Frustrations of a Self-Proclaimed Villain Lord

Chapter 79: The Grand Duke Visits the Palace Uninvited (2)

The older guard stared at me. "Grand Duke Konstantin," he said slowly, "with respect, you cannot claim imperial authority."

"I don’t need imperial authority to prevent a prince from dying in a locked room."

His face changed, fear giving way to calculation. He glanced at the younger guard, then back at the warded gate, just as another sound reached us from inside, a woman’s voice this time.

The Empress. "Adrien. Look at me. Do not answer."

The gate trembled, and the older guard made his decision. He reached beneath his armor and produced a small key.

"Her Majesty ordered the gate sealed," he said. "But she didn’t order it impossible to open."

A wise man. Some people were wise, some were otherwise.

He placed the key into a hidden lock near the base of the gate, and the moment it turned, the silver lines flared. Abi raised a hand, violet light pressing against the ward, not forcing it apart but holding it still while the mechanism released. The gate opened with a sound like someone dragging metal across stone, and cold air spilled through, carrying a scent that was wrong in a way I didn’t like. Not simply black salt, not merely temple incense, but something faintly sweet beneath it, stale, buried too deep in memory to name.

"Stay here," I told the guards.

The younger one looked horrified. "Your Excellency, that’s the eastern wing."

"Yes."

"You can’t enter alone."

"I’m not alone." Abi waved at him. The guard stared. "That’s not comforting," he said.

"It wasn’t meant to be."

We entered. The eastern wing had been prepared for containment, every mirror covered with white cloth, the gilded lamps along the corridor extinguished, pale salt scattered beneath the doors and along the windowsills. Palace guards stood at each crossway, faces tense, weapons drawn but uselessly lowered. None of them knew what they were fighting, and that was usually the most dangerous kind of battle there was.

A young knight hurried toward us, his coat bearing the Crown Prince’s personal crest. He stopped when he saw me. "Your Excellency," he said, breathing hard. "Her Majesty ordered no one through."

"Her Majesty also sent a message asking me not to let her son die."

His face tightened. "She did not say that."

"She did not have to."

Abi looked down the corridor. "The sound is strongest ahead."

The knight followed his gaze, his expression shifting. "You can hear it too?"

"I can hear many things." That did not reassure him. I did not care.

"What happened?" I asked.

He swallowed. "His Highness was in the study when the bells began. At first he only complained of a headache. Then he heard singing outside the corridor. Her Majesty came immediately, ordered the wing cleared, and placed the ward herself."

"Was anyone else inside?"

"The palace physician. Two attendants. Lord Vesren from the archive office."

"Where is Lord Vesren now?"

He hesitated.

"Answer."

"He tried to enter His Highness’s rooms after the ward was sealed. Her Majesty ordered him restrained."

Interesting. Marcellus’s deputy hadn’t merely given the gate order. He’d tried to get inside himself.

"Where is he?"

"Guarded in the west reception room."

"Keep him there. No one speaks to him without House Konstantin present."

The knight blinked. "Your Excellency, that’s palace custody."

"Then call it palace custody with better supervision."

Abi made a pleased sound. The knight looked as though he had several objections queued up, but a bell rang beneath our feet before he could voice any of them, and the floor shuddered. A sharp cry came from the end of the corridor, and his face lost its color.

"Please," he said. "If you can help him, do it."

I didn’t answer. There was no point making promises before I knew what I was working with.

We reached the final door. The Empress stood before it, her silver-blue gown exchanged for a dark robe, practical enough to move in but still unmistakably royal, her hair come loose from its pins. Faint blood stained one sleeve, not from an injury I could see, but from ritual lines she’d drawn over her own palms. She looked exhausted. Not weak. Never weak. Just a woman who’d been holding a door shut with her own hands for far too many years.

"Your Majesty," I said.

She turned, her expression softening for half a breath when she saw me, then returning to control.

"You came quickly."

"I dislike being summoned through emergency notes."

"I did not summon you."

"The Crown Prince did."

Her eyes moved to the letter in my hand, and something crossed her face, relief and pain both at once. "He shouldn’t have written."

"He was frightened."

"He is the Crown Prince."

"He’s also frightened."

She looked toward the sealed doors, and for the first time, she didn’t argue that point.

"How bad?" I asked.

"Worse than before."

"Explain."

"The bells reached the old mark."

"The one from his seventh year rite?"

"Yes." Her hands clenched. "The ward has held it dormant for years. It reacted whenever he was ill, whenever the lower vault records were disturbed, whenever the old chapel bells rang during the founding observances. But never like this."

Abi stepped nearer to the warded doors, the silver lines flickering beneath his gaze. "This isn’t your ward anymore," he said quietly.

She looked at him. "No. I know."

The words were plain, no excuse in them, no attempt to frame herself as the victim of Marcellus’s lies. Only an acknowledgment, which was somehow more dangerous than denial would have been.

For a moment none of us spoke. The corridor held only the sound of the weak ringing beneath the palace floor, and I let that moment sit before pushing forward, because some things needed a breath before you could ask the next question.

"What’s happening inside?" I asked.

The palace physician emerged from the side room before she could answer, an older man with white hair, his robes rumpled, his face drawn with exhaustion, blood on both hands. His eyes widened when he saw me.

"Grand Duke Konstantin," he said. "His Highness’s pulse is unstable. His temperature is rising. There’s an unfamiliar mark spreading beneath his sternum."

"Unfamiliar to you?"

"Yes."

"Not unfamiliar to Her Majesty?"

She didn’t answer. The physician looked between us, then seemed to decide palace politics were well above his current salary. Sensible man.

"He’s conscious," he continued. "But he keeps hearing voices. We’ve sedated him twice. It did nothing. He isn’t responding to ordinary magic."

"Because the problem isn’t ordinary," Abi said.

The physician’s face tightened. "What is it?"

Abi looked at me. I looked at the Empress. She looked at the sealed door, and no one answered.

A palace bell rang somewhere outside, and the ward lines across the door flared. From within came the Crown Prince’s voice.

"Stop singing." The words came strained, not shouted, and somehow that made them worse.

Her face changed. She moved toward the door before I could. "Adrien," she called. "You are safe. Do not listen."

A long silence followed, then his answer. "I am trying."

That wasn’t the response of an heir receiving a political lesson. That was the response of a boy trying very hard not to panic.

My hand tightened around the ring on my finger, the small vial inside remaining cool against my skin. Vita’s Tears. The supposed poison. The possible cure. Not yet. I hadn’t seen the full condition, didn’t know what the ward would do if a foreign substance entered the room, didn’t know whether the rite had been turned into a trap waiting for exactly this decision.

I hated waiting. It was an inefficient activity.

"Open the door," I said.

"You cannot," the Empress said.

"I can."

"The ward is holding the resonance inside."

"It’s holding the Crown Prince inside with it."

"If we open it carelessly, the pressure will spread through the wing."

"Then we won’t open it carelessly."

Her gaze sharpened. "You don’t understand what this ward contains."

I looked at the blood on her palms, then at the door, then at the silver lines trembling against the dark stain beneath them.

"No," I said. "But I understand cages."

She went still. For one second the corridor seemed to lose every sound except the weak ringing beneath the floor, and then she looked away.

"Marcellus told me the ward would protect him," she said. "He told me the residue from the rite would keep looking for an opening. He said the black salt would suppress it. He said the ward would make sure Adrien never had to hear it again."

"And did you believe him?"

"I had watched my son burn with a fever no physician could diagnose. I had watched him wake screaming from dreams he could never remember. I would have believed anyone who offered him a chance to sleep." Her hand pressed against the door. "That doesn’t excuse me."

"No," I said. "It doesn’t."

She nodded once. "I know."

There was nothing useful to say after that, so I didn’t say anything. Abi broke the silence instead.

"The ward can be opened in layers."

She looked at him. "What?"

"The outer lattice is yours. It was built to close around the room. The inner lattice isn’t. It’s tied to the sound line."

"Can you separate them?"

"Not alone."

Her eyes moved to me. "What do you need?"

"Your control over the outer layer," Abi said. "My control over the sound thread. And Skandar standing where the two meet."

I stared at him. "Why me?"

His expression didn’t change. "Because your aura disrupts the old structure."