Chapter 192: The Crash
Lorraine’s eyes landed on the boys seated at their study desk, backs straight, books still open before them, an oil lamp flickering though the stained glass spilled the room with enough autumn light. They wore woolen tunics, warm against the season, but their stillness was colder than the air itself.
Illyria, for all her faults, stopped screaming the moment she saw them. She rushed to their side, arms thrown around them as though she could shield them with her body. Lorraine dragged a chair to the door and sat, the quiet scrape of wood against stone punctuating the tension.
She was playing a dangerous game, trying to twist the dowager’s schemes back on themselves. Whether it would work or not, she had no idea.
The dowager had been clever, perhaps even prescient, to draw her grandsons close. With Hadrian "missing" and the House of Arvand bleeding its goodwill among courtiers, the safest place for the boys would indeed be the palace, under her own shadow. She might even have reasoned that Lorraine and Leroy could never use the children, her grandchildren, as bargaining chips, possibly in exchange for Aralyn.
It seemed like the dowager considered her grandsons important enough to protect when she didn’t do the same for her sons who were murdered by her firstborn.
She might think her grandsons would be safe with her, but had she considered her son, the Emperor? The man who had murdered his own brother without hesitation? Would he balk at discarding two nephews if they so much as threatened his throne?
Lorraine studied the boys. They understood their grandmother’s terror well enough to keep their heads bowed, small shoulders tense, hands folded. They seemed clever; too clever for their years.
When she rose and stepped toward them, Illyria lurched up to block her path. Lorraine’s gaze flicked over her, cold and sharp. Almost instinctively, Illyria covered her bruised cheek and stumbled back. Lorraine lowered herself beside the boys instead, reached for parchment and quill, and scratched out words in silence.
Do you know who I am?
The children—nine and six—looked to each other, then shook their heads. Their candor made Lorraine smile faintly. Whatever else they were, they were untainted. Their faces held no trace of her father or Elyse. They were their father’s sons.
Her chest tightened. They should still have their father. They should still be children unafraid. Instead, a jealous emperor had stolen him from them, and now they lived in his shadow. For the first time, Lorraine felt the ache of Leroy’s words when he spoke of the boys’ innocence. She had brushed it aside then. But now, looking at them, she understood. She could never order their deaths, no matter what the game demanded. She was many things, but not that. Not that evil, yet.
She set her pen again. I only wanted to read some books, she wrote, and slid the parchment toward them. You may continue your lessons.
Then she rose and turned away. Her fingers brushed over the spines until they found one dusty and neglected. A tome of history, an account of the noble houses of Vaeloria since the Liberation, the end of the Dragon Dynasty. She carried it back, opened it, and let her eyes wander across old ink.
Illyria hovered near the door, gaze darting toward escape, but Lorraine ignored her. The boys bent their heads to their reading once more.
The library fell into stillness, broken only by the faint scratch of turning pages, the shifting colors of stained glass spilling across their faces.
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Leroy sat in the marketplace tea shop, parchment spread before him, rewriting Lorraine’s instructions in his own hand, shaping them into a report. The tea at his elbow steamed, warm and sweet, its aroma curling around him like a gentle tether to the present moment. The shop was quiet at this hour, with only a few patrons scattered among the tables. From his seat by the window, he had a clear view of the street outside.
It was neither crowded nor empty; midday traffic, a steady rhythm of footsteps, and the occasional cart rolling past. He watched idly as he worked, though a part of him still wondered why Lorraine had sent him to this shop in particular. Her reasons were rarely obvious at first glance.
When he finished, he leaned back and took a long sip of tea. The sweetness spread across his tongue as her words returned to him, fragments of plans that seemed almost nonsensical in isolation. Yet the strangeness of them stirred something in him. His hands trembled faintly, not from doubt, but from excitement.
He loved being home again. He loved being near Lorraine, hearing her voice, sharing her presence. Even with danger threading through every corner of their lives, being back in her orbit made the world feel whole. But if he was honest with himself, another truth lingered beneath that contentment.
He missed the battlefield.
He missed the smell of rain-soaked earth churned beneath hooves, the dust clinging to his throat, the thunder of horses, the reek of leather and steel. He missed the weight of sweat and the shouts for glory rising above the clash of blades, and the sound of armor clashing. He even missed the sting of blood, the gore underfoot, and that hot, pounding certainty in his chest, the rush of not knowing whether he would live to see another dawn.
That was the thrill he longed for. And now, sitting in this unassuming tea shop with parchment inked by his wife’s designs, he felt it again. The pulse quickened, the warmth spread, as if war itself had found him here. Lorraine knew him too well. She knew how to give him that fire back.
His gaze shifted to Elias, standing by the door as rigid as a statue, eyes trained outward. Leroy had invited him to sit, to share the table and the tea, but Elias had declined. That was fine. Small talk had never been his strength.
Just as Leroy drained the last of his tea, a sharp commotion broke outside, the sudden shriek of wood against stone, followed by a hollow crash. The tea shop stirred to life as patrons rushed to the windows. Shouts rose, panicked and urgent, like a carriage had overturned.