The flight from the Alderton Hunting Lodge was less a flight and more a desperate, silent retreat. The Winter Lark sliced through the pre-dawn sky, its sophisticated hull barely concealing the immense strain of operating at maximum speed and stealth. Seraphina stood in the cramped cockpit, clutching the Duke's Ledger, the cold, heavy leather a constant, grounding weight in her hands. The adrenaline that had fueled her escape was beginning to recede, replaced by the profound, creeping exhaustion of twenty-four hours spent facing death and making impossible choices.
She didn't dare attempt a return to the Eastern Wing. Kaelen would have the entire palace perimeter secured, and the moment the airship touched down on Imperial ground, it would be swarmed by the Shadow Guard. She needed a temporary, unassailable fortress—a sanctuary protected not by men, but by ancient, non-negotiable legal and magical boundaries.
She landed the Winter Lark precisely on the roof of the Imperial Library. It was a massive structure, clad in arcane bronze and inscribed with protective wards. Its immense magical defenses were designed to prevent the unauthorized entry or exit of knowledge, but they also had the secondary effect of preventing easy eavesdropping or targeted magical assault. The Library's independent charter made any sudden, unauthorized search by the Crown Prince a legal and political nightmare, buying her precious, necessary hours.
Valerius, his face grim and dusted with the sulfur from the flash-bomb, secured the airship. He turned to Seraphina, his dark eyes wide and breathless, reflecting the chaos they had just endured.
"Seraphina," he murmured, the name sounding entirely new on his tongue, stripped of its former mockery. "You were magnificent. Reckless, but magnificent. You risked everything—your freedom, my reputation, my life—to retrieve this book. Why? For a Prince who hates you, who set you up, who was prepared to have you executed?"
Seraphina moved toward a cold stone bench, placing the Ledger down carefully. She was too tired to stand, but too wired to rest. "It's not for him, Valerius," she said, her voice flat, emotionless. "It's for my life. And, by sheer coincidence, for the stability of the Empire. My survival is mathematically linked to his survival. If Alderton replaces him with Alaric, my execution is instantaneous. Kaelen, at least, is predictable."
She pulled out a small, sharp dagger—a forgotten artifact from the Lodge's writing desk—and, with the precise, deliberate motion of a surgeon preparing for incision, she carefully cut the thick, knotted leather binding that sealed the Duke's Ledger. The cut was clean, separating the spine without damaging the pages.
"I need to know what I risked your life for," she stated, ignoring his look of stunned disbelief at her cold pragmatism.
She cracked open the ledger. It was written in the Duke's precise, cramped hand. Seraphina didn't read it like prose; she scanned it like a complex, collapsing medical chart. Her eyes tracked dates, names, and numbers, rapidly synthesizing the data points into a single, terrifying diagnosis: Full systemic failure imminent.
The ledger was not merely financial; it was a detailed, chronological log of communication, financial transfers, and coded meeting notes between the Duke of Alderton and Prince Alaric, Kaelen's ambitious, exiled half-brother.
The evidence was instant and undeniable: a planned military coup scheduled to coincide with the highly volatile, politically charged Solstice Festival. The Duke's contribution was his Northern Regiments, traditionally loyal to his House, who would march south, supported by Alaric's contingent of foreign, ruthless mercenaries smuggled in via Valerius's own trade routes (a fact that twisted the knife in Valerius's conscience).
"The Duke wasn't just planning to frame me for poisoning, Valerius," Seraphina muttered, her eyes scanning the dates and meticulously calculating the timeline. "That was the theatrical overture. The tea, the seizure, my public arrest—that was all meant to happen just before the Solstice. He was planning to use the immediate, destabilizing chaos of Kaelen's public illness and my treason conviction to justify his own 'intervention,' leading the Northern Regiments right to the capital, and then installing Alaric on the throne while the Council was too divided to act."
She inhaled sharply, the dust from the old book catching in her throat. Her finger stopped on a specific, chilling entry, written in the Duke's precise, arrogant hand. It was not a military note or a financial transfer, but a personal instruction.
The entry read: "Phase II activation—Solstice. Secure the new Crown Heir's private physician."
Seraphina felt a cold, paralyzing dread settle in her stomach, a physical reaction far worse than any fear of the Shadow Guard. Her surgical mind instantly grasped the sheer, horrifying depth of the betrayal.
"The Prince is still in danger," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "It wasn't just the poison that was the threat. The threat is still active."
She looked up, her gaze fixed and terrifying. The Duke's plan wasn't to kill Kaelen instantly, which would generate chaos and martyrdom. It was far crueler and more thorough. Alderton had intended for Kaelen to survive the immediate poisoning, thus buying him time to execute the coup. But a lingering illness would be required to keep Kaelen weak and politically vulnerable.
"The Duke intended for Kaelen to live," Seraphina explained, the logic clicking into place with sickening clarity. "But to live sick, confused, and slowly dying. 'Securing' the physician doesn't mean arresting him. It means co-opting him. The private physician would be poisoning Kaelen slowly, legally, and professionally, ensuring Kaelen remains too compromised to fight the coup, and eventually dies of his 'chronic illness.' They planned to execute me, but leave the Crown Prince in the hands of a traitorous doctor."
For Seraphina, the former surgeon, this was the ultimate violation of her code. The idea of a healer being co-opted for slow murder struck her at a core level. Kaelen's physical weakness—the chronic disorder she was aware of from the novel—was his ultimate political vulnerability, and Alderton planned to exploit it with a scalpel, not a sword.
"This physician—he's the final key to the Duke's plan. He keeps Kaelen alive but incapacitated until Alaric arrives at the capital," Seraphina said, snapping the ledger shut.
"We need to get this ledger to Kaelen," Seraphina said, looking up at Valerius. "Immediately. If we delay, the Duke might move up the Solstice deadline, or the physician might act now that Alderton knows we have the book."
Valerius, who had been listening with rising horror, nodded instantly. "I'll take it to him. I can use the emergency tunnels beneath the Guildhouse to bypass the palace defenses. He trusts me enough to grant me an audience, even now. He won't trust you, but he must trust this book."
"No," Seraphina said, shaking her head sharply, a gesture of absolute finality. "He doesn't trust you, Valerius. Not now. He doesn't trust anything you touch. The moment he saw you, his suspicion became absolute. He believes you are my pawn, my lover, and my co-conspirator. Any evidence you bring him will be dismissed as a forgery intended to frame the Duke, allowing me—the escaped traitor—to secure the throne with Alaric."
She rose, pacing the cramped roof space, the cold stone biting through her thin soles. "We have to think beyond Kaelen's personal anger. We have to appeal to his political paranoia, his survival instinct. The arrest attempt tonight has burned every single bridge of private communication."
"Then what is the move, Seraphina? We can't hold up here forever," Valerius pressed, his hand resting instinctively near his crossbow. "We're fugitives. He's probably issued a warrant for both of us under high treason."
Seraphina stopped pacing. She looked down at the ledger, then at her own hands, then up at the vast, darkened bulk of the Imperial Palace, looming over the city. She knew exactly what needed to happen to expose the truth—it was a risky gamble, the kind of Hail Mary she would only attempt when a patient was crashing and all conventional options were exhausted.
"I need to appeal to him where he can't ignore me," Seraphina said, her eyes narrowing in fierce determination. "I need an audience that is not just Kaelen. I need to appeal to him publicly. We need witnesses. We need a stage so large that he cannot politically afford to dismiss the evidence, even if he wants to kill the messenger."
The only stage large enough, she realized with a cold certainty, was the Imperial Council itself. She had to present the ledger to the entire apparatus of the state, forcing Kaelen to choose between his hatred of her and his political survival, under the scrutiny of his entire court.