"Your jealousy has already done enough," Edric said.
The words left his mouth colder than he intended, but he did not take them back.
He was old enough to rember the aftermath of what had happened four decades ago. Not the truth of it, perhaps, but the shadows it had left behind. He had been a boy then, too young to understand the politics, too young to be trusted with secrets, yet old enough to rember the fear and fascination that swept through the noble houses when the Caelvaris estate burned.
Everyone had spoken about it. Not openly. Never openly. But whispers traveled where declarations could not.
The destruction of the Caelvaris family mansion had beco the kind of story nobles exchanged behind closed doors and lowered voices. The details shifted depending on the speaker, but the shock never changed.
Edric rembered sitting in his grandfather’s study shortly afterward.
The old Spymaster had not explained what truly happened. He had simply called his grandson over and spoken of jealousy. Of powerful won. Of the terrible things people were capable of when love curdled into resentnt and resentnt hardened into obsession.
He had never ntioned Leone by na. He had not needed to. The implication had settled in the young boy’s heart all the sa.
And from that day onward, Edric had watched Leone Caelvaris as one watches a potential enemy.
He respected her. Feared her, perhaps. But he never trusted her.
How could he?
She commanded the resources of one of the most powerful noble houses in the kingdom. Her influence stretched through courts, academies, trade networks, and political circles. For decades, she had moved pieces across the board so subtly that most people never noticed they were being moved at all.
Even recently, he had watched her maneuver from the shadows, doing everything within her power to keep her granddaughter away from the Crown Prince. She had resisted every effort to bring Rosalyn closer to the royal family and had only relented because the girl herself insisted upon it.
This woman...
Even after years of studying people for a living, Edric still did not know what she truly wanted.
"My jealousy?" Leone turned toward him.
The movent caused her hood to slip back. For the first ti since arriving, Edric saw her face clearly beneath the silver wash of moonlight.
And he froze.
Her eyes were glistening. Not with anger or manipulation but with pain. Decades of pain. The kind that no longer fit inside a person. The kind that had nowhere left to go.
Edric faltered.
He had been raised to respect won. It was a lesson drilled into him from childhood. No matter how hardened he beca as Spymaster, no matter how many lies he uncovered or betrayals he witnessed, seeing a woman in tears still struck sothing instinctive within him.
For a brief mont, his certainty wavered.
Leone swept her arm toward the devastation surrounding them. The ruins. The shattered stone. The ashes of a life long gone.
"Look around you!" she demanded. Her voice cracked across the empty estate. "Look at what remains!"
The force of her words echoed through the broken halls.
Her voice trembled, not from weakness, but from the unbearable strain of carrying sothing far too heavy for far too long.
"For forty years," she said, "I rebuilt this house stone by stone."
She pointed toward the shattered remnants around them.
"I hunted down every relic. Every record. Every fragnt of our history that survived the fire. I searched through auction houses, private collections, forgotten vaults, and ruined estates. I spent half my life gathering the pieces of House Caelvaris and putting them back together."
A bitter laugh escaped her. The sound was hollow. Broken.
"Jealousy?" The word seed absurd even to her. "You think this is jealousy?"
Her eyes flashed.
For the first ti, Edric saw genuine anger beneath the grief. Not anger at him, but anger at fate itself.
"Do you know how easy it would have been to walk away?" Her voice lowered. "Do you know how easy it would have been to leave these ruins untouched?" She gestured toward the broken mansion. "To leave every wall shattered. Every relic buried. Every mory forgotten."
The wind stirred her silver hair. "I could have done nothing." The admission ca quietly.
"I could have allowed House Caelvaris to die alongside Lucien."
Edric’s breath caught. Because she was right. No one would have blad her. After what had happened, no one would have expected her to spend decades rebuilding what another person had destroyed.
But she had. For forty years. Forty years. The number suddenly felt enormous. A lifeti. An entire lifeti.
"But I didn’t."
Her voice softened.
And sohow that softness hurt more than her anger.
"I stayed."
She looked around the ruins as though seeing every year layered atop them. Every sacrifice, every disappointnt, every lonely decision...
"I gave this family forty years of my life because I believed its legacy deserved to survive."
The moonlight caught the tears in her eyes.
"And now," she whispered, "you stand amidst the ashes of that labor and speak to of jealousy."
Silence followed.
Edric stood motionless.
For perhaps the first ti in his life, he looked at Leone Caelvaris not as an adversary, not as a political force, not as the woman at the center of a decades-old rumor.
He looked at her as a woman who had beco a widow while her husband was still alive.
The thought settled heavily in Edric’s chest.
Not a widow in the traditional sense. Lucien Caelvaris still breathed. He still walked the world. He still held conversations, conducted experints, and terrified half the kingdom with his genius.
Yet the man standing in the Arcanum today and the man who had existed before that fire seed separated by sothing greater than death.
And Leone had spent forty years living beside that absence.
For the first ti, Edric wondered whether the story he had carried since childhood had never been the truth at all.
But then sothing began to bother him. A small inconsistency. A thread that refused to fit.
He had accused her of jealousy. Yet Leone had not defended her love for Lucien. She had not spoken of her marriage. She had not spoken of betrayal.
She had spoken of the Caelvaris legacy. The family. The history. The house. The things she had rebuilt.
Not once had she denied loving Lucien. Everyone knew she did. Everyone had always known.
Which made her response strangely selective.
Edric’s eyes narrowed.
Sothing deep inside him stirred.
Won...
He had spent his entire life navigating political sches, hidden agendas, and noble ambitions. He had learned that n often concealed things through force, while won concealed them through omission.
Neither lied.
Not exactly.
They simply guided attention away from the places they did not wish examined.
His grandfather had once told him that the most dangerous person in a room was rarely the loudest.
It was the one who allowed you to reach your own conclusions.
A chill ran down his spine.
Won truly were terrifying creatures.
Especially intelligent ones.
Edric swallowed.
Slowly, he unclenched his fists and forced himself to regain his composure. Whatever emotions her grief had stirred in him, he could not afford to lose sight of why he was here.
Leone was still watching him. Still asuring him. Still deciding how much to reveal.
Then she spoke. "Have you heard the story of the Dusk Hare, Edric?"
The question landed between them softly.
Yet it struck him harder than everything she had said before.
Ah.
So that was it.
Edric felt sothing click into place.
This.
This was the reason she had summoned him.
To this conversation.
To this na.
The Dawn Hare.
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