The manor sat a half‑day's ride from the capital, buried deep in a strip of old forest.
Stone walls, peeling shutters, an overgrown drive: the kind of country house no one in the city bothered to remember. On the steward's lists, it was Lord Vallens' retreat, used now and then when he wanted distance from court. Tonight, no visit had been recorded. The staff had been dismissed early with extra coin and no explanations.
Inside, most rooms lay shut and cold, smelling of dust and old smoke. Only one chamber on the ground floor had been opened and lit.
Its windows were boarded from within. A plain table stood in the centre, ringed with chairs dragged from other rooms. A small fire worked in a narrow hearth, giving more smoke than heat. One oil lamp burned over the table.
Seven nobles sat around it.
"That seat has always belonged to perfect blood," Lord Vallens said. "Now the king puts a boy with dirty blood in it and calls him consort."
"My daughter was raised for that place," Lady Alenne replied. Her voice stayed level; the tendons stood out on the back of her hand. "She knows the law, the alliances, every house that matters. Her lineage is clean as far back as ink can show. He drags an omega from nowhere and seats him where our daughters were meant to stand."
"The people call it a miracle," the youngest lord said. "They like the story that love ignores rank. They like thinking anyone might rise that high."
"They liked Marquess Rhalis' courage as well," Vallens said. "Right up until the day his chair was empty."
The fire snapped. Silence followed.
"Rhalis said in the great hall what we only dared whisper," Alenne murmured. "We went to him. We told him someone had to speak. If a man of his name warned the king what he was doing to the line, His Majesty would have to listen." Her mouth thinned. "Instead His Majesty lifted a hand, Veyric moved, and Rhalis' blood went on the floor."
"We expected him to turn on the omega," Lord Sornel said. "A public rebuke, a slap at his rank, even sending him back to the mud he came from anything but a marquess' blood on the marble. We misjudged him. We will not stand in front of that temper a second time."
"The lesson was plain," Vallens said. "Challenge the queen where the king can see you, and you die for it. Once is enough."
"So we bow," the youngest lord said, "and let wrong blood take root in that chair?"
"No," Vallens answered. "We stop it. Quietly."
Sornel's fingers tapped once on the wood, then stilled.
"He is wrong for that place in every way," Sornel said. "Low birth. No house behind him. No kin we can call to account. A ruined village and rumours where there should be records. If he gives the king a child, that heir will stand above all of ours, with nothing beneath it but a story."
"And people will call it proof that blood never mattered," Alenne said. "They will forget why we were raised to guard that line."
The older lord frowned. "We do not even see him," he said. "He is kept close. Behind guards."
"We do not need to see him," Sornel replied. "We have sources inside the palace. Eyes and ears we placed there. Stewards. Maids. Footmen. Tasters. Men who pour his wine and carry away his plates."
He let the list hang.
"They say he leaves some feasts earlier than he did," Sornel went on. "That he sits more. That he looks thinner than he used to. That his hands are not always steady when he thinks no one important is watching. Our people see enough."
The youngest lord's mouth curved, without softness.
"So he is already fraying," he said. "And we simply trust he will come apart quickly enough on his own?"
"No," Sornel said. "We trust that everyone already expects him to come apart. That is what we use."
Lord Harel lifted his gaze.
"There is only one way this changes," he said.
The older lord inclined his head. "Say it."
"As long as he sits there," Harel said, "the line is bent. The king will not undo it; Rhalis' body made that clear. If we care more for the crown than for His Majesty's pride, the consort must go."
"You mean kill him," Alenne said. She did not soften the word.
"Yes," Harel replied. "Once, we pushed one of ours into the light and watched him die for it. This time, if someone is to die, it will not be another man of perfect blood."
"That is treason," the older lord said. It sounded like a measurement, not a protest.
"Letting dirty blood settle in the royal line is another kind," Vallens said. "We have learned what happens if we stand up in the king's hall. We will not give him another Rhalis. We act where he cannot see."
The youngest lord drew a slow breath.
"How?" he asked. "If we cannot speak in court and will not face him in the palace, what is left?"
Sornel leaned forward a little.
"We do not need to know what truly ails him," he said. "We only need to lean on what people already whisper. They expect a boy dragged from the mud to bend under this life. If he begins to weaken, no one will be surprised. All we do is make sure that, if it comes, it looks exactly like the ending they have been describing to each other for months."
He tapped the table again.
"Small things," Sornel went on. "A little more tired each week. Leaving a feast early. Sitting when others stand. What goes into his cup and onto his plate can see to it that his strength never quite returns. No bold dose that lays him flat. Only a slow wearing down, easy to call natural."
"You are speaking of an illness helped along by our hand," the older lord said.
"I am speaking of an end that needs no explanation," Sornel answered. "The physician mutters about strain, about a constitution unsuited to the weight. The king hears what he wishes. Everyone else nods and says, 'Of course. He was never going to last.' They see proof they were right about his blood."
"And our names stay off His Majesty's tongue," Vallens said.
"If he dies without a child," Alenne said quietly, "the seat stands empty again. Our heirs stand where they were meant to. If he lives long enough to breed, we bow to his mistake until we are dust. Those are the choices."
No one argued.
"The king killed a marquess with perfect blood because we set him in His Majesty's path," Vallens said. "We will not make that error again. We give the king no target. We remove the error he refuses to see. Quietly."
Sornel inclined his head.
"I will find the hand," he said. "One of our sources already near his table. They will think they are only following orders. You will not know who they are. You will only see the result."
There was no objection.
Chairs scraped on bare boards as they rose. The lamp flickered when Harel passed under it, then steadied. Outside, the trees swallowed their departing carriages. By the time the city gates opened at dawn, Vallens' country house was dark again.
-------
The inner courtyard of the palace was almost deserted.
Lamps along the walls cast pale circles on the stone. The air was cold enough that each breath showed white. Above, a strip of sky held a scatter of sharp stars. Soren's footsteps echoed softly as he walked the same length of paving, papers in his hands.
Ink smudged his thumb. The pages were full of Arven's compact script: ministers and their grudges, old laws with teeth, feasts that pulled coin and obligation as much as music.
He reached the far wall, turned, and realised he could not repeat the last line he had read.
"You will cut a rut through my courtyard," Ecclesias said from the archway.
Soren stopped and turned. The king stood in the entrance, cloak unfastened despite the cold, hair tied back. The nearest lamp caught the lines at the corners of his eyes. His arms were folded, but his gaze softened as it met Soren's.
"If I sit, I fall asleep," Soren said. His voice was rough. "If I fall asleep, I wake slower. My head feels full."
Ecclesias stepped onto the stone.
"And if you pace yourself into the ground, I inherit a courtyard full of holes and a consort who cannot stand up," he said. "It is a poor bargain."
Soren's mouth twitched. Some tightness in his shoulders eased, as if answering something familiar.
"You value the stones more than me," he said. "I will remember it."
Ecclesias came closer, the corner of his mouth tipping faintly.
"The masons complain less," he said. "But the stones do not read council papers at this hour, so the balance evens out."
He stopped within arm's reach. The cold made Soren's breath show white between them. For a moment Ecclesias only looked at him, gaze travelling over his face as if taking inventory: the smudged ink, the tired eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw.
"This is not where you are meant to be at this hour," he said, quieter. "There are tables indoors. Some of them are even near fires. I had one of them cleared for you."
"You did not say that," Soren replied.
"I am saying it now," Ecclesias said. "Late, as always, according to some."
Soren looked down at the papers. The ink wavered. His fingers were shaking; the pages trembled with them. Ecclesias' eyes followed the movement, then dropped to Soren's bare hands. The cold had reddened the skin; the tremor made them look almost fragile.
Without comment, Ecclesias reached out and took both of Soren's hands between his own.
His palms were warm. The gesture was simple, almost practical, but his thumbs moved once over the backs of Soren's fingers, slow, as if he meant to smooth the shaking away. Soren's breath caught. For a heartbeat he forgot the papers, the courtyard, everything except the contrast of heat against his cold skin and the way Ecclesias did not look away.
"You will not feel your fingers if you stay out here much longer," Ecclesias said. His voice had gone low. "I need them when you correct my ministers."
"That is all you need them for?" Soren asked. The words escaped before he could pull them back.
Ecclesias' mouth curved, not for the courtyard or the guards, but for him.
"For tonight," he said, "it is the excuse I will use."
The answer made something twist under Soren's ribs. He should have pulled his hands back; instead he let Ecclesias hold them, let the warmth seep in along his bones until the numbness in his fingers became ache and then feeling again.
Before Soren could speak again, Ecclesias leaned in and pressed his mouth to Soren's.
The kiss was brief, no more than the space between two held breaths, but deliberate. His hands still cradled Soren's; he did not grip or demand. It was a touch of warmth in the cold, a promise rather than a claim. Soren froze, shock flaring through him, followed by a rush of something unnamed that made the world tilt.
Ecclesias drew back first, just enough to see his face. His eyes searched Soren's, checking, asking without words if he had shattered something or simply moved it.
Soren's lips parted, but no sound came. Heat rose up under his skin, startling in the winter air. He had been fighting, for weeks, against feelings that did not fit the rules he had been given: loyalty, yes; gratitude, yes; this sharp, aching pull every time Ecclesias looked at him as if there were no one else in the room not that.
"It feels like drowning more slowly," Soren said at last, the words breaking loose on a different current than he had meant.
Ecclesias' gaze softened openly now, relief flickering through it as he understood Soren was still standing, still speaking.
"It will always feel like too much," he said. His voice stayed low, meant only for Soren. "If it ever feels easy, you have stopped seeing what is there."
"Fortunately," another voice said from the archway, "you are not alone in that argument."
Both of them turned, Soren's hands slipping free at the last instant, as if the cold itself had rushed back in to cover what had happened.
Arven stepped through the arch with a small lantern in his hand. Its light made a clear circle on the stone. The royal physician walked beside him, sleeves stained with the colour of dried herbs, the air around him carrying the dry, bitter smell of his work.
"Your Majesty," Arven said.
"Arven," Ecclesias answered, his stance still a little too close to Soren's to be entirely formal.
The physician's gaze went to Soren's bare hands and stayed there long enough to see the tremor. He drew a measured breath.
"We were meant to meet this evening," he said to Soren. "His Majesty asked that your health be reviewed after a few days on the new regimen. I went to your chambers. You were not there. You were not in Her Grace's wing. No one could say where you were." He inclined his head to the king, then back to Soren. "I have been looking for you to see whether the tonics and vitamins are doing what they should. Finding you like this does not reassure me."
Before Soren could answer, a guard appeared at the edge of the light, breath quick, eyes wide.
"Your Majesty," he said, bowing. "Forgive the hour. There has been an incident in the queen's wing."
Ecclesias' attention sharpened. Soren went very still.
"Speak," Ecclesias said.
"The tray sent up for Her Grace's supper," the guard said. "The taster collapsed after sampling it. The physician on duty believes it was tainted. The food was meant for the queen."
The courtyard seemed to tighten.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Then Ecclesias' scent shifted stronger, sharper, filling the cold air like the weight before a storm breaks. It pressed against skin and lungs; the guard swallowed hard, Soren's pulse stumbled, even Arven's jaw clenched.
"Is the taster alive?" Ecclesias asked, his voice very level.
"Yes, Your Majesty," the guard said quickly. "He vomited. They gave him charcoal. He is weak, but breathing. The tray was stopped. Nothing reached Her Grace's rooms."
"Good," Ecclesias said.
The invisible pressure of his pheromones did not ease.
"Seal the kitchens," he went on. "No one enters, no one leaves. Bring me the chief steward, every cook on duty, and every hand that touched that tray. Take them to the west hall. Now."
The guard bowed again. "Yes, Your Majesty."
"If anyone hesitates," Ecclesias added, "you will have them dragged."
The guard fled.
Silence returned, changed.
Soren looked towards the inner doors, then back at Ecclesias. The king's scent still lay heavy on the air, sharp and dangerous, but when his eyes met Soren's, there was a brief, fierce flicker of something else refusal to lose him.
"Someone tried," Soren said. The words came out thin. For a heartbeat he could not feel his hands at all, only the echo of the tray being named and the sudden, icy knowledge that the next attempt might not miss him.
"Yes," Ecclesias replied. "And tonight, they failed."
Soren's throat worked. "They will try again," he said, barely above a whisper. It was not a question. The thought of unseen hands moving through his rooms, his food, wrapped around the edges of his mind like frost.
Ecclesias stepped close enough that Soren could feel the heat of him through the cold. One hand settled at the back of Soren's neck, fingers warm against chilled skin, drawing him in just enough to press his lips to Soren's forehead a brief, deliberate touch that felt more like an oath than comfort.
"They dared to reach for my queen in my own palace," he said, his mouth still close to Soren's skin. "When I find them, they will beg the day they were born had never come."