"Are you going to blame your father’s death on Lady Vera?"

Ivy asked casually, as though she were asking about the evening’s menu rather than the fate of a woman who had just publicly accused the Crown Prince of patricide.

Her hand was hooked through Damon’s elbow, familiar in the way that she had long since stopped asking permission to touch him, and the corridor stretched before them.

"Although what she has done until now deserves it," Damon answered, "she is still my siblings’ mother."

He did not look at Ivy as he spoke. His gaze remained fixed on some point ahead, as though he could see through the walls to the rooms where his younger brothers and sisters were being kept, guarded and watched. They had lost their father, so he wouldn’t be the one who took their mother away.

"I will teach them how to deal with their mother once everything calms down."

Ivy hummed noncommittally.

"Then," she said, and her grip on his elbow tightened just slightly, "who are you going to blame for it?"

A pause.

"Me?"

Damon turned his head and fixed Ivy with a glare that could have curdled milk.

"You planned it all." He said flatly. "But you also would not give me a way out?"

The glare intensified. "You overestimated me, Princess."

"I did not." Ivy’s glare matched his, needle for needle, spark for spark. "Just select one of your random political opponents and be done with it."

"It will not be possible." Damon rolled his eyes. "The Saintess’s prophecy made it significantly harder to assassinate my father. If I pick a name at random, people will not believe it. They will ask how such a man could possibly have breached the defenses that the prophecy itself necessitated."

The court would tear apart any explanation that did not account for the extraordinary circumstances of the Emperor’s death. A random noble with a petty grievance could not have done it.

"Then... who?" Ivy asked.

Damon stopped walking.

Grasp.

His hand came up and grasped her jaw. He shook her face from side to side in short, exasperated jerks.

"This." Shake. "Is why." Shake. "I did not." Shake. "Kill my father—"

"Awawawawawawawawa—"

Ivy protested, her voice emerged as a stream of garbled syllables, her cheeks wobbling with each shake. She grabbed at his wrist with both hands, trying to stabilize herself, but Damon’s grip was firm and his exasperation was apparently bottomless.

"S-stawph—" Her eyes crossed slightly from the motion, her vision blurring. "I will get you the solution—"

Damon stopped.

He looked at her and despite everything, he wheezed. He saw Ivy blinking, uncrossing her eyes with visible effort.

"What solution?" Damon asked, releasing her jaw but not stepping back.

"Pick a family you do not like." Ivy rubbed her cheeks with one hand, glaring at him without any real heat. "And drop the name ’Roarke’ as the hired assassin."

Roarke?

Damon’s amusement faded. His eyes narrowed.

"Why this specific name?"

"Do you remember the series of assassinations of the southern beast tribes’ chiefs and lords earlier this year?" Ivy asked. "It was him. Every single one. Clean. Untraceable. No survivors to identify him, only rumors and fear."

She tilted her head, considering.

"I believe that if he was the one who was paid for it, he would definitely be able to achieve it. Even with the tightened security from the prophecy. His reputation alone would make the explanation plausible."

Damon looked at her with naked suspicion now.

"You are... remarkably certain of this." He said. "Did you ever have the pleasure of using him?"

Ivy chuckled. "No." She smiled up at him, sweet and innocent as a poisoned apple. "But even your former Saintess could only warn against him, could she not?"

Damon clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "I do not believe you."

"Ah—why?!"

But even as he said it, Damon’s mind was already turning the suggestion over, examining it from every angle.

If Ivy was the one who recommended it this way, willing to put this name forward, knowing he would scrutinize it, then it could not be entirely without merit.

Roarke. A blade with a name in the dark that even Cecilia had failed to illuminate.

It could go into the list of possible ways to manage this situation and give them a villain they could believe in while the truth remained safely buried.

"Plant a proof~" Ivy sang, her voice lilting and playful, the melody of a nursery rhyme completely twisted. "Plant the name~ Make it plausible and logical~"

She swayed slightly with each phrase, her hand still hooked through Damon’s elbow, her steps light despite the weight of what she was suggesting.

Damon chuckled helplessly.

He pulled her down the corridor, his stride lengthening, her shorter legs scrambling to keep pace as she continued to hum her treacherous little tune.

The black marble gave way to arched windows, and the arched windows gave way to double doors of wrought iron and frosted glass. Damon pushed through them, and the garden opened before them like a sigh.

And there, walking down the gravel path with the afternoon light catching the edges of her black veil, was exactly who he had intended to see.

They were arriving at the perfect time.

Lady Sees and Saintess Ruby Vaiva were making their way through the garden, their conversation apparently concluded.

And walking toward them from the opposite direction, tall, majestic, moving with the grace of something that had learned to walk on two legs but had never forgotten how to run on four, was Arkai Dawnoro.

The Black Wolf King of the North.

He wore a black northern tunic, simple in cut but rich in fabric. His fur coat was heavy, his dark hair was pulled back neatly, revealing the sharp planes of his face, the stern set of his jaw, the eyes that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

The garden would weep if it was sentient as he walked through it like he owned it, like every flower and hedge and fountain existed only by his permission.

Damon’s eyes chilled.

The temperature of his gaze dropped by several degrees in the space between one heartbeat and the next. His posture did not change and his expression remained pleasant, even cordial.

But Ivy, whose arm was still linked through his, felt the shift as clearly as she would have felt a door slam shut in an empty house.

Something dangerous was about to happen.

She could not have said what. She could not have pointed to any single sign. But she had spent enough time in Damon’s company to recognize the stillness that preceded violence.

"Your Majesty, Arkai Dawnoro."

Damon greeted smoothly like a normal crown prince normally greeting a normal visiting dignitary. But there was something in his tone, a frequency that only certain ears could catch. Ivy heard it, and beneath her black veil, Cecilia heard it too.

"It is an honor to receive your prayers for my father today."

"Your Highness, Crown Prince Damon."

Arkai’s response was the usual formal, his visage as stern and cold as ever.

"Extending a last prayer for a good colleague is a privilege for me." His voice rumbled like distant thunder. "Please, it is my good fortune that I had the chance to attend the funeral before he is buried."

"How kind of you." 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Damon smiled.

And then, without warning, without preamble, he released Ivy’s arm and stepped away from her side. Ivy’s hand fell back to her side and she watched, frozen, as Damon crossed the remaining distance between himself and the two women on the garden path.

Lady Sees flinched.

Everyone noticed too.

"My fair lady."

He caught her hand before she could withdraw it. His fingers closed around hers with the gentle but unyielding grip, having no intention of letting go.

"It must also be a fortune for you to catch the eye of the Black Wolf King of the North."

Damon lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of it. The motion was courtly, elegant, the picture of chivalrous admiration. His smile was gentle and charming, the smile of a lover greeting his beloved after a long absence.

"You must have gone through a major life and death scenario to be with him, did you not?"

Ah.

Arkai smelled it. A real, dangerous threat.

His black eyes began to glow, crimson bled into the darkness.