The silence following the Marquess's proclamation was heavy, suffocating the golden light of the drawing room. Draven felt a cold sweat prickle his hairline.
The door opened with a sharp, decisive click. Darius Solvaren, Draven's lead advisor and right hand, stepped into the fray. He was a man of sharp angles and even sharper intellect, his eyes scanning the room like a hawk.
Beside him stood Elarion Ironvein, the Commander of the Prince's personal guard. Elarion was a mountain of a man, encased in blackened steel, his hand perpetually resting on the pommel of a broadsword that had tasted a hundred battles.
The air in the drawing room grew toxic. Eliosa watched Draven's face, seeing the flickering shadows of doubt and fear, and she felt her grip on him loosening.
She stepped forward, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper that felt like silk over a blade. "Draven, we must consider another possibility. One that explains her... unnatural calm."
The Marquess turned to her, his eyes narrowed, but Eliosa did not flinch. She looked directly at Draven, her eyes wide with a performative sorrow.
"A woman who carries a child and is told her world is ending does not simply say 'As you wish,'" Eliosa murmured. "Unless she already had a destination in mind. Or a person."
Draven's head snapped toward her, his eyes darkening into a dangerous, abyssal black. The implication hit him like a physical brand on his skin.
"What are you implying, Saintess?" Draven asked, his voice flat and clinical, though his eyes remained fixed on Draven's volatile reaction.
"I am saying that perhaps there was another," Eliosa said, her tone dripping with mock hesitation. "A secret suitor. Someone she has been courting in the shadows of this very palace."
She smoothed her robes, her confidence growing. "It would explain why she didn't grieve. She didn't feel discarded; she felt liberated. She used your divorce as a doorway to escape to another man's arms."
"Enough!" Marquess Valtorien's voice thundered, shaking the crystal chandeliers above. He stepped toward the Saintess, his face flushed with a righteous, fatherly fury.
"My daughter has been a paragon of loyalty," the Marquess hissed, his hand white-knuckled on his cane. "To accuse her of such filth while she is missing and pregnant is a sacrilege your 'holy' office cannot excuse."
Eliosa shrank back slightly, seeking refuge behind Draven's arm. "I only speak of what is logical, Marquess. Love can drive even the most 'noble' woman to deceit."
"Logic?" Runevald spat the word. "You speak of poison. If the Crown is more interested in slandering my daughter than finding her, then I have no business here."
The Marquess turned to Draven, his gaze cold with a new, profound disappointment. "I will find my daughter alone. And when I do, I will ensure she never has to look upon this 'Gilded Estate' again."
He did not bow. He turned on his heel and marched out of the room, the heavy doors slamming behind him like a gavel.
Draven stood frozen. Half of his mind screamed that Eliosa was lying to protect her own ego, but the other half—the half rooted in a toxic, possessive pride—was already burning.
The thought of Iris being "unbothered" because she loved another man was more painful than the thought of her dying in the Forbidden Woods.
"Darius," Draven said, his voice low and vibrating with a terrifying intensity. "I want every letter she ever wrote seized. Every scrap of parchment she touched in the last seven years."
Darius bowed his head slightly. "And her life before the marriage, Your Highness? The years she spent at the Valtorien estate?"
"Everything," Draven commanded. "Search her past. Find the man. Find the letters. I want to know who she was talking to when I wasn't in the room."
For the next three days, the palace was silent, save for the scratching of quills and the rustle of paper. Darius, Elarion, and a dozen trusted clerks tore through Iris's life.
They went through her childhood ledgers, her correspondence with her mother, even the notes she had exchanged with her seamstresses.
They found nothing.
There were no secret lovers. No clandestine meetings in the gardens. No letters hidden in the linings of her trunks. Her life was a ledger of absolute, terrifying purity.
Darius entered the study on the third night, dropping a final stack of reports onto Draven's desk. The Prince looked up, his eyes bloodshot and haunted.
"Well?" Draven asked, his voice a ghost of its former self.
"She is a ghost, Draven," Darius replied, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "She wrote to no one but her father and the Imperial charities. Her past is a desert."
Darius leaned over the desk, his eyes boring into the Prince's. "She didn't leave you for a man, Draven. She didn't leave because she was unfaithful."
He paused, the weight of the truth hanging in the air. "She left because she was never truly yours to begin with. You were just the man she was waiting to outgrow."