Chapter 98: The Grand Duke Receives Too Many Confessions (1)
The Elysian Estate had acquired another prisoner by sunset. This was becoming a pattern. A very expensive pattern. I would need to have Bernard create a separate household category for emergency detainees, ritual criminals, compromised officials, rescued children, royal patients, and inconvenient foreign observers. The last one wasn’t a household category yet, but I had the unpleasant feeling it might become necessary.
The thought alone offended me.
Father Lorian was placed in the lower ward room far from Marcellus, Vesren, Caldus, and the conductor. Not because he deserved comfort. He didn’t. Rather, because his words had been taken from him in the Coronation Hall, and we didn’t yet know whether the silence left in him could crawl into other people.
A man who’d lost his words should have been pitiable. He wasn’t. He was evidence.
The red glass shard from beneath the dais was placed in the silver pantry beside the Conservatory bell. The pantry, I was disgusted to admit, performed admirably. The moment the shard crossed the threshold, the old silver lining in the walls brightened, salt stone seams appearing beneath the shelves where preserved fruits and sealed spices usually sat.
My childhood fever had apparently resulted in one of the most effective domestic containment rooms in the Capital.
Mother called it thoroughness. I called it excessive. Abi called it "deeply heartwarming." I nearly banned him from the pantry.
The Ansel cloth stayed with me. Not because I trusted myself more than the wards, that would be arrogant. Well, accurate. But mostly arrogant. The truth was simpler. I did not want to place it beside the red glass. The cloth had a name. The shard had a hunger. I would not put the two together just because some dead ritual once decided they belonged in the same cavity under an imperial dais.
There were many ways to commit cruelty. Repetition was one of them.
When I returned to the study, the room was already full. My mother sat behind the desk. My desk. I paused at the door. She looked up. I looked at her. She did not move.
Naturally. A wise son understood when sovereignty had been temporarily transferred.
I walked to the side chair. Abi, who’d followed me with a smile bordering on treasonous delight, whispered, "How moving. The Grand Duke has been displaced."
"I will displace you through a wall."
"You would need to catch me first."
"Abi."
He smiled and sat on the sofa.
My father stood near the window with two reports in hand. Bernard occupied the smaller writing table, surrounded by papers and looking like a man slowly becoming one with bureaucracy. William stood by the tea service. The Empress sat stiffly near the hearth. Adrien, despite physician protests, had been allowed into the study for exactly twenty minutes under the condition that he remain seated and not attempt to look heroic.
He was failing already. Not dramatically. Just enough. He sat too straight, face still pale but eyes dangerously clear, Spiro’s garden map folded carefully in the pocket of his coat. His knight stood behind him with the weariness of someone whose prince had decided recovery was a decorative suggestion.
Spiro was not present. Good. The rescued children were not present either. Better. There were discussions children did not need to witness. Even if those discussions were about them.
Especially then.
Mother placed a report on the desk. "Marcellus has asked to speak."
"Of course he has."
"He asked to speak to you."
"How flattering."
"He asked after hearing that Ansel’s name was found under the dais."
The room quieted. Adrien’s gaze sharpened. The Empress lowered her eyes.
I sat back. "Then bring him."
William left without needing further instruction. The silence that followed had edges.
Adrien looked at me first. "Ansel. That was the name from Spiro’s list."
"Yes."
"And from my rite."
"Yes."
His hand tightened on the chair arm. He didn’t ask the obvious question. Was Ansel the boy who held his hand? Perhaps because he feared the answer. Perhaps because he already knew that answers rarely arrived whole.
My father looked toward him. "Your Highness," he said, voice gentler than mine would have been, "a memory from childhood, especially one linked to pain and ritual pressure, cannot be relied on completely."
Adrien’s mouth tightened. "I know."
"But it should not be dismissed either."
His eyes lifted. My father gave him a small nod, and that seemed to steady him.
How unfair. When I said sensible things, people accused me of being cold. When Father said sensible things, people felt comforted. This was discrimination.
William returned with Marcellus. The Lord Keeper had lost some of his polish, not enough to appear broken, Marcellus was too practiced for that, but the perfect alignment of his collar had slipped, and the skin beneath his eyes had darkened. He hadn’t slept.
Good. Sleep was for people whose records didn’t include ritualized children.
He stopped when he saw the Empress. Then the Crown Prince. Then me. Finally his eyes moved to the folded cloth on the table. I had placed it there before he entered. A kindness, perhaps.
No. A test.
His expression changed. Not much. But enough. He recognized it.
"Sit," Mother said.
Marcellus obeyed.
Fascinating. He had resisted the Emperor, maneuvered around the Empress, lied to the Crown Prince, and buried half an empire under archival dust. Yet when my mother spoke, he sat.
A man of discernment after all.
"You asked to speak," I said.
Marcellus looked at the cloth. "Yes."
"Speak."
His gaze moved to Adrien. "Your Highness, I owe you a truth."
Adrien’s expression didn’t change. "How generous of you to discover that now," he said.
Not bad. The imperial puppy had teeth. I approved.
Marcellus accepted the blow with a lowered head. "The seven children from the first rite were not supposed to die."
I smiled. He flinched. Good.
"Try again," I said.
His throat worked. "They were chosen because their resonance could hold the excess pressure away from the prince. The old texts described them as auxiliary witnesses, not sacrifices."
"Adults love inventing words that make children bleed more politely."
The room went still. Marcellus closed his eyes. "Yes."
That one word didn’t save him. But it was less ugly than denial.
"What happened after the rite?" Adrien asked, his voice controlled. Too controlled.
Marcellus looked at him. "The rite failed halfway. The lower voice answered before the containment phrase completed. Your mother ordered it stopped. I believed that if we severed the connection abruptly, you would die."
Adrien’s jaw tightened. "So you continued."
"I completed the anchor portion."
The Empress inhaled slowly, as though she’d been stabbed too many years ago and only now felt the blade twist.
"You told me it had stopped," she said.
Marcellus didn’t look at her. "I told you the chamber was sealed."
"That is not the same thing."
"No."
The word fell between them. Small. Useless. Insufficient.
Good. Some truths should feel too small beside the damage they name.
"The children?" I asked.
"Three collapsed immediately. Two were conscious. One screamed until Father Caldus sedated him. One remained awake and kept holding His Highness’s hand."
Adrien’s face went white. The Empress covered her mouth. The room did not move.
The boy in Adrien’s memory had been real. Of course he had. Children didn’t become less real because adults wrote them as support structures.
"What was his name?" Adrien asked.
Marcellus looked at the cloth. "Ansel."
Adrien closed his eyes. No one spoke. Not even Abi.
I felt something in the room shift. Not magic. Not aura. Something human, which was often worse.
Adrien had carried the memory of a boy holding his hand through years of sickness, fear, and silencing. A small boy telling a prince not to answer the singing. A child used as an auxiliary, comforting the child at the center because no adult had done enough.
There were some things one could not speak of without wanting to ruin the entire civilization that allowed them.
I looked away from the prince first. "I need the rest," I said.
Marcellus nodded. "After the rite, the children were taken from the palace through the lower archive route. I was told they would be treated, their resonance severed carefully, then transferred into protected care."
"By whom?"
"The Choir."
Abi laughed. No humor in it. Marcellus’s shoulders stiffened.
"You handed seven children to the organization that designed the hymn," Abi said.
"I did not understand what the Choir had become."
"Convenient."
"It is not a defense."
"No," Abi said. "It isn’t."
The quiet that followed tasted sharp.
Marcellus continued, "Years later, I searched the transfer records. Three names had disappeared entirely. Two had been moved into temple choir accounts. One was marked deceased. Ansel was listed as retained."
"Retained where?" I asked.
"The Melverne Conservatory."
Toma. Bell. The stage. The red bell.
I looked at the cloth again. "And the red shard?"
Marcellus’s voice lowered. "The shard was from the first bell used in the rite. It shattered when the Empress ordered the hymn stopped. The Choir collected the pieces."
"How many?"
"Seven."
Of course. Seven children. Seven shards. Seven little fragments of a ritual that should have been buried under every curse this world could muster.
"And one was beneath the dais," I said.
"Yes."
"The others?"
"I do not know."
"Try to improve."
He looked up at me. For the first time, his control frayed. "Grand Duke, if I knew, I would tell you."
"I am not convinced."
"You have Father Lorian. Caldus. Vesren. The conductor. Duke Rouvier. The rehearsal master. The records from Saint Orison’s and Melverne. You have more than I ever managed to gather without being noticed."
"How sad for you."
His mouth closed. I leaned forward. "Lord Keeper Marcellus, do not mistake my interest in your regret for belief in your helplessness. You were not powerless. You were cautious. There is a difference."
He looked down. My mother’s gaze warmed by half a degree. Approval, probably. It was always difficult to tell with her.
Adrien’s voice cut through the quiet. "Did my mother know what happened to them?"
Marcellus froze. The Empress did too.
There it was. The question no one wanted in the room.
Good. Let it stand in the center and make everyone uncomfortable.
Marcellus answered slowly. "No."
Adrien’s eyes moved to the Empress. She didn’t defend herself.
Marcellus continued, "Her Majesty knew children had been used in the rite. She knew it was wrong. She ordered inquiries afterward, but I diverted them. I told her the children had been returned to church care with compensation."
The Empress’s lips parted, then closed. Adrien looked at her. "You believed him?"
Her face was pale. "I wanted to."
That was not a noble answer. It was a human one. Ugly. Honest. Not enough.
Adrien looked away first. The Empress accepted it. No plea. No tears. No attempt to collapse under guilt and demand comfort from the son harmed by her failure.
Good. Perhaps she had spine. Late spine, but spine nonetheless.
"Where is Lady Marielle?" I asked.
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