CHAPTER 99: HOW HE FIGURED OUT

Aldric could see it. Leroy’s pride was unmistakable, simmering beneath that measured smile. It wasn’t an easy truth to embrace. Every single thing the princess had done carried the weight of a death sentence. She had defied the emperor’s commands, shielded Leroy more than once, and moved people like pawns for her own ends and her husband’s.

If such truths ever saw daylight, their lives would be forfeit. And yet... there was more.

As a woman in Vaeloria, granted as many rights as a horse and expected to remain behind the walls of her manor, she had acted without her husband’s permission. More than that, she had proved herself sharper, more cunning than the man she was bound to.

Many husbands would have felt threatened. Most would have condemned her and clipped her wings so she would stay in the confines of what was defined as marriage in their kingdom.

Leroy wore it like an honor.

Aldric’s lips curved, a rare, quiet satisfaction settling over him. His patience had paid off. For the first time, he could allow himself the smallest measure of relief. Leroy knew, and he didn’t flinch. The princess had found her match in him.

"How," Aldric asked, leaning forward, "did you figure it out?"

Leroy’s smile deepened—slow, deliberate, the kind of smile that didn’t answer the question so much as savor the memory of it.

The day he returned, he’d known something was off. She wasn’t in the room when she should have been. Then, moments later, she was there—composed, calm, as if she hadn’t just vanished into the city’s veins. He’d wondered where she’d gone... and almost let the thought slip away.

Until she nearly fell to her death.

He’d been furious, thinking she’d tried to take her own life. But then she struck him—sharp, defiant—and something inside him shifted. Maybe he was wrong about her. She didn’t turn weak. But she had changed, and he knew.

At the ball, when Elyse claimed Lorraine had turned violent, he believed her—because he had accepted that slap himself. And Lorraine hadn’t even bothered to pretend that night; she was ready to strike. His wife was not one to start a game she couldn’t win. She knew she could walk away untouched if she chose to.

He stopped her only because Elyse was nothing. Not worth wasting the weapon she had kept sheathed until then. He also wanted to give Elyse a warning not to cross his path.

When he hunted for Cassian, he found the man already in someone else’s grip—dressed absurdly in women’s clothing. Why dress a man if you meant to kill him? Whoever had him was skilled, defending him with precision. Leroy’s jealousy had burned hot when Cassian plummeted to his death... but the question lingered. Who had moved those pieces on her behalf?

And then he saw her.

In a ballroom drowning in shouts and chaos, one woman stood with eyes like sharpened steel. She didn’t pause to savor the ruin of the man who had humiliated her. She searched for the exit, already moving toward the next step.

That was the moment he knew. Somehow, she was in it. Did she know who did that for her? It did stir jealousy in him.

At the funeral of Viscount Norton’s daughter, the pattern became undeniable—someone dark, calculating, and powerful was pulling the strings of the capital. He began hunting for that ghost, leaving Cedric to chase the trail of the Swan Divina.

It was then he found the name—Lazira.

A shadow wrapped in velvet and a mask, stalking the dungeons, punishing defiance without mercy. Keeper of a hundred courtesans, bending them to her will, wielding them like a silent army. A woman marked by the constant presence of the vyrnshade blossom. A name that slithered through the red-light district like a viper in the dark.

That woman... could only be his wife.

Who else could rule in darkness but the one they all called a curse?

The last person anyone would suspect—the outcast of aristocratic society, the woman dismissed as foolish—turning the capital’s strings with a mastery no single soul could match.

For him, it was the easiest truth to accept.

She had once promised to live for him—to be his poison, his blade in the shadows, to keep him in her chest like a breath. Who else could orchestrate so much with such perfect secrecy? He knew better than anyone how long she could bury her true voice without a single slip. And who else but his wife could survive the constant touch of the poisonous bloom?

The day he first met her, she was eating those vyrnshade blooms like it was nothing. His first kiss tasted sweet, like that poison bloom.

Who else could it be other than his wife?

And then, one night, he saw her. She didn’t see him. She couldn’t. Not with the shadows cloaking him as well as they did her. She probably still didn’t know that he saw her.

Under the black hood, moving through the dim, hushed corridors, she carried herself like a phantom draped in velvet, untouchable, absolute. Those eyes, sharp as drawn steel, swept the hall, and everyone else turned away, as if afraid their gaze alone might cost them their life.

Everyone except him.

He stood where her network couldn’t reach, where even her influence couldn’t trace a whisper. For all her webs spun across the capital, she wasn’t the only one who could hunt in the dark. He watched her pass, unseen, and in that single glance of her eyes, he knew.

It was her. His dear wife.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one to see it. He wasn’t the only one watching her from the shadows. Prince Damian knew as well. And yes—he was jealous. She was talking to him for hours, laughing with him.

He knew she could speak and hear. Had she told him herself? That answer, he still didn’t have.

Lazira had been easy for him to uncover.

But the Swan Divina... that was different.

When he told Cedric to look into this so-called "Diviner," he never imagined that the figure in white, the one who sent out invitations with swan feathers... could be his wife.

Not after the stories he’d heard.