Chapter 7 Extra – Echoes in the Palace
(Interlude – multiple POVs, the night after the library incident)
Prince Cedric – The Rose Salon, two hours after Evelyn left
Cedric stood alone among the scattered teacups, the nightshade-laced blend now cold and accusing.
He had dismissed the guards, locked the doors, and still the room felt too small.
"She knows," he said to the silence. "She actually said it aloud."
The words tasted like rust.
For six years he had kept that night buried under marble and protocol. One push of wind-magic, one scream swallowed by thunder, one little girl's hand crushed in his until the bones creaked. A necessary sacrifice. The duke would have torn the kingdom in half with those letters.
And now the daughter remembered every detail.
Cedric poured himself a fresh cup (plain tea this time) and drank it in one burning swallow.
Tomorrow he would move the trial forward. Tomorrow he would crush her before the north could rally.
But tonight the echo of her maid's voice kept circling his skull like a vulture:
"Zero survivors who raised steel against those I protect."
He set the cup down too hard. Porcelain cracked.
Saintess Lilia – Her private chapel, kneeling before the altar
Lilia's fingers worried the lace handkerchief until it tore.
The ink had been meant for Evelyn's lap (black on crimson, perfect symbolism). Instead it had bloomed across the maid's chest like a dark flower.
And then the maid had smiled.
Lilia had seen smiles like that before (on the faces of temple assassins when they came for heretics).
She pressed her forehead to the cool marble altar.
"Goddess, why does the villainess now have a demon guarding her?"
No answer came, only the flicker of candle flames.
Lilia began to cry (real tears this time).
Lady Marguerite & The Viper Garden – Midnight, dormitory corridor
"He actually went pale," Marguerite whispered, clutching her silk robe closed. "Did you see? When Evelyn mentioned the tower."
"Cedric looked like he'd seen a ghost," another girl giggled nervously. "Or like the ghost had just promised to haunt him."
Their laughter died quickly.
Because they had also seen the maid.
Quiet, ink-soaked, smiling like winter.
"I think," one of them said, voice small, "we may have chosen the wrong side."
Queen Regent Isolde – Her solar, reading urgent missives
The queen mother read her son's hastily scrawled note three times.
Evelyn de Clermont has accused me openly of the duke's murder.
The maid threatened northern rebellion.
Advise.
Isolde crumpled the parchment and fed it to the fire.
She remembered the night clearly: the storm she herself had summoned, the push of air against Aldric de Clermont's back, the satisfying crunch far below.
She had thought the daughter broken.
Apparently the daughter had simply been waiting.
Isolde rang for her spymaster.
"Double the watchers on the northern border," she ordered. "And find me everything you have on Lady Evelyn's personal maid. I want to know what that girl eats for breakfast and who taught her to speak like death wearing an apron."
The spymaster bowed and vanished.
In the hearth, the last scrap of Cedric's note curled black and burned.
The game, Isolde thought with a thin smile, had just become interesting again.
Somewhere in the palace, clocks struck midnight.
And every predator who had believed Evelyn de Clermont was prey discovered, too late, that the prey now had teeth.
Northern Loyalists – The Black Stag Tavern, lower city, same night
In a back room thick with pipe smoke and the smell of pine whiskey, six men and one woman sat around a scarred oak table.
Every one of them wore the Clermont stag somewhere: a silver pin, a faded tattoo, a ring that had not left their finger since the duke's funeral.
The youngest (barely twenty) finished reading the letter aloud.
It had arrived by raven an hour ago, written in Evelyn's own hand, smuggled out by a kitchen boy whose mother once served House Clermont.
The room was silent enough to hear the fire crack.
Then old Captain Garrick (scar across his throat from the empire wars, voice like gravel) spoke first.
"She said it. In the prince's own palace. Said his name and the tower in the same breath."
He lifted his cup, not in toast but in ritual.
"To the daughter who finally drew steel."
Every cup rose.
The woman at the end (Duchess Rowena de Vey, Aldric's cousin, exiled from court for mourning too loudly) set her cup down untouched.
"And the maid," she said quietly. "The one who caught the ink and threatened open rebellion. Who is she?"
Garrick gave a wolf's smile. "The duke's last gift. He trained her himself from the age of nine. Called her his little shadow. We thought she died with him that night. Turns out she was only waiting."
Rowena's eyes gleamed in the firelight. "Then the north still has its blade."
She stood, drew the silver stag brooch from her cloak, and pinned it to the table like a battle standard.
"Send word to every loyal house from Frostfang to the Iron Coast," she ordered. "Tell them the stag's daughter has spoken the truth at last. Tell them the prince's reckoning is coming."
She looked around the table, meeting every gaze.
"And tell them the duke's shadow still walks. Anyone who raises a hand to Lady Evelyn now answers to her first."
Garrick raised his cup again, higher this time.
"To the duke who never truly fell," he growled, "and to the daughter who will make them all kneel."
They drank until the cups slammed empty on the wood.
Outside, snow began to fall over the capital (thick, silent, northern snow).
And in taverns and keeps and mountain passes across half the kingdom, old men took rusted swords down from mantels, young women sharpened knives by candlelight, and ravens carried sealed letters north.
The north had heard its lady speak.
And the north, at long last, was answering.