Chapter 26.5

  The days bled together—chaos, dread, choices without end—until Leo almost forgot Lady Luck’s festival and the Games that came with it. Usually, the games worked like a mask, a few hours where the city cheered and he pretended to be only its smile. This year they were something better: cover for his plans.

  When the streets emptied and the sand drank the first roar, his quiet men will slide through Dawnmere’s gates. The missing pieces would turn up; if not, something else would—enough to knock them down a peg. He knew who had taken them. Whether proof arrived on its own or by arrangement didn’t matter.

  He woud make sure to make a spectacle out of it.

  The air over the coliseum sat a half-step low, as if the wards were humming through clenched teeth. Clouds crowded the sky, the color of old iron, as though the day itself expected blood.

  His turn.

  Leo stepped onto the royal balcony. Twenty thousand heads lifted; silence rippled outward and settled. For a breath he felt the old thrill—the first-year jolt of being the point around which a city spins. Then procedure put its hands on his shoulders and turned him.

  He wove essence into the air. It caught his voice and laid it in every ear, high and low alike. The Games were a mercy, a small hope to cling to when the world ground its teeth.

  “Today marks the three hundred twenty-seventh Founding Games, held in the name of Lady Luck. Today the bravest and strongest among you fight for glory, for gold, for a seat at the table. The victor will be granted lands and the title of Duke.”

  A wash of oohs and aahs. He let them have it.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Let the Games begin.”

  A nod, almost nothing. Trumpets pealed. Sunlight knifed the cloudbank, bright on black stone, on gold sand, twenty thousand throats rose as one and became weather. He lifted one hand, not high, just enough—so they remembered their place.

  As attention slid back to the arena, his gaze found Virella and William, hand in hand, two fixed points in the swell. They hadn’t realized he had fixed on them, and calm seemed to rest there. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Beside them stood Amalia and Albert, eyes on him despite the spectacle below. The instant their gazes met his, they looked away.

  They knew. Or suspected—something.

  Leo’s thumb brushed his signet. The whisper-coin warmed against skin. And so the dance began.

  Amalia kept her gaze pinned to the sand. Steel met steel—bright, ugly—and skill outdid brute strength again. Below, a bull of a man was being cut to ribbons, too slow to parry before the blade slid through cloth and muscle. Within moments he crumpled, and the crowd’s cheer rolled over him.

  Even as he fought for his life, her own eyes fought the pull to the right. She needed to see the King. But she couldn’t risk it—couldn’t let him know, or catch his gaze again. Not today.

  For now, they only had to buy time. The book and the scroll were already in her old mentor’s hands, Mrs. Abigail’s, but work like that takes days of hard work. And time, well, time wasn’t on their side.

  A trumpet call cut through the noise: three short, one long bursts echoed through the arena. Amalia swallowed sand-dry air and leaned just enough for Albert to hear. “Just the next fight, don’t worry.”

  Only the finals remained, and still no word from his men. Tension climbed. What if they were ready for him? What if they wanted this? Maybe it was a trap: bait.

  His hands wouldn’t keep still. A coin stamped with the family crest, his father’s, clicked between his fingers, faster and faster as the minutes bled out.

  Heat pressed to his ear. “Sire, we didn’t find anything. The books and the scroll aren’t in the house.”

  His heart dropped; warmth flooded his cheeks. Anger scrabbled for a door.

  “But we did confirm an essence signature—the nature user. He’s the one who breached the vault.”

  Leo nodded, fear and fury settling as a plan tried to assemble itself. “Good. Get your men ready to arrest them.”

  The man’s voice cracked. “Here, sire.?”

  “No, goddammit. Tomorrow. Don’t be stupid.”

  The words sank like lead in water.