfacing, held in check by sheer will. “It’s not over for me. The legal part, maybe. But not for me.”
She understood. The promise in the scriptorium still hung in the air between them. She nodded. “I know.”
He studied her face, searching for something. “What do you need? Right now.”
The question was so simple, so utterly foreign in its concern, it undid her more than the confrontation had. She thought of the cold attic straw, the gnawing hunger, the silence. She looked at the meat pie cart.
“I’m starving,” she said, and it was almost a laugh, almost a sob.
A genuine, small smile touched Finn’s eyes for the first time that day. He bought two pies, handing one to her. The pastry was hot enough to burn her fingers, the filling rich and peppery. She took a huge, unladylike bite, closing her eyes as the flavor exploded on her tongue.
“Good?” he asked, watching her.
“The best thing I’ve ever tasted,” she mumbled through a full mouth, grease shining on her lips.
They walked on, eating in companionable silence. The sun broke through the smog, casting weak, golden bars through the alleyways. For a few blocks, it was enough. The pie. The sun. The solid presence of the man beside her.
Then Finn spoke, his voice lower. “The initials. A.L. They’re in the ledger for your procedure, for Maria’s, for the retainer for your death. But the payments for his gambling, the mistress… those are in there too.”
Nadia swallowed her last bite, the warmth turning to a cold stone in her stomach. “You think it’s two different people using the same cipher?”
“Or one person who owns him completely,” Finn said. “A benefactor who funded his vices and then commissioned his crimes. Who wanted you, specifically, silenced for good.”
The momentum of their victory stalled. The shadow of the rabbit’s grin and the needle-sword flickered at the edge of her vision. They had clipped the weed, but the root was still buried somewhere deep, and it was poison.
Finn saw the understanding dawn on her face. He took the empty pie paper from her hand, his fingers briefly brushing hers.
“We enjoy the win today,” he said, tucking the rubbish into his pocket. “We let your father humiliate himself tomorrow. Then…” He looked down at the strongbox in his hand. “Then we find out who ‘A.L.’ really is. And we finish this.”