"You wished to see me, Uncle?"

  Isolde’s stride was measured and her back was straight. She entered the study not as a niece summoned, but as a queen attending a council.

  The victory in the garden, her assertion of command, had settled in her bones, giving her a newfound gravity. She felt much more confident. She was here to discuss the march on Solstara, to finalize the strategy that would win back her kingdom.

  The study door closed behind her with a soft, oiled click. The sound was innocent, but it seemed to seal the room off from the rest of the world. The air changed slightly.

  This was not the Marquis’s public office. This was something else entirely. Her steps slowed. The room was a mausoleum of memory, the walls lined with portraits of dead kings and battle standards from wars that no longer mattered. Her father was there too. Her own brothers were also there, captured in oil paint, their youthful arrogance frozen in time.

  At the center of it all, above a marble mantel cold enough to bleed warmth from the air, hung a painting of her mother.

  It was larger than life, dominating the space.

  That was the strange part, the detail that made her pause. Why’s her portrait so large? It wasn't the formal portrait of Queen Lysandra that hung in the royal palace. This was different. Lysandra's blue eyes watched everything and nothing, the brushstrokes so intimate they felt like a violation.

  The painter had captured her in a moment of private laughter, the kind a woman shares only with herself, her head tilted just so, a stray lock of blue hair falling across her cheek. It was a Lysandra that Isolde, her own daughter, had rarely seen.

  "You're here," Marius said. He stood by the hearth, pouring wine from a crystal decanter. The rich and cloying scent of it filled the quiet room. His voice was silky, a stark contrast to the authority she had projected moments before. She’d thought he’d speak in a lower tone after she’d gone against him, but he didn’t. "Finally, away from those barbarians."

  "They're my friends," Isolde replied, her tone firm. She would not let him undermine them, not even with a casual slight.

  He didn't reply, merely smiled as if she'd said something charmingly naive. He changed the topic, nudging his chin at the portrait.

  "You and your mother look so similar, it's uncanny." He walked over and handed her the goblet, his fingers brushing hers and lingering a heartbeat too long. Isolde felt strange. "Same blue hair. Same skin." The wine was dark as blood. "Only the eyes are different. Yours are brilliant gold while hers were like the blue depths of the ocean. Hm. Don't take offence, her eyes held the ocean's depth. Yours hold its fire. Different. But fire burns out."

  "...I see?"

  She didn’t know what to say. Was he trying to insult her?

  She took the wine because refusing would have been a battle too early in the war. The metal was cold against her palm, contrasting with the heat of the wine as it went down her throat. The confidence she had walked in with began to feel like a borrowed cloak.

  Something was wrong with her uncle today. Why was he behaving this way?

  "A sister-in-law, she was," Marius said, turning his gaze back to the painting, his profile sharp against the firelight. "My older brother's queen. I watched her for years. Watched her become something she never wanted to be. Watched her die from a poison meant for a version of her that didn't exist anymore. I loathe that bastard who took her life, and to this day, I search for a speck of his hair."

  The words were like dust in sunlight, pleasing to look at, but as Isolde thought about it, she felt a stone wall building around her. He spoke of her mother's death with a familiarity that felt profane, as if he had owned the grief more than her children had.

  "Your mother had the same scar," he said, his gaze sliding back to her. "Right here."

  His fingers found the small, pale burn on Isolde's wrist, the one she'd earned in a training accident at the Academy when a Mirror Sovereign spell had backfired. His thumb traced it, cold and dry, a touch that felt like it was measuring her skin against a memory.

  "She got it saving me from a fire in the old library. I still remember how she laughed afterward. Said pain was just proof you'd lived."

  Isolde's skin crawled.

  A sudden and unwelcome cold sweat formed on her forehead. The wine in her throat turned to ash as she realized he wasn't looking at her. He was looking through her, at a ghost superimposed on her skin. But no, he wasn't remembering a moment with his sister-in-law; he was reliving a moment with a woman who had never been his.

  "Uncle…" she began, her voice a thin thread, pulling her hand away.

  "She used to tilt her head just like that when she was angry." His voice dropped, almost reverent, a hushed whisper in a holy place. "You even sound like her. The same cadence, the same fire. It's so strange."

  Isolde avoided his gaze. In that attempt, her eyes fell on a diary on his desk. It was open. He must have been reading it. Her eyes fluttered. That handwriting…

  Lysandra's handwriting filled the page, the ink faded to brown. Isolde's eyes caught a line near the bottom, the words leaping out at her as if written in flame. These days I’m worried. Marius grows strange. He watches me practice. I fear he's starting to see not me, the Queen, but what he wishes I could be beside him.

  Her hand moved without thought, snatching the leather-bound book.

  The pages were brittle, the spine cracked with age. This… this was her mother’s lost dairy! Marius's eyes flashed. Not with anger, but with something worse. With hunger denied. A flicker of raw and possessive frustration that he smoothed over in an instant.

  "Give that back, dear. Some things are meant for–"

  She didn't hear the rest.

  Isolde didn’t feel comfortable here for a moment longer. She was already running, the diary clutched to her chest like a talisman, his voice chasing her down the hall, no longer silken but sharp with command. "Don’t be unwise! I will help you take the Throne, Isolde. But you can't escape what you are. You are her."

  She burst through the door and ran. She ran and turned through a few hallways until she slammed straight into a massive, brick wall. Only when her face hit it did she realize it was a little squishy. It was a man’s chest. Isolde lost her balance.

  “Princess?” Thorvyn caught her mid-fall, his hands rough and calloused and strangely warm, spanning her upper arms with a grip that could have crushed bone but held her with a gentleness that was almost painful.

  She expected to flinch, to recoil from a man's touch after what just happened. Instead, her body did something traitorous. It relaxed. The knot between her shoulder blades, the tension she'd carried since the Crimson Valley, simply unwound. His hands were a cage she could walk out of. Marius's hands had been a gilded trap with no latch.

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  "Princess?" Thorvyn's voice rumbled again, deep and storm-scoured. His crimson eyes searched hers. "You're trembling."

  ****

  Her body relaxed into my grip, and that was the moment I knew Marius had finally overstepped. Something in me burned. Isolde Thalasson didn’t relax.

  She was a princess who held herself like a sword, always ready and aware. But right now, she felt like a girl who had just learned the walls of her sanctuary were painted with blood.

  "I'm fine," she lied, her voice a thin thread that might snap.

  "No," I said. "You're not."

  We didn’t remain there any longer. Ragna's room was on the third floor, away from the main halls where Marius's spies lingered like cobwebs. She answered the door with her club in hand, the metal gleaming in the lantern light. One look at Isolde’s face and she stepped aside without a word, her usual bravado replaced by something quieter.

  The barbarian girl understood wounded things. She didn't offer words; she offered a safe den.

  The room smelled of leather and smoke. Ragna had been oiling her club, and the rag lay on a small table. She set the weapon down carefully, the metal clicking against stone.

  "Take a seat," she told Isolde, pointing to the bed. Isolde sat, the diary held in her lap like a shield. I stayed by the door, my back to the wood, watching the hallway through the crack. No footsteps nor shadows followed. Yet.

  “Princess,” I called.

  Isolde opened the diary.

  Her hands were steady now, but her voice wasn't. She told us everything. The study, the painting that dominated the room like an altar, the way Marius's thumb had lingered on her scar. The way he'd spoken of her mother… not as a sister-in-law, a queen he served, but as a lost thing that had been stolen from him.

  "I see now. Things make a lot more sense. He's not seeing you, Isolde," I said, keeping my voice low. "He's seeing that painting. His memories. But you're not paint on a canvas."

  Her jaw tightened. "Mother… mother saw it. She even wrote that she feared what he was becoming. Does that make me complicit in his... sickness? Is it my fault I look like her?"

  That question had zero logic behind it, but I supposed she was shaken. "Is it the fault of the sun that a madman worships its heat until he burns himself to ash?" I pushed off the door and crossed to the window. Below, despite the darkness of the night, a few of the Veridian Guard drilled in perfect formation, their movements precise as a clockwork toy. "He chose this obsession. You didn't. Your mother saw it and named it. That means she was trying to protect you from him, even then."

  Isolde fell quiet. She began to think.

  For a moment, I thought of my own ghosts, the ones I carried from a world that no longer existed. How funny. Everyone has a story, huh? Even Marius had his tragedy. The wife of his older brother, a desire that had curdled into something dark because it could never be spoken aloud. He was a man who had lost his war with grief and decided to colonize the living to win it.

  A question flickered through my mind, unbidden. I killed Vorlag for Finn. I paid a debt. Is that what I'm going to do to Marius?

  No. Vorlag had been a transaction. A brutal exchange of life for life. Marius was different. From what Isolde said, he was left broken after her mother’s passing.

  Perhaps he left the capital to come here because of her death? Because he couldn’t live where memories haunted him. In another world, this might have been a romance book.

  But no, he was eyeing someone innocent and unrelated. He’d made a choice, a slow corruption wrapped in silk and noble purpose. He hadn't done anything to Isolde. So far, Marius had only reached. He'd measured with his eyes and his touch. He hadn't yet closed his fist.

  The question was, would she let him keep reaching?

  Perhaps I hadn’t controlled my gaze properly as I stared into her eyes, she lowered her head and fidgeted. The strong queen from this morning was shaky. I had to do something, or else her conviction would be ruined.

  "I… I am scared," she confessed, her voice barely a whisper. "If I really look so much like mother… he…"

  "You do," I said, turning from the window. "You have her hair, her fire. But you're also like your father. Stubborn, principled. And you're like you – the girl who fought a little Phoenix, who stood her ground against a Frost Giant. You’re stronger." I let the words land, a counterweight to her fear. "Marius doesn't see any of that. He sees a sketch made of grief and lust. That's not love. It's grave-robbing."

  Her hands clenched on the diary. "You’re right. But we need his army. We can't afford to make him an enemy. He's a 6th Ascension, Thorvyn. Master of Sand Magic. You did slay Vorlag, but he’s not like him. From what you told me, Vorlag was a blunt weapon. My uncle… during the Border Wars, he turned an entire Erebian legion to dust. I saw him form Sand Knights that made the 5th Ascension knights weep in terror. If we confront him…"

  Her fear was practical. It was smart.

  Marius was not a monster to be slain; he was a power to be navigated. Vorlag had been a wall of muscle and divine rage, my Valtherian Physique gave me a decent counter. But Marius was a scheming mage. In a straight fight, Vorlag was more dangerous. In a war? Marius could unmake you without ever drawing a blade.

  He could be a useful ally, as much as a dangerous enemy.

  What do I do now? I decided to pull out my Status first.

  I’d have loved to be above 5th Ascension for this, but things didn’t always go according to plan. I continued frowning for a moment and then looked at Osmotic Evolution.

  The key.

  [Osmotic Evolution (S) “Purified: Juggarnaut” – 16 hours, 11 minutes]

  The skill I'd taken from the Domain-Lord. I chose it because he’d announced it by word when he attacked me, [Juggernaut]. I'd been worried about picking it since it was tied to a Dark God, but my Ostomic Evolution showed the word [Purified] beside it.

  The System, or whatever force guided my evolution, had stripped away the Concord's influence. The Grey Sentinel or whatever.

  It had boiled away the poison, leaving only the pure, terrifying essence of the power itself. Unstoppable momentum. Unbreakable defense. I should be able to go against Marius, at least within the next 16 hours. But… while this skill was a force of nature, it was a mindless one.

  It was a hammer. And you don't use a hammer to defuse a trap made of menacing sand.

  “Can we still trust him, Thorvyn?”

  "I don’t think so. Trust is for friends." My voice went flat, pulling her back from the edge of panic. "This will make me sound exactly like him, but you’ve seen his intentions with your own eyes. Marius is a tool. Tools need leverage, not trust. He wants Solstara almost as much as you do. He won't betray that until the crown is within reach. Our job is to make sure when he does, he's holding a blade against a neck that knows how to duck."

  Ragna, who had been listening in silence, grabbed a wineskin from beside her bed and threw it to Isolde, who caught it by reflex. I recalled what was inside. It was a cheap, strong drink, the kind that didn't ask permission.

  Isolde took it, drank, and the raw burn seemed to shock her back into her body. Ragna then went to sit with her club, beginning to polish it again. This time, she did it aggressively. As if she were getting ready for something more immediate.

  I didn’t know if I had a plan. I was unsure if I was taking the right risk. I walked to the door. Alright, fine. I had a plan. It was a terrible one, but it was the only one I had.

  "Thorvyn," Isolde called out, her voice thin and urgent. "Where are you going?"

  I didn't turn. "You know it."

  "Think through this."

  My hand paused on the latch. "I have," I said. "That's why I'm going to talk to your uncle and see. And if he touches you again, he won't have hands to touch anything with."

  The door closed. I stood in the hallway for a moment, the sound from within the room muffled by the wood. I grumbled. I hated politics. I must try my best to avoid it in the future. Regardless, we had to address the problem at hand.

  Marius was a predator. I was a monster. And somewhere between us, a princess was trying to become a queen.

  Oops forgot to post yesterday, here's the chapter!!

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