“No one is that clumsy, my lady,” he murmured, his voice vibrating through the flagstones beneath her. His irises, the flat slate of frostbitten iron, locked onto hers. “What exactly are you hiding?”
Veska swallowed, the sound like gravel in her dry throat. Her tongue felt thick. “N-nothing, Lord Commander. J-just… the shock.” She gestured vaguely at the dissolving remains, a pathetic, trembling hand. Slitch, still clinging to the moth-silk near the puddle of muck, chirped, a sound that in her current state felt less like a comfort and more like a judgmental scold.
Drastan’s gaze darted to Slitch, then back to Veska’s face, sharp and assessing. “Shock, or something else entirely?” His finger, still on her cheek, traced a path from the dried blood to the corner of her jaw, a feather-light touch that felt like the cold edge of a blade. “We will speak again, Lady Marova. Soon.” He rose, a dark silhouette against the iron sconces of the Blood-Gallery. “See to your… *fiancé*.”
He walked away, his cape dragging through soot, leaving Veska gasping against the floor. She scrambled away from the lingering ichor, her limbs aching. Baron Yulog, pale and shaking, was still slumped against a pillar further down the hall, clutching his untouched goblet as if it were a life raft. He hadn’t seen anything, too lost in his own blurry world. Good. The less witnesses, the better. She had merely been a clumsy fool, not the pivotal element in saving the Lord Commander’s life.
***
The following morning, the ruined manor of Baron Yulog smelled of stale ale and desperation. Veska, in a dressing gown three sizes too large, was hunched over a grimy wooden table, a single, flickering lantern illuminating the chaos. Sheets of parchment, covered in her meticulous, tiny script detailing the financial vulnerabilities of the four elders, were scattered around the glass enclosure. Each sheet represented months of careful eavesdropping and frantic late-night scrawls.
She shoved the ledger leaf titled ‘Elder Rindt’s Gambling Debts’ into the damp substrate, nestling it amongst bioluminescent mold. Slitch, nestled in his mossy bed, blinked his multiple eyes at her, a silent, knowing accomplice. “Don’t look at me like that,” Veska muttered, wiping a smear of ink from her nose. “It’s safer in here than my pockets after last night. What if Drastan had decided to *search* me?”
A heavy rap struck the front timber, rattling the loose panes. Veska froze, her fingers buried in enclosure muck. No one ever called on Baron Yulog this early, least of all with such authority. It couldn’t be. Not him.
But the heavy oak door, warped and scarred, groaned open to reveal Lord Commander Drastan. He filled the doorway, his obsidian armor gleaming dully in the perpetual twilight that filtered through the cracked glass. His gaze swept the dilapidated hall, past the peeling frescoes and the overturned furniture, and landed on Veska. He looked like an apex predator who had inexplicably wandered into a chicken coop.
Baron Yulog, roused from a fitful sleep on a threadbare chaise, blinked owlishly at the imposing figure. “Wha…? Who is this?” he slurred, fumbling for the half-empty bottle beside him.
Drastan’s eyes, the color of a winter sky before a blizzard, narrowed. He took a single, deliberate step into the room. The floorboards groaned in protest. “Lord Commander Drastan,” he stated, his tone flat as an anvil. “I am here to ensure your betrothed is treated with the respect due to her bloodline.”
Veska’s meticulously crafted plan, her entire ‘pathetic noblewoman engaged to a drunkard’ ruse, shattered like cheap glass. Drastan, showing *concern* for her? This was not on the spreadsheet. This was not in *The Obsidian Ledger*. He was supposed to be her executioner, not her self-appointed bodyguard.
“Oh, she’s fine, she’s fine,” Yulog mumbled, waving a dismissive hand. “Always running around with that… that lizard. Bit of an odd creature, my intended.”
Drastan’s gaze sharpened, fixing on Yulog. The air in the room seemed to thicken, suddenly heavy and cold. “Perhaps, Baron,” Drastan said, his voice deceptively calm, “you would prefer to enjoy the morning air from the window overlooking the Ghast-River?” His gaze cut to a cracked pane, then back to Yulog’s suddenly sober face. The implication hung heavy, a brutal promise.
Yulog visibly paled, dropping his bottle. He stammered, “N-no, Lord Commander! Of course not! Lady Marova is… a delight. My fiancée. A true flower of Ghalmor.” He shot Veska a look of pure terror, as if she were personally responsible for the terrifying visitor.
Veska, her mind racing, tried to salvage the situation. She plastered on her most vapid, simpering smile, pushing her hair back with a hand still caked with Slitch-muck. “Oh, Lord Commander, you needn’t worry your handsome head about little old me!” She batted her eyelashes, a practiced move from her days observing the Court’s dumber debutantes. “Baron Yulog is always so very… attentive. Just last night, he was so worried about my… my delicate constitution after that ghastly business at the gala!”
Drastan’s lips barely twitched. He ignored Yulog entirely, his full attention on Veska. He walked closer, his heavy boots silent on the dusty floor, until he stood directly over her. He loomed, a mountain of dark steel. “About that ‘ghastly business’,” he said, his voice dropping low. “The assassin. He was a practitioner of the Bleeding Veil. A specific, ancient form of shadow-weaving. Tell me, Lady Marova, what do you know of such pacts?”
Veska’s carefully constructed vapidity crumbled. *The Bleeding Veil*. She knew of it. It was a blood-pact, yes, but not just any. It was a unique, self-sacrificing technique employed by the Clan of the Whispering Blade—a cult rumored to be loyal only to the oldest, most powerful Houses, and whose members bore specific identifying scars upon their initiation. This was information no 'delicate flower' of Ghalmor should possess.
“The… the Bleeding Veil?” she stammered, trying to inject confusion into her voice. “Oh, dear me, that sounds dreadfully complex, Lord Commander. All those dusty old scrolls and esoteric incantations. Far too much for my poor little head. I prefer embroidery, myself. Or perhaps gossip about the latest Court fashions?” She gestured weakly toward her moth-silk dressing gown, which was currently splattered with tank grime.
Drastan’s eyes remained fixed on hers, unblinking. “Yet you recognized the nature of the assassin’s abilities, even as his form dissolved. You understood the desperation of his attack, the speed of his dissolution. Tell me, Lady Marova, have you perhaps delved into the forbidden histories of the Blood-Pacts of Ghalmor?” His voice was a silken trap, each word designed to ensnare.
Panic, cold and sharp, clawed at Veska’s throat. He knew too much. He saw through her flimsy disguise. He was *testing* her. Her eyes darted to the glass vivarium, then back to Drastan’s unyielding face. A desperate idea, born of pure terror, bloomed in her mind.
With a sharp thrust, she plunged her hand into the glass case, pinching Slitch’s tail. The beast let out a shrill squeak like tearing vellum and scrambled onto the table boards. Veska gasped, mimicking sheer terror.
“Oh! My Slitch! He’s… he’s loose!” she shrieked, clutching her chest. “He bites! A venomous creature! I simply can’t… I can’t bear it!” She swayed dramatically, her knees buckling. The dramatic faint, a classic noblewoman’s move, was her last resort. She hoped it was convincing.
Drastan, surprisingly, moved with a swiftness that belied his armored bulk. He reached out, catching her just as she began to collapse. His arm, strong as ironwood, wrapped around her waist, pulling her against his rigid armor. The scent of polished steel and something sharp, like ozone, filled her senses. Her head lolled against his shoulder, a perfect mimicry of unconsciousness.
As he held her, his armor shifted, a plate on his shoulder scraping against another. Just for a fraction of a second, the movement exposed a sliver of skin beneath the dark metal. There, etched onto his shoulder, was a jagged, unmistakable scar. It was identical, perfectly identical, to the mark she had glimpsed on the assassin’s dissolving body just before he became a puddle of ink and sulfur. The Clan of the Silent Edge. Drastan, the Lord Commander, was marked by the same shadow-cult that had tried to kill him.