Frustrations of a Self-Proclaimed Villain Lord

Chapter 80: The Grand Duke Visits the Palace Uninvited (3)

"Because your aura disrupts the old structure."

Reasonable. Probably. I didn’t like the way he avoided looking at me directly when he said it, but there were more immediate problems.

"Will it hurt the Crown Prince?" I asked.

Abi went quiet for a moment. "Yes. Less than leaving him inside."

I looked at the Empress. She looked at the door, then closed her eyes. "Tell me what to do."

Abi moved toward the ward. "Place your hands on the outermost lines. Don’t let the silver layer collapse. You’re going to peel it away from the inner ward, not break it."

She nodded.

"The physician and the knight stay ready," I said. "The moment the door opens, you take the Crown Prince toward the west receiving room. Not the public infirmary."

The physician looked startled. "Your Excellency, the receiving room isn’t equipped for royal treatment."

"It’s equipped with walls that don’t have palace wards hidden inside them."

He hesitated, then nodded. "Understood."

I turned to the knight. "When the door opens, you take your prince out. Don’t stop for anyone. Don’t let an advisor, priest, archive clerk, or noble relative tell you he must remain. If the Crown Prince says he hears someone calling him, you do not answer for him. If he tells you someone is in danger, you bring him to me first."

His eyes flickered. "You believe the voices may use him?"

"I believe the voices will use whatever works."

He nodded once. Good.

The Empress took her place on one side of the door, Abi on the other, and I positioned myself between them. The ward lines sat close enough to touch, and I could feel the heat off them. The silver wasn’t simple magic. It carried years of effort, fear, prayers, and the stubborn refusal of a mother who would rather become the wall herself than let anything reach her child. It wasn’t a clean ward. It had been built over something ugly. But the devotion inside it was real, and that mattered.

"Ready?" Abi asked.

"No," I said.

He smiled faintly. "Fair."

The Empress didn’t smile. "Begin," she said.

Her bloodied hands pressed against the outer ring, and the silver lines brightened. Abi raised his palm, and violet light threaded across the inner layer, catching at the dark lines buried beneath the silver. The ward shook. A bell rang under the floor, and the door trembled. From inside, the Crown Prince gasped.

Then the sound reached us. Not one voice. Seven, children singing in uneven harmony, the same three notes Eleni had hummed in the chapel. The sound pressed against my mind, wanting my attention, wanting me to hear something beneath the music. A name. Not mine. Not yet.

I set my hand against the point where silver and darkness met, and my aura moved, not in a grand display, not with thunder or light, just pressing outward, steady and stubborn, like a hand placed against a door that had no right to close.

The silver lines shifted. The black lines recoiled. For one breath, both wards separated, the corridor lights burst, and the door opened.

The Crown Prince was on the floor. His ceremonial shirt had torn open at the collar, a dark mark spreading beneath his sternum, shaped like the same divided circle I’d seen in the lower vault and on the old records, black veins trailing from it across his chest.

His knight rushed forward, and the Crown Prince looked up, his eyes finding mine.

"You came," he said.

"I was already busy nearby."

"That’s not an answer."

"You’re in no position to criticize conversational standards."

His mouth twitched, then he doubled over, and the physician dropped beside him.

"His pulse is collapsing."

The room behind him was worse than I’d expected. The walls were covered in ward lines, but the inner sections had burned black, the mirrors shattered, a low table near the window split in half. On the floor, directly beneath where the Crown Prince had been sitting, lay a circle of black salt arranged into seven segments. One had been broken. Six remained.

The second hymn hadn’t completed. But it had started.

Abi entered the room behind me, his gaze locking onto the salt circle. "Don’t touch it," he said. I hadn’t planned to.

The knight lifted the Crown Prince carefully, Adrien’s face gone pale beneath the sweat, his eyes closing, then snapping open again.

"Wait," he said.

The knight froze. "What is it, Your Highness?"

He looked toward the black salt circle, his breathing uneven. "There was a boy," he whispered.

The Empress had entered behind us. Her face drained. "Adrien."

"He was there before," the Crown Prince continued. "During the first rite."

My attention sharpened. "What boy?" I asked.

His eyes moved to me. "He held my hand." The room went still around that sentence. "He told me not to answer," Adrien said. "He said if I heard the singing, I should keep my eyes closed and wait for someone to find us."

The Empress looked as though someone had struck her. "I did not know," she whispered. The Crown Prince didn’t hear her, or heard her and couldn’t answer.

"He was smaller than the others," he went on. "He had pale hair. He was crying, but he kept telling me it would be alright."

Spiro’s hair was pale.

My fingers tightened. No. There were other children with pale hair. Boleoti was full of them. The House of Gentle Mercy had traded in northern children. The world wasn’t so small that every secret had to circle back to my son.

Still, a cold weight settled beneath my ribs, and I let it sit there a moment rather than shove it aside the way I wanted to. This was not the time to examine it. It was also not the time to pretend I hadn’t felt it.

"What was his name?" I asked.

Adrien’s eyes closed. "I don’t know."

The dark mark beneath his sternum pulsed. The bells beneath the palace rang again, and the physician cursed under his breath. "He’s getting worse."

I looked at the Crown Prince, then at the vial hidden in my ring, then at the black salt circle. No. Not here. Not in a room with an incomplete ritual drawn beneath his feet and an unknown force still using the ward lines. I’d come to the palace expecting a dangerous situation. I hadn’t expected to find an old memory wearing my son’s silhouette.

How troublesome.

"Move him," I said.

The knight adjusted his hold. "To the west receiving room?"

"No."

The Empress looked at me. "Where?"

I looked at the warded doorway, the broken salt circle, and the dark veins still spreading beneath the Crown Prince’s skin, and made the only sensible decision available to me.

"We take him to Sonomi."

She stared. "That is impossible."

"Nothing has been impossible so far," Abi said from beside the black salt circle. "Only very inconvenient."

The Crown Prince’s eyes opened slightly, finding mine again. "You’re kidnapping me?"

I considered it. "Temporarily."

His mouth twitched again. Encouraging. Then he lost consciousness.

The bell beneath the palace rang once more, and this time, every black line in the room turned toward the eastern wall. Toward the direction of the Elysian Estate.

Toward where Spiro was waiting.