Chương 104: 41-3.Imperial Pursuivant

When Alvira returned to her room, she closed the door and stood with her back against it for a while. She'd thought that simply leaving the breakfast table would clear her head. It hadn't. It was worse, actually. Because in the quiet, yesterday's scene came back on its own—easier, cleaner, without anything to crowd it out.

Erina stopping in her tracks, turning back, grabbing Cedric by the collar without a half-second of hesitation, and kissing him—the whole thing as brief as a spark, and somehow impossible to forget. Alvira's brow furrowed. She crossed to the table, lifted the teapot—and noticed, before she'd even finished pouring, that her hand wasn't entirely steady.

"… Insufferable." She muttered it under her breath and set the teapot down. She knew, of course, what was insufferable. It wasn't the public impropriety of a princess. It wasn't the tangled consequences waiting in the royal capital. Those she understood. Those she'd already worked through. Everything Olivia had said in the corridor last night—she had heard it, absorbed it. Gratitude, or a clean severance, or a door that would not open again—she understood all of it.

And precisely because she understood it, the discomfort was worse. Because it meant the kiss had not been careless. Not wine-loosened impulse. Not aristocratic caprice. Not a moment of thoughtless confusion. It was something done with clear eyes—decided, and then done anyway. Alvira sat on the edge of her bed, her fingers slowly curling. She was displeased. But she refused to call it jealousy. That would be too embarrassing. She wasn't Jessi—the type to wear every thought plainly on her face.

She wasn't the kind of girl who burst into tears and made a scene the moment someone she cared about was touched by another person. She was simply— Simply feeling a weight on her chest. A dull, persistent weight. Not quite enough to make breathing difficult—but impossible to pretend away. And the thing that actually made her angry wasn't even Erina. It was Cedric. Just thinking about the way he'd stood there—stunned, like even his soul had been delayed by half a beat—made her want to roll her eyes.

Absolutely hopeless. She thought it with conviction. He was always so quick with his mouth, wasn't he? Always had some sharp, unnecessary response ready to fire back. And then, at the one moment that actually mattered, he just stood there like a post. But even as she thought it, she knew—a scene like that, no one was guaranteed to handle cleanly. And Erina had moved without warning, without space, without giving anyone the luxury of a reaction.

At that thought, the hard line of her expression softened—just slightly. Then snapped back into place immediately. That wasn't defending him. It was just—an honest assessment. Nothing more. Alvira pressed her fingers to the tips of her ears, which had gone traitorously warm, and felt her mood worsen further. She didn't like this version of herself. Didn't like that she was in turmoil and had to keep performing composure.

Didn't like that she understood every layer of reality behind that kiss—the weight of it, the resignation in it—and still found herself unsettled every time her mind returned to the image of Cedric standing there, with the princess's mark on him. And what she liked least of all— Was that she had asked, this morning: and what about the princess's side of things? The moment those words left her mouth, she'd known it was too transparent. At least to someone like Olivia.

Alvira pressed her teeth together and swore quietly.

"Disgraceful." But she couldn't help it. Because she genuinely wanted to know. Whether Erina, once back at the palace, would face consequences. Whether what that kiss had left behind wasn't only a mark on Cedric—but a weight that would press down on Erina herself. Alvira didn't like Erina's particular brand of untouchable distance. Didn't like the cold that sometimes seemed to place her on a different plane from everyone else. Didn't like the faint undertone of command that came naturally with her every word.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. But she also couldn't deny that, in the end, that princess had not done a single thing worth contempt. She had turned back on her own. She had walked away on her own. At that thought, the weight in Alvira's chest became more complicated, not less. Because she knew, with uncomfortable clarity, that she couldn't do what Erina had done.

When Alvira was displeased, the most she could manage was a cold stare, a sharp word, a few well-aimed remarks to push someone back. But to do what Erina had done—to know exactly what that touch would leave behind, to do it in front of witnesses anyway, and then turn and sever it herself—that kind of ruthlessness wasn't something she possessed. Or rather—it wasn't something she wanted. Alvira fell back onto the bed and stared up at the canopy. After a long moment, she let out a very quiet breath.

She wasn't unaware of it, actually. The fact that she cared about Cedric. She'd just never bothered to take it apart and look at it. The man was sharp-tongued, perpetually prone to causing trouble, and frequently looked like he needed to be hit. But whenever a hand needed to be extended, he extended it. Whenever everyone else was busy treating something as a problem to be avoided, he would come back with it slung over his shoulder, looking thoroughly aggrieved about the whole situation. Profoundly foolish.

And—not entirely without merit. Alvira closed her eyes. The tips of her ears, traitors that they were, went warm again. Infuriating. She thought. Why did it have to be now—of all the possible moments—that things became this clear? And the more infuriating part was that even if she could see it clearly, there was nothing she could do with it. The princess's kiss had only just fallen. The winds in the royal capital had only just begun to stir.

For her to push her own feelings one step further forward right now—that wasn't courage. That was adding to everyone's problems. She knew where the line was. And knowing that—having the discipline to hold herself at it—only made the weight worse. Alvira turned over and pressed her face into the pillow, as though if she couldn't see the ceiling, she might also be able to bury the images that kept surfacing in her mind. After a long time, she finally said something—muffled, quiet, into the fabric:"Idiot."

Whether she meant the princess. Or the man who had stood there in a daze. Or herself. Even she wasn't entirely sure. The good days didn't last. They never do, with me.

Those mornings of sleeping until my body decided it was done sleeping—waking up with no particular agenda, letting breakfast drift into lunch, spending afternoons wandering the stables or talking someone into a game on the lawn, or finding a quiet stretch of water and sitting there with a fishing line until I'd nearly forgotten whether I'd come to the royal capital to lie low or simply to retire early—all of it ended exactly as it was always going to end. I should have known.

The Blackwell roof can shelter a person from the rain. It cannot pin the entire sky in place. That morning, I'd only just woken up, still sitting on the edge of the bed contemplating whether to go to the stables or drag Lucas out to the lake for a full afternoon of doing absolutely nothing productive, when I heard the knock at my door. Two beats. Unhurried. Not heavy. But precise—the kind of knock that seemed purpose-built for shattering peaceful mornings. I didn't even need to look up.

"Come in." The door opened. Vincent, naturally. The old steward had never once appeared at my door without cause, and his appearances had never once preceded good news. By this point, I had internalized that pattern thoroughly. He was exactly as he always was—not a crease out of place, expression as unshakeable as a man who had long ago decided that the collapse of civilization would simply be filed under routine household affairs. He stood at the threshold and inclined his head slightly.

"Young master. The lady of the house requests your presence downstairs. Immediately." I pulled on my jacket and asked without enthusiasm:"What is it this time?" Vincent paused. A short pause. Short enough that it made the second half worse before he'd even said it.

"The Imperial Herald has arrived." My hands stopped moving. … Right. No need to ask further. The kind of figure who arrives bearing the seal of the imperial house, representing the crown, carrying the implicit message of you would do well to wash your face and present yourself downstairs immediately—that kind of figure did not, as a rule, bring news designed to improve anyone's day. By the time I came downstairs, the side parlor was nearly full.

My sister sat in the head seat, her expression neither alarmed nor pleased—somewhere in the controlled middle distance that meant she was already calculating. Olivia sat to her left, composed in the way of someone who had, from the moment Vincent first spoke, quietly run through the three most likely worst-case scenarios and ranked them by severity. Alvira was leaning back in her chair, brow faintly creased. Jessi, unusually, was still—apparently even she understood that this was not the moment for commentary.

I had barely sat down when I heard my sister's voice, low and flat:"An Imperial Herald…" She didn't bother to conceal the edge in it.

"Every single time one of these appears, it is never—not once—good news." I nodded internally. How very true. My sentiments exactly. The man was shown in shortly after. The moment he stepped through the door, I had to consciously resist the urge to roll my eyes—not because of anything he'd done, but because of what he was. He looked like a minor character who had wandered out of a third-rate court drama and forgotten to find his way back.

His clothes were extravagant to the point of self-parody, his cape draped with the energy of someone deeply concerned that people might not immediately recognize his importance, the imperial seal hanging from his chest like a credential he felt compelled to present to every room he entered.

If Gales Eberhart was the kind of man who could stand seven paces from the king and require no decoration whatsoever to command a room, then this individual appeared to have taken the opposite philosophy entirely—stitching the words I represent the imperial house directly into every layer of his wardrobe, apparently worried that one fewer stitch might cost him the scene. He entered. He bowed. Then he began to speak. And I immediately regretted not having finished my tea.

What followed was a sustained exercise in ornamental language—the kind that had clearly been refined over generations to be as long as possible while conveying as little as necessary. He opened with an extended tribute to the glory of the imperial house, transitioned into a celebration of His Majesty's virtue and wisdom, and then proceeded to cycle through the words empire, sovereignty, order, grace, and duty in various configurations for what felt like several complete rotations of the earth.

I sat there and listened, and found myself genuinely wondering—do these people actually believe that if they make the preamble long enough, ornate enough, liturgical enough, the person on the receiving end will somehow forget that there is a final sentence waiting at the end of it? They won't. At least, I won't. Because no matter how elaborately these arrivals are staged, no matter how many layers of gilded language are applied, the conclusion is always the same.

And sure enough—when he had at last exhausted his considerable reserves of ceremonial throat-clearing, he unrolled the scroll in his hands with the air of a man who believed every syllable he was about to read deserved to be bronzed. The side parlor went quiet. Even Jessi didn't make a sound. The Herald cleared his throat. Then, in a tone suggesting he wished each individual word could be engraved in gold leaf, he read out the contents of the scroll. I didn't absorb every line. There was no need.

By the midpoint, I already knew the conclusion. Strip away all the tribute, all the praise, all the architectural scaffolding of courtly language—and what remained was a single sentence. The king wished to see us. That was it. Everything else—the flattery, the grandeur, the carefully constructed edifice of words—was just the wrapping around the pill. And no matter how thick the wrapping, it couldn't change what the thing tasted like going down. I sat in my chair and felt, distantly, like laughing.

So that's it, then. The good days are over. The mornings of sleeping as long as I pleased. The afternoons I could waste entirely on a fishing line. The comfortable illusion that as long as I remained within the walls of Blackwell House, the world outside might have the decency to stay calm—all of it, at this precise moment, officially concluded. Because the king wished to see us. And when a king wishes to see someone, it is almost never to arrange a more comfortable life for them.