With a wince, he continued unperturbed.
He looked toward Serika, who returned his gaze by staring at him questioningly.
She released a rare giggle.
"High-value criminals..." The king’s murmur paused their internal chatting instantly. "Tell me, Alastair. Who are these people?"
The question hit the duke like a poisoned dagger that slid between armor plates.
The fact that His Majesty didn’t recognize them by face meant one thing: in the king’s estimation, they weren’t big enough.
And after Kaede’s display, after the clean, terrifying elegance of killing the entire leadership of the Phantom League in a single strike... this offering was starting to look less like the masterstroke he thought it was and more like an afterthought.
For the first time that evening, Alastair felt his stomach tighten. He should’ve just gone the safe route like the other three male dukes, who had settled for gaudy, ostentatious displays of wealth and loyalty. No one remembered those gifts a week later, but no one called them a failure either.
Still... if Kaede hadn’t done what she did, these prisoners would surely have been celebrated.
After all...
"These men and women," he began, "are responsible for unspeakable acts of villainy. This one..." he gripped the shoulder of a lanky man with hollow eyes, "was a key smuggler in the southern trade routes. Over the centuries of his evildoing, a great number of narcotic shipments have been delivered to innocents who didn’t know better. Their lives have been ruined as a result."
He moved to a gaunt woman whose wrists still bore the deep bite marks of chains. "This one oversaw an underground brothel in Redwater. But it was not just any brothel. She bought young boys and girls from impoverished peasant fathers and put them to work immediately."
A wiry man with a broken nose earned his next gesture. "And him... a black-market broker who funneled weapons to insurgents during the Tamarin Uprising."
He spoke with all the flourish and severity of a man unveiling the faces of monsters.
Vex’s voice was dry as sand in the mind-link.
Jasmine asked.
Then her tone changed.
𝙧åNȱʙƐṩ
If Vex could have rolled her eyes hard enough to echo through the hall, she would have.
To her, these were scraps.
But Alastair, caught in the moment and trapped in his own choice, pressed on, his voice swelling in false conviction. "Each of them is a danger to the realm, and now each stands bound before you, my king. Let their fate be decided here, in your wisdom."
"Father..." Felicity’s timid voice rose all of a sudden.
This, finally, elicited a reaction from the king, who turned his head in her direction. "Yes?"
"I don’t wish to question Lord Alastair’s sincerity, but what about the rest of the prisoners...? Some of them don’t look very... imposing," she said while timidly looking at Jasmine’s mother in particular.
The woman truly wasn’t a threatening sight to behold.
The king did not answer Felicity.
Instead, his head turned back and fixed once more on Alastair. There was no question spoken aloud.
Alastair straightened, drawing himself to his full height, and stepped toward the frail, hunched woman in rags. The soldiers flanking her moved back at his gesture, revealing the entirety of her diminished frame. She barely seemed aware of the attention, her eyes dull from years without sunlight.
"This woman is far more dangerous than she appears. She is the wife of Aurelion, one of the richest members of the Vesper Consortium. For decades, she aided him in consolidating his power, weaving herself into the shadowed web of his finances. Without her counsel and unseen hand, much of his obscene wealth could never have been amassed."
Jasmine cried with utter disbelief.
Alastair swept an arm toward her as if unveiling a venomous serpent. "Her crimes are not the kind one finds on a battlefield or in the gutters. No, hers are crimes of subtlety and reach. It is the gold she helped Aurelion hide, the fortunes she ensured never reached the people, that funded assassins, destabilized cities, and fed the Consortium’s grip on the duchy."
But even as his words rang out, the contrast was jarring. Before them was no shadowy matron cloaked in the trappings of wealth and cunning. She was a wisp of a woman, spine curved by years of neglect. The rags draped over her frame seemed to hang heavier than her own flesh.
If this was the mastermind Alastair claimed, she wore her cunning poorly.
The king’s eyes lingered on her a moment longer. Then they rose to meet the duke’s once more. His expression hardened.
The Tyrant King was not happy.
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