The silence in the Solar was a physical weight, pressing down, suffocating. The Emperor's question—Tell me his name—was a blade at Lia's throat. Her carefully constructed lie had been a house of cards, and he had just blown it down with a single, impossible query.
Her mind, the analytical engine of the Shadow Hand, went into overdrive, processing variables, calculating probabilities, searching for an escape route where none existed. The pain in her head intensified, a sharp, rhythmic pulse that was half panic, half the searing resonance of the Soul-Tether.
[PROBABILITY OF IDENTITY DETECTION: 22% AND RISING.]
The Ledger's warning was a death knell. He wasn't just guessing; he was feeling her, a phantom limb he'd severed long ago.
He stepped closer, his presence a vortex, pulling all the air from the room. His fingers were still on her jaw, a touch that was both intimate and terrifyingly clinical. "The name, Lia," he whispered, his voice a silken threat.
She had to break the connection. She had to create distance.
Her mind seized on a desperate, high-risk gambit. She couldn't invent a name out of thin air; he would see the lie in her eyes. But she could use a real one. A name from her past life. A ghost to fight a ghost.
"Master Elian," she breathed, the name a shard of memory from her first life. He was a real historian, a kind old man who had tutored her as a child, long before she became the Shadow Hand. He had died of natural causes decades ago. His name was a deep cut, a piece of irrefutable truth buried in a mountain of lies.
The Emperor's eyes narrowed, searching her face. "Master Elian," he repeated slowly. "I have never heard of him."
"He was... disgraced," Lia said, forcing a tremor into her voice. She let the pain from the Soul-Tether show on her face, twisting her features into a mask of distress. "He was accused of heresy. His works were burned, his name struck from the records. He taught me in secret, in exile."
It was a perfect lie, unverifiable and emotionally resonant. She was offering him a story that fit the narrative he had already constructed about her—a brilliant outcast, taught by another brilliant outcast.
But the pain in her head was becoming unbearable. The room began to swim.
[SOUL-TETHER RESONANCE AT 35%. CRITICAL ALERT. PROLONGED EXPOSURE WILL RESULT IN PERMANENT DETECTION.]
She staggered back, pulling away from his touch as if burned. "Your Majesty," she gasped, pressing a hand to her temple. "I… I am unwell. The pressure… your presence is overwhelming."
It wasn't entirely an act. His sheer power, combined with the tether, was a physical assault. The Emperor watched her, his expression a mask of cold, analytical curiosity. He saw her distress, her pale face, the sheen of sweat on her brow. He could interpret it as the fear of a commoner in the presence of a king, or the strain of a powerful liar holding their story together. For the first time, he was uncertain.
"It seems the air in the palace does not agree with you," he said, his tone unreadable. He made a small, dismissive gesture. "Go. Return to your merchant and your books. But know this, Lia the scholar. I will be watching you. And I will learn the truth of you, one way or another."
It was a dismissal. A temporary reprieve. She sank into another deep curtsy, her body shaking with the strain of it all, and backed out of the room, not daring to turn away from him until the great oak doors had closed behind her.
She practically ran through the silent, torch-lit corridors, her only thought to put as much distance between herself and him as possible. As she moved away, the painful thrumming in her head began to subside, the Ledger's warning fading from her mind.
She stumbled out of the palace gates just as the midnight bells began to toll. Julian's carriage was there, a dark, solid shape in the night. The door opened before she reached it. He was there, his face a grim, anxious silhouette.
He helped her inside, his hands steady and strong. The moment the door closed, sealing them in the carriage's dark, intimate space, her strength gave out. She collapsed against him, her body trembling uncontrollably.
He said nothing, simply wrapping his arms around her, holding her as the carriage lurched into motion. It was not a lover's embrace, but that of a soldier shielding a comrade from the horrors of the battlefield.
"I survived," she whispered into the darkness, her voice ragged. "But he knows. He knows something is wrong."
"Then we change the game," Julian replied, his voice a low, steady promise in the night. "We stop reacting to him. And we start making him react to us."