The de Vaillant parlour had witnessed enough family crises to stop being surprised by them. Its ancestral portraits had perfected expressions ranging from stern disapproval to mild alarm, their painted eyes suggesting that descendants who chose monster-fighting over needlework had only themselves to blame. Outside, a cold drizzle slicked the cobblestones with the greyness of late Blotember, when autumn stopped pretending it wasn’t simply winter’s opening act.
Lambert stood behind Laila’s chair and studied his family.
Laila had taken the seat nearest the hearth, not the largest, but the one with clearest sightlines to every door. Isabella had claimed the window seat, perched on its edge rather than settled into it; Lambert had never seen his sister sit in a chair the way normal people did, as though remaining fully seated might cost her a crucial half-second if something came through the glass.
Wylan was folded into a high-backed chair closer to the fire than dignity would normally permit, pale and drawn, his shirt loose enough to hide the bandages beneath. The faint chemical smell clinging to him suggested he’d spent the sleepless hours productively. Alchemy. Wylan’s answer to everything. His brother had not yet thanked him for the divine intervention that had kept his organs on the inside of his body where they belonged. Tch.
Alexisoix had found the corner furthest from the centre of the room, near the drinks cabinet, where he could plausibly be doing something with decanters rather than meeting anyone’s eyes. His lute case rested against the wall, which was where he left it when the situation had moved beyond music.
The fire crackled. No one had spoken for several minutes. People revealed themselves in the spaces between words.
Lambert watched as Isabella’s gaze flickered repeatedly to Wylan: quick glances, checking he was still breathing. Lambert understood. He’d woken up before daybreak to check on Wylan himself. Not that either of them knew.
Almost. The shadow wrapping around Wylan, dragging him down. Lambert’s healing taking hold a half-second before it would have been too late. Almost was a word that kept him awake at night.
As he watched, Alexisoix’ hand drifted to his coat pocket, pressed briefly against something beneath the fabric, then withdrew. His cousin’s gaze flicked toward the family, checking if anyone had noticed.
Lambert had noticed. He’d noticed last night, too, in the chaos of the chamber: Alexisoix spotting something on the floor, the careful adjustment of boot laces, the paper vanishing into that same pocket.
Are those your secrets or ours, dear cousin?
“Well,” Laila said, and the room drew breath. “I believe we have rather a lot to discuss.”
She rose and crossed to the parlour doors, checking each one for eavesdroppers pressed against the wood. Finding none, she turned the locks anyway. The click echoed in the silence.
“Alexisoix.” She didn’t look at him. “Something ambient, if you would. Nothing with lyrics.”
Alexisoix blinked. “I… yes. Of course.” He retrieved his lute: the first solid thing he’d been offered all morning. A moment later, a soft melody filled the room, just loud enough to muddle any conversation that might drift through keyholes or servant passages.
Laila surveyed the room once more, apparently satisfied. Then she took position before the hearth, clasped her hands behind her back, and addressed her family as though they were a war council rather than four people recovering from a very difficult evening.
“After last night’s events, I believe I can now say with confidence what I have long suspected.” She paused, letting the silence do its work. “Alexios didn’t just die. He was taken from us. Deliberately. This wasn’t a tragedy. It was orchestrated.”
“You’re being positively theatrical, Mother,” Wylan observed.
Laila’s gaze could have frozen the fire. “You don’t think the moment warrants it?”
Wylan reached for the vial on the side table, recognising a losing position.
Lambert watched as his family performed their usual routine. Comforting, in its way.
? Accusing Laila de Vaillant of theatricality was like accusing water of wetness: self-evident and unlikely to change anything. Wylan had learned this lesson many times but continued to voice the complaint as a matter of principle.
Laila let the silence settle before continuing. “There is something I have kept from the family. The signet ring Maximilian wears is a replica.”
She paused, clearly expecting some reaction. Lambert kept his face carefully neutral. At the window, Isabella examined her fingernails with sudden interest. Wylan took a measured sip of his restorative.
“I can see from your lack of shock that you have discovered this for yourselves.” Her tone suggested she would be revisiting the question of who knew what and when at a later date.
“When I found Alexios’ body, the ring was nowhere to be found,” she continued. “I acted quickly to place a replica on his finger until I knew more. For six years, I used my own networks through Phaedra to learn what I could. When that turned up nothing, I had Monsieur Chevalier see what he could discover through Guillaume’s contacts.”
The lute melody faltered for a half-beat. Lambert’s attention sharpened.
“What Chevalier informed me,” Laila said, “was that he chased a rumour to Cimmeria. That rumour was a trap.”
She let the moment linger theatrically.
Lambert coughed politely into the silence of Isabella and Wylan’s blank stares.
“It appears, then, that not only has someone taken the ring,” he said, “but someone knows the ring is missing and is actively looking for it. Which suggests they understand it’s more than just a ring.”
Laila inclined her head. “Precisely. So what else do we know?”
“We know that Legate Calderon was looking for the secret chamber,” Isabella said. “His notes referred to The Gilded Window, which turned out to be the lever that opened the door in question.”
“We know he was looking for the book,” Lambert said. “We don’t know what his agenda was. Given his last confession to me, I suspect he did not actually know the significance of what he sought. Which suggests he was told to look for it, not why.”
“By whom?”
“That is indeed a rather important question.”
“Two threads, then.” Laila began to pace, three steps and turn, three steps and turn. “Chevalier’s investigation draws hostile attention. A Church legate arrives with implausible timing, searching for the precise mechanism that opens our family’s most guarded secret.” She stopped. “Someone knows. Someone has known for some time. And they have been methodically working to gain access.”
“To what end?” Wylan asked.
“That is what we need to determine. There is another thread to add to this. Last night, Countess d’Aubigne made an unusual gesture that prompted me to peek at the edges of her mind. In doing so, I discovered a sense of loyalty that connects her to Aeloria.”
“You mean to say she is a dragon cultist?”
“I am convinced of it.”
Isabella leaned forward. “Were they working together? Is Aeloria trying to gain access to the dungeon? Why?”
“I find it highly improbable that d’Aubigne and Calderon were working together,” Lambert said. “They showed very little in the way of coordination.”
“Yes, d’Aubigne’s retainers were quite protective of her effects, but seemed entirely uninterested in Calderon’s. If they were coordinating, they were doing so with remarkable incompetence.” Isabella looked into the distance as she spoke, picking back through the night.
“That conforms to my suspicions.” Lambert folded his arms. “I suspect we have two players acting against us. I shall need to have a conversation with Guillaume about where his information originated.”
“What does my father have to do with any of this?”
The question cut through the room. Alexisoix had stopped playing. His hands rested flat against the lute’s body, pressing down hard.
Lambert addressed his cousin directly. “Nothing directly. I had merely wanted to follow up with Guillaume about where he obtained the information that Chevalier acted upon.”
“No one is suggesting anything, Alexisoix.” Laila kept her voice even. “Guillaume’s involvement, and thus Chevalier’s, was your mother’s suggestion. She was seeking her own answers for the death of her younger brother. I mention it only to establish that this investigation has not been idle speculation.”
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He resumed playing, but the melody had shifted, something minor, something that wandered. If there was one thing he recognised, it was the shape of guarded guilt. The same look Alexisoix had failed to hide when he pocketed that scrap of paper in the chamber. That confirmed what Lambert had begun to suspect: Guillaume was connected to this. Somehow.
Your father’s name makes you flinch, cousin. Why?
Guilt announced itself, in Lambert’s experience. Innocence made no sound at all.
The conversation had moved on without her, Lambert and Laila trading implications. Isabella let their voices fade to a comfortable murmur.
She reached into her coat and withdrew the journal. No one had thought to take it from her in the chaos of last night, and she had not volunteered its return.
What were you hiding, Father? She turned the pages slowly, watching the cipher patterns shift and repeat. And from whom?
Near the back, the pages grew stiff: something tucked between them. Her fingers found the edge of paper, thicker than the journal's leaves, and drew it out.
A painting, small and faded. Six figures stood together, young and alive and clearly doing something dangerous.
One of them was unmistakably Alexios.
Oh.
This wasn’t Father. Not the distant man who had accepted a political hostage and called her daughter. Young, perhaps in his twenties, with an easy smile she had never seen on his face. His posture was relaxed, open, leaning towards the others as though they shared secrets worth keeping.
This was before. Before Laila, before the marriage, the household, the decades of careful manoeuvring. Before whatever had turned him into the guarded figure she had known.
She still had vivid memories of the day she went with him into the Bramblewoods. The day they hunted a monster together. The day she learned to hunt back.
The day I called him Father for the first time.
Those moments had been rare. She had hoarded them like coins.
This painting feels like that. Private. His.
And now mine.
But Laila needs to see this.
“Isabella, you are radiating nostalgia.” Pure observation. The room turned to Laila bearing down on Isabella.
“What have you found?”
Isabella handed over the painting. She held it a moment longer than necessary, feeling something slip away as Laila’s fingers closed around the edge.
Laila studied the image, and something in her face went still.
“This is Alexios.” A pause. “A young Alexios.”
She tilted the painting toward the light, and Isabella watched her mother’s eyes move across the other faces, cataloguing, recognising.
“And Ramirez. Madame d’Amboise. Soraya.” Laila’s brow furrowed. “But these two I don’t know.”
The painting had turned in Laila’s hands, angled now to catch the firelight. From where Isabella sat, she could see the back: faded writing she hadn’t noticed before.
“There’s an inscription,” she said. “On the back.”
Laila flipped the painting over. Her lips moved as she read.
“The Eclipse Society.” She looked up. “And the names listed beneath. Alexios de Vaillant, Ramirez Esteban, Genevieve d’Amboise, Gawain, Alarico Navarro, Soraya.”
The names hung in the air. Isabella watched her family absorb them.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” The words came out smaller than she’d intended.
Laila had not looked away from the young smiling Alexios. Isabella didn’t know what she was looking for.
No one answered. The fire shifted. Laila set the painting down on the arm of her chair.
“Ramirez wasn’t just Father’s chaplain,” Lambert said slowly. He was studying the painting the way he studied confessions. “Look at the composition. He’s taking the centre. The others are arranged around him.” He paused. “Given Father’s age here, the Prelate would have been the natural leader. The one who brought them together, perhaps.”
“You knew him,” Laila said. “Before his disappearance.”
“Barely. I was young and new to the Church. He came to the house as chaplain. I had the impression he was paving the way for me to eventually take over the role. Not directly—he never took a direct interest in me. I don’t think he particularly liked me. But doors opened. I found myself assigned to the best theological teachers in Pharelle. Opportunities appeared.” He paused. “I assumed it was coincidence. Or Father’s influence. Now I suspect it was neither.”
“And his disappearance?” Isabella asked.
“Takes on new significance.” Lambert’s gaze hadn’t left the painting. “If Mother Vaziri wanted him gone, and wanted control of the Church…”
“You think she was behind the disappearance? Or possibly the person pulling Calderon’s strings?” Laila’s voice sharpened.
“Either seems plausible. She had the means. And if Grandmother Seraphina ever spoke to her sister about the family’s secrets…” He spread his hands. “It depends on what Seraphina knew, and what she told.”
A silence fell, as it usually did after mentioning Grandmother Seraphina in Laila’s presence.
“And Genevieve.” Laila turned the painting in her hands, her thumb resting near the figure of the younger woman. “We were never friends. But there was an understanding. I knew she and Alexios shared something I couldn’t touch. Their friendship was singular. Guarded.” Her mouth twisted. “I checked, once. With enchantment. It was never libidinous. But it was private in a way that excluded me, and now I see why.”
She checked with enchantment. Isabella filed that away. She was jealous enough to look, and proud enough to admit it.
“We each had a piece of him the other couldn’t reach,” Laila continued quietly. “I thought that was simply the nature of the man. Now I wonder how much of what I couldn’t reach was this.”
“I’m not drawing any inferences that might explain her involvement,” Lambert said. “Wylan, what can you add about Soraya?”
Wylan was quiet for a moment. “Father’s patronage,” he said finally. “I assumed he sent me to her because I’d broken through and needed training. Because she was brilliant and he could afford her fees.” He was staring at the painting now; at the woman he’d known only as a teacher. “But if they were working together all along, then…” He stopped. Started again. “My apprenticeship. Was that even about me? Or was it about bringing my skills into whatever they were planning?”
“He died before any of it could be realised,” Laila said. “Whatever his plans for you or any of us.”
How many of us were children, and how many have been pieces on someone else’s board? At least the Hunt was real enough.
Wylan said nothing. His hands had curled around the empty vial on the side table.
“That begs the question.” He looked up, voice steadier now. “What is, or what was, the Eclipse Society?”
“Sounds like a gentleman’s club,” Alexisoix offered from his corner. His voice was light, but his grip on the glass said otherwise.
“Given its location in this journal, it must have been clandestine in nature.” Laila turned the painting over again, studying the faces.
“You mean a secret society?” Part of Isabella was thrilled by the conspiracy of it all.
“What I mean,” Laila said carefully, “is that your father kept a painting of six people hidden in an encrypted journal, with a name that suggests they did not wish to be found. Whatever the Eclipse Society was, it was not a gentleman's club.”
? Naming a clandestine organisation after a celestial event was, historically, the first step toward being discovered. Astronomers notice these things.
She looked up. “Isabella, I’m going to keep this.”
“But I thought—”
“Have you any experience with ciphers? And more importantly, how my late husband thought?”
Isabella felt the words before she could stop them. “I don’t know, Mother. Given what we’ve just learned, have you?”
From the corner came the sound of glass slipping from fingers and shattering on the floor.
Isabella did not look toward the corner. She kept her eyes on her mother.
When she spoke again, her voice had found its level.
“That was unkind.” A pause. “And not entirely unearned.” She set the journal and painting on the side table with deliberate care. “But no, Isabella. What comes next, I need you out there where you notice things. Not with your nose stuck in a book where you won’t.” She turned to Lambert. “I think I may need your assistance on this. I can perform some of the cipher work, but you were always much better at noticing patterns.”
“But before we delve deeper into conspiracy,” Wylan said, “I must ask a pertinent question. How much do we tell Max?”
Laila had been expecting this.
“Max does have a right to know.” She chose her words with care. “But right now, this household is harbouring a dangerous secret. I did not ask Max to maintain appearances out of cruelty. He is currently being the face of House de Vaillant to a number of unimportant dignitaries, while we do the real work.”
Wylan said nothing, but his expression asked the question.
“I will not hide this from him,” Laila said. “I will not keep the peril that potentially faces him, the household, or his wife and daughter from him. He will be told. But he will be told when I have something coherent to tell him, not a tangle of half-formed suspicions.”
The fire crackled. Somewhere in the house, a clock reported the hour to a room that had stopped keeping track.
“Now then.” Laila turned back to the room. “We have names. We need to determine which of these people we can find, and who might actually speak to us.”
“Genevieve d’Amboise remains prominent in Pharellian society,” she continued. “I see her at enough functions to know she hasn’t fled the city. Finding her would be the simplest matter. Convincing her to speak may prove more challenging.”
“And the others?” Isabella asked.
“Ramirez Esteban vanished a decade ago. If he’s alive, he’s hidden himself well enough that my networks have found nothing.” Laila’s tone suggested this was a personal affront.
“What about Captain Navarro?” Wylan was studying the painting. “Alarico Navarro. That’s an Iberian name.”
Alexisoix shifted. “Alarico… that name sounds familiar.” He frowned, trying to place it. “My father’s company deals with dozens of captains. Shipping, logistics, cargo routes up and down the coast. I may have heard it mentioned at some point.”
“Can you recall the context?”
“I…” He shook his head. “No. It’s just… familiar. Like a name you’ve seen on a manifest and forgotten.”
Lambert filed this away. Another thread connecting to Guillaume.
“And Gawain?” Laila asked the room.
No one had anything to offer.
“A Prelate who vanished a decade ago, a captain whose name rings a vague bell, an Alchemist no one has seen in years, and someone called Gawain about whom we know precisely nothing.” Lambert folded his arms. “All of them connected to whatever Father was involved in. That seems beyond coincidence.”
“That leaves Madame d’Amboise,” Laila said. “She’s our best lead. Perhaps our only lead.”
“Two leads,” Lambert said.
The journal sat heavy in Lambert’s hands.
Laila was discussing next steps with Phaedra. Approaches, contingencies. Lambert let the conversation wash past him.
? Lambert had long understood that the most productive part of any meeting was the part where everyone else thought he was listening.
Alexisoix had been fidgeting with something in his pocket for the past hour. The same pocket where that scrap of paper had vanished last night. Lambert watched him from the corner of his eye, tracking the nervous movements, the way his cousin’s fingers kept returning to whatever was hidden there.
A small prayer. Nothing dramatic. Just a whisper to the Realm of Dusk, asking for a moment’s confusion, a heartbeat of inattention.
Alexisoix’s hand stilled. His expression went vague, distant. Without seeming to notice what he was doing, he withdrew the folded paper from his pocket and set it on the drinks shelf behind him.
Lambert noted the location. He would retrieve it after the meeting.
For now, he turned his attention to the journal. The cipher was dense, impenetrable. But patterns emerged if you knew how to look. Laila had asked for his help with this, and he intended to provide it.
He flipped to the final entry. The last words Father had written before his death.
Most of it was incomprehensible. But one word appeared twice, clear as day: a name.
“That’s at least one good lead.”
“Two leads,” Lambert said. The conversation stopped.
He stood, holding the journal. “Laila, apologies for the dramatics. But yesterday was the anniversary of Father’s death, was it not? Or at least the day you found him.”
“It was.” Her voice was carefully level. “Why?”
Lambert turned the journal around and placed it on the table, open to the final entry.
“Because it looks like Soraya was the last person to see him alive.”