Chapter 10 Extra – The Prince in the Ruins of His Victory
(The Royal Palace, three nights after the escape)
Cedric had not slept in seventy-two hours.
The council chamber still smelled of smoke from the documents he had burned: forged testimonies, bribed confessions, every piece of paper that was supposed to bury Evelyn de Clermont forever.
Instead they had buried his credibility.
He stood alone on the balcony of the queen's solar, staring north. Snow fell thick and silent over the city, erasing footprints, swallowing sound. Somewhere beyond the white veil, Evelyn was riding free.
His hands gripped the stone balustrade hard enough to bleed.
Behind him the doors opened. Queen Isolde entered without ceremony, her silver hair unbound, face stripped of paint and pretence.
"They are gone," she said flatly. "Every northern gate reports the same: six riders, two women on one horse, vanished into the forest before the alarm reached the walls. The maid planned it perfectly."
Cedric did not turn.
"She humiliated me," he whispered. "In front of the entire council. In front of history."
Isolde's voice cut like a scalpel. "You humiliated yourself when you let a fourteen-year-old girl live with the memory of what you did."
He whirled, eyes wild.
"I was nineteen! The kingdom was fracturing! Father was dying! Aldric would have torn the realm in half with those letters—"
"So you murdered a duke and thought a forced engagement would silence his daughter." Isolde stepped closer. "You created a martyr, Cedric. And now she has a blade sharper than any sword."
Cedric laughed (a cracked, ugly sound).
"That maid. That nothing little maid. Do you know what she said to me in the Rose Salon? 'Zero survivors who raised steel against those I protect.' She looked at me like I was already dead."
He dragged both hands through his hair.
"I want her found. I want her flayed. I want her head on a spike outside Evelyn's window so the bitch remembers who owns this kingdom."
Isolde regarded him for a long, cold moment.
"No," she said at last. "You want her alive. Because dead, she becomes legend. Alive and broken, she becomes a warning."
She moved to the map table, unrolling a parchment of the northern provinces.
"Send the Royal Blades. All of them. Quietly. No banners, no declarations. Find the girl and the maid. Bring them back in chains before the new moon. Then we stage a public trial (real evidence this time). Treason. Regicide. Whatever sticks."
Cedric stared at the map as though he could see Evelyn's laughter in the empty spaces.
"And if the north rises to protect her?"
Isolde's smile was winter itself.
"Then we burn the north. House by house. Until even the snow forgets the name Clermont."
She rolled the map shut.
"But first," she said, "we remind the kingdom who writes its stories."
Cedric turned back to the balcony. Snow had begun to stick to his lashes.
Somewhere in the dark, a black stag banner was rising again.
And for the first time in his life, Prince Cedric tasted fear (cold, metallic, absolute).
He welcomed it.
Fear would keep him ruthless.
And ruthless, he thought as he crushed snow between bleeding palms, was exactly what it would take to drag Evelyn de Clermont back to kneel.
Alive.
Broken.
His.