Time/Date: Mid-Morning, TC1853.01.10
Location: Brenner Estate, Lord Garrick's Private Quarters
The words hung in the air like a blade suspended over all their heads.
We can't allow those DNA tests to proceed.
Isolde's breath caught. Not with surprise exactly—more like confirmation of something she'd been dreading. "You want to destroy evidence in an active police investigation?"
"I want to buy us time," Garrick corrected, and there was something in his voice that made Edmund's stomach clench. The precision of someone who'd spent seventy years finding loopholes in contracts and laws. "When the Empire Medical Research Center discovers the samples are compromised, they'll request fresh collection under supervision. Which gives us..." His pale eyes went cold as winter stone. Hard. Calculating. The eyes of a man who'd made difficult decisions before and would make them again. "An opportunity."
The unspoken words hung heavier than anything actually said.
Edmund felt sick. Actually physically sick, like his stomach had dropped through the floor and kept falling. "Father, you can't be suggesting—"
"I'm not suggesting anything." Garrick cut him off with the sharp authority of someone who didn't tolerate interruption. Never had. "I'm stating facts. Medical procedures carry inherent risks. Sample collection can result in... complications. Subjects sometimes become agitated during invasive testing. Staff members defend themselves. Family members intervene to protect personnel."
He leaned back in his chair with deliberate casualness, steepling his fingers in that gesture Edmund remembered from childhood. The one that meant Father had already worked out every angle and found them all acceptable. "Things escalate. Situations become regrettable but explainable."
A pause. Let the implications settle like dust after an explosion.
"Selene will face justice for the baby swap—that can't be avoided now. Her connection to the Amber Kiss incident is already documented, her fingerprints preserved in evidence." His weathered face showed no emotion. None at all. "But if the girl doesn't survive to testify about the abuse, about the poisoning, about seventeen years of systematic torture..."
He let that thought trail off naturally, the way a merchant lets a customer reach their own conclusions about price.
"Then the scope of the investigation narrows. Considerably. One crime versus nearly two decades of conspiracy."
"And the DNA samples already collected?" Isolde asked. Her voice carried that cool rationality that made her so valuable in family councils. Testing the plan for weaknesses the way she'd test a contract before signing. "The police have physical evidence. Blood samples. What happens when those results confirm the bloodline connections?"
But Edmund caught something in her pale eyes—a flicker of calculation that went beyond simple due diligence.
She was weighing something. Measuring what could be sacrificed to save the Montague name.
"That's precisely why the contamination is critical," Garrick said, leaning forward slightly. His merchant's mind was already working through the implications with frightening clarity. "If the samples are compromised before analysis completes, they'll need fresh samples from all parties for retesting. But if the girl is... unavailable... for that retesting..."
He paused, letting them work through the logic themselves.
"They can only test those who remain," Isolde said slowly, understanding dawning in her pale eyes. "Amara, Selene, Edmund. Those results will show Amara is Selene and Edmund's biological daughter. Which we've never denied."
"Exactly." Garrick's fingers steepled. "But without the girl alive to provide comparison samples, there's no way to prove she wasn't Edmund and Eveline's daughter as we've always claimed. The baby swap accusation becomes... unprovable. A theory without evidence to support it."
"The Marcellus family," Edmund said weakly. "Eveline's relatives. They might ask questions. Demand their own investigation—"
"The Marcellus family always needs funds," Garrick interrupted, and there was something cold in his voice. Merchant calculation applied to human lives. "Eveline's branch particularly so. They're respectable enough, but constantly struggling with debts and failed investments. A generous settlement for the 'tragic loss' of their family member years ago, combined with... ongoing financial support... will ensure their cooperation and silence."
He said it so casually. Like buying grain or negotiating shipping rates. Just another transaction where money solved inconvenient problems.
"So without physical evidence, without the girl's DNA to prove otherwise, the baby swap remains an unsubstantiated accusation," Isolde murmured. "Selene's fingerprints on the Amber Kiss glass remain, but that's a separate matter entirely."
"Becomes circumstantial without the living witness," Garrick said. Each word chosen for maximum efficiency, minimum sentiment. "Selene stole a child. That's provable through medical records, birth certificates, circumstantial patterns. But proving that child endured seventeen years of abuse requires testimony. Medical evidence of ongoing poisoning. Witnesses who can attest to behavioral patterns over time."
His hands moved to rest flat on the desk. "Without the girl alive to provide detailed accounts, the prosecution's case loses substantial weight. They have a baby swap—serious, yes, but contained. Not a conspiracy spanning decades involving multiple family members and elaborate cover-ups."
Perfect, the Devourer System purred, satisfied that its gambit had worked. Pleased with how thoroughly it had corrupted this old man's already questionable morals. Now seal the conspiracy. Make them all complicit. Bind them together through shared guilt so none can betray the others.
"Before we proceed," Garrick said, his merchant's mind catching on a detail that didn't quite align, "I need to understand something, Selene. The police investigation focuses heavily on the Amber Kiss incident. The glass with your fingerprints, the hotel room, the positioning of witnesses." His pale eyes narrowed. "You targeted Lord Kael Xuán. The imperial heir. Why?"
Selene's hands stilled in her lap. For just a moment, genuine confusion crossed her face. "I didn't target Lord Kael."
"Then who—"
"There was a merchant. Brenner family connections, respectable enough but certainly not imperial blood. I arranged for him to receive the invitation, to be positioned near the girl at the banquet." Her voice carried the frustrated edge of plans gone wrong. "The room was booked under his name. The witnesses were positioned to see him compromised. It was supposed to ruin her reputation completely—pregnant by a merchant, no possibility of a respectable marriage, forever stained."
Garrick leaned forward slightly. "But Lord Kael appeared instead."
"Yes." Selene's brow furrowed. "I don't know how. The invitation was specific, the arrangements clear. But somehow Lord Kael was there instead, and the whole situation became infinitely more complicated."
Something flickered in Garrick's expression. Not quite satisfaction, but close. "This merchant—would he testify to the original plan? Confirm that he was the intended target?"
"I can make him," Selene said with quiet certainty. The serpent showing her fangs. "He owes the Brenner family significant debts. Commercial favors that would be... uncomfortable... if called in publicly."
"Perfect." Garrick's fingers drummed once on the desk—the only outward sign of his mind racing through implications. "The prosecution claims you and Amara conspired to drug Lord Kael specifically. But if we can prove the original target was someone else entirely, that Lord Kael's presence was unexpected..." He nodded slowly. "It weakens their case considerably. Changes the narrative from targeting imperial blood to a simple family dispute that went wrong."
He fell silent for a moment, pale eyes distant. "But someone intervened. Someone changed the target from a merchant to the imperial heir. Someone with access to your plans and the influence to redirect Lord Kael to that specific location." A pause. "Something to investigate. Later. After we've handled the more immediate crisis."
Edmund felt ice spreading through his chest. His father was already thinking three moves ahead. Already finding angles and leverage in a situation that seemed completely damned.
"We'll need help," Garrick continued, returning to the immediate logistics. "Specialized compounds. Substances that can make this... simpler. More certain. Less likely to raise questions during forensic analysis."
Edmund's face had gone ashen. All the blood draining away until he looked like a corpse himself. "You want to involve more people in murder?"
"I want to survive." Garrick's voice cracked—just slightly, just enough to show the fear beneath his control. "And that means making choices I never wanted to make. Serenya has access to specialized compounds through her work with Caelia at the Lin family medical facilities. But we'll need to ensure her cooperation—"
"She'll cooperate," Amara interrupted quietly, and every eye in the room turned to her. "Grandfather, there's something you need to know. Serenya... she already knows the truth. About the swap. About who she really is."
Silence crashed through the room like a physical force.
"She knows?" Edmund's voice came out strangled. "How long has she—"
"Two years," Amara said, meeting her grandfather's pale eyes steadily. "I told her. She deserved to know the truth about her own birth, about who she really is." A pause, carefully calculated. "She's been helping me. With various... arrangements. She understands that we're bound together—if my truth comes out, so does hers. If the Long family discovers she's not really their blood..."
She let that trail off, but the implications hung heavy in the air.
Selene's head snapped up, and something changed in her expression. A dawning realization spreading across her face like cracks through ice. "So that's why you two were so close," she breathed. "I always wondered. The way she deferred to you despite her higher station, the way she took your instructions without question."
A laugh bubbled up from her throat—harsh, bitter, edged with something that might have been hysteria. "I always thought it was ironic that Caelia and my daughter were friends. Her perfect celestial heir and my disappointing offspring, bonded across Ring boundaries." Another laugh, sharper this time. "But it wasn't irony at all, was it? It was conspiracy."
Her eyes fixed on Amara with new understanding. New calculation. "You've been playing your own game this entire time. Your own schemes, separate from mine. Using Serenya as your accomplice."
The serpent recognizing another serpent.
"How much of what happened at the banquet was actually my plan, Amara?" Selene asked softly. Dangerously. "And how much was yours?"
"Does it matter now?" Amara's voice remained steady, but something flickered behind her amber eyes. Fear, maybe. Or respect for a predator who'd finally seen her true colors. "We're all in this together. All of us complicit in one way or another."
Selene stared at her daughter—the girl she'd raised, the child she'd thought she controlled—and saw something entirely different. Not the perfect granddaughter performing for Garrick's approval. Not the innocent victim she could sacrifice to save herself.
A schemer. A manipulator. Someone who'd been running her own games while Selene thought she held all the strings.
"She has as much reason as any of us to ensure complications arise during the retesting process," Garrick continued, his voice carefully neutral. "Serenya understands the stakes better than anyone. Her own false identity will be exposed if this investigation proceeds unchecked."
Something flickered across Isolde's face then. Not quite approval, but a kind of grim acceptance. She'd been raised in a world where families protected themselves by any means necessary. Where bloodlines mattered more than individual lives.
Where sacrifices were made for the greater good of the name.
"The girl isn't really ours anyway," Isolde said quietly. Almost to herself. "We raised her, yes, but she carries celestial blood. Long, Lin, Zhao. She was never truly a Brenner." A pause. "Perhaps it's... cleaner this way. Less complicated than trying to manage three families' worth of outrage and retribution."
Edmund stared at his mother. At the woman who'd borne him but never quite loved him, who'd married beneath her station and never let anyone forget it. He'd known she was cold. Distant. But this—
This was something else entirely.
"Isolde," he breathed, and couldn't find more words.
She met his eyes with that aristocratic composure that had defined her entire life. "Don't look at me like that, Edmund. You married Selene despite my warnings. You participated in this swap, whatever you claim about being deceived. You've benefited from raising their daughter as a servant while elevating yours as celestial blood." Her voice remained perfectly level. Perfectly controlled. "We all made choices. Now we live with the consequences. Or we ensure certain... complications... that limit those consequences."
He turned back to Amara, expression softening just slightly. Not much—Garrick wasn't given to overt displays of affection—but enough to show the favoritism that had always defined their relationship. "Child, I need you to do two things."
He held up one finger. "First, maintain your perfect granddaughter act with Lord Kael. Be seen in public frequently. Establish a clear pattern of whereabouts. Make absolutely certain that when this happens, you have witnesses who can attest to your location."
Amara nodded, tears still glistening in her amber eyes. Playing her role even now. Especially now. "Of course, Grandfather."
"Second." His voice dropped to something almost reverent. "I need you to use your Seer abilities to guide us. Show us the path forward. Help us understand when and how to act so this appears unfortunate but explainable rather than calculated."
Yes, the System whispered with barely contained eagerness. Give them visions of success. Show them futures where you triumph. Make them believe.
Listen carefully, chosen daughter, the Devourer System transmitted urgently into Amara's consciousness. I've calculated the optimal timeline. Feed them this information as prophecy.