CHAPTER 7: THE CONFESSION

POV: Viktor | Day 2, Evening

Viktor’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He sat in his private chambers in the nobles’ quarter, reviewing financial documents and the wine in his glass had gone lukewarm hours ago, but he kept bringing it to his lips anyway not to drink, but to have something to do with his hands claw at his own face.

His wife was at the theater. He’d insisted on it, had practically forced her into the carriage despite her protests about not wanting to leave him. Because if she was at the theater, if she was surrounded by witnesses and guards and the general population of the capital, then she would be safe. Then Marcus couldn’t reach her. Then there was at least one person in Viktor’s life who wouldn’t pay the price for his cowardice.

The letter felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket.

He’d written it. Of course he’d written it. Daemon had sat across from him in that interrogation chamber with eyes like winter, and Viktor had understood with absolute clarity that refusing would result in immediate execution. But writing the letter had made it real in a way that six months of covert cooperation with Marcus had never quite managed.

The letter was a betrayal of his benefactor. And his benefactor, regardless of his moral degeneracy, had also been his only lifeline when Viktor’s world had begun to collapse four years ago.

His wife had gotten sick. Not the kind of illness that could be cured with prayers or herbal remedies, but the kind that required constant medical attention, expensive physicians, medications that cost more than most noble families spent on their entire annual wardrobe. The kind of illness that was slowly draining every asset Viktor possessed while doing absolutely nothing to improve her condition.

He’d started embezzling from the royal treasury six years prior. Small amounts at first amounts so negligible that no one noticed, amounts that he justified to himself as loans that he’d somehow repay once his wife recovered. Once her condition improved. Once things got better.

Things never got better and the amounts got larger. The desperation grew more acute. And then, approximately six months ago, a man in a hood approached him in the lower gardens with documentation of every theft, every false entry, every crime Viktor had committed against the crown.

The man had not been threatening. That was the thing that haunted Viktor most. He hadn’t needed to threaten because the evidence spoke for itself. Viktor’s crimes were extensive enough to result in execution, not the quick kind, either. The kind that involved torture and humiliation and the confiscation of everything he owned, including the properties that his wife’s medical care depended on.

So when the hooded man had offered him substantial amounts, enough to fund his wife’s care indefinitely in exchange for relatively minor services, Viktor had accepted. He’d told himself it was temporary. He’d told himself it was necessary. He’d told himself a lot of things that had gradually become increasingly difficult to believe.

Now he sat in his chambers with a letter designed to betray that man, and the weight of it was suffocating.

The knock at his door came at precisely midnight.

Viktor’s entire body jerked, and the wine glass shattered against the stone floor. The sound of it breaking seemed impossibly loud in the quiet of his chambers, a declaration of his panic to anyone who might be listening.

He opened the door to find his personal servant, a young man named David, who’d been with Viktor’s family for five years looking terrified.

“My lord,” David said, his voice shaking, “there are men in the lower corridors. They came from the council quarters. They’re asking about you. They’re asking about the financial records.”

Viktor’s vision went white.

“What did you tell them?”

“Nothing, my lord. I said you were in your chambers and unavailable. But they seemed… they seemed like they weren’t going to accept that answer.”

The men were Marcus’s people. Had to be. Marcus had somehow learned that Viktor was going to betray him, had somehow anticipated that Daemon would force him to do exactly this, and had sent his people to eliminate the liability before Viktor could be used as a witness.

Which meant Marcus had already decided Viktor was expendable.

Which meant Viktor’s wife was also expendable, because anything connected to Viktor was now a target.

Viktor moved to his desk and pulled out a second piece of parchment—one he’d written in the hours following his interrogation, a confessional document that detailed everything he knew about Marcus’s network, everything he could remember about their conversations, every piece of information that might be useful to someone trying to build a case against the Lord Chancellor.

He pressed it into David’s hands.

“Take this to Rowan Blackwood,” Viktor said, his voice steady through sheer force of will. “The captain of the guard. Tell him it’s from me. Tell him to give it to the king. Can you do that?”

“My lord, I don’t understand…”

“Can you do it?”

David nodded mutely, the parchment trembling in his hands.

“Go now. Use the servant passages. Don’t let anyone see you.”

The moment David left, Viktor moved to the window and saw them: five men in Marcus’s livery, moving through the lower gardens with the specific purpose of people on a killing errand. They were moving toward the servants’ entrance the one that would give them access to the lower corridors, the one that would allow them to reach his chambers without being noticed by palace guards.

Viktor had perhaps five minutes.

He pulled his wife’s jewelry from the locked chest, her rings, her necklaces, the pieces she’d inherited from her mother and wrapped them in cloth. He wrote a letter to her explaining everything. He told her he loved her. He told her to go to her sister in Thornbrook and live the rest of her life knowing that he’d tried, at the end, to be better than he’d been.

The footsteps in the corridor were very close now.

Viktor opened his shutters and looked out at the drop to the gardens below. Not survivable. Not without bones that would break and a body that would fail him. But at this moment, with five men coming to kill him and the weight of his failures crushing down on him like a physical force, the drop seemed almost merciful.

He was halfway out the window when the door burst open.

“Viktor!” It was Rowan, moving with the specific urgency of a man who’d understood the situation immediately. Behind him came two of his own guards, their swords drawn. “Get down from there.”

“They’re coming,” Viktor said, his voice sounding very distant. “Marcus sent them. He knows I was going to betray him.”

“I know.” Rowan was pulling him back from the window, his hands surprisingly gentle for someone who’d spent his entire life doing violence. “That’s why I’m here. David found me. Gave me your letter. Come on.”

The sounds of fighting erupted in the corridor as Rowan pulled Viktor deeper into his chambers, away from the window, toward the interior passage that connected all the nobles’ quarters. It wasn’t a secret passage that only existed in the royal wing but it was private, and it was away from the five men who were now fighting their way past Rowan’s guards.

“This way,” Rowan said, pushing Viktor toward the narrow corridor. “We’re going to the palace proper. You’re going to tell the king everything you know, and then we’re going to figure out how to keep you alive long enough to testify.”

They ran through passages that Viktor had used hundreds of times without ever really seeing them stone corridors lit by periodic torches, the smell of damp and age, the sound of their footsteps echoing off the walls like accusations.

Behind them, the sounds of fighting had stopped. Rowan’s guards had either died or been driven back. The men who’d come to kill Viktor were probably pursuing them right now, closing the distance with every second that passed.

“How did you know?” Viktor gasped as they ran. “How did you know they were coming?”

“I didn’t,” Rowan replied, pulling him around a corner. “David came to me in a panic. I made an educated guess about what it meant. And I’ve been keeping eyes on Marcus’s movements all day. The moment he seemed agitated, I anticipated he’d move against his loose ends.”

They burst into the main palace corridors, and Rowan’s presence seemed to create a kind of shield. Guards recognized him, stepped aside, didn’t ask questions. The men pursuing them fell back because attacking the Captain of the Guard in the middle of the palace was a bridge too far, even for Marcus’s people.

Within minutes, Viktor was standing in the royal war room a chamber he’d never been permitted to enter before, filled with maps and strategic documents and Daemon in a state of absolute fury.

“He tried to have you killed,” the king said flatly, looking at Viktor with the kind of contempt that suggested the only thing keeping him from executing Viktor personally was the information Viktor possessed.

“Yes, Your Majesty. Which means he knows something. He’s realized his position is compromised.”

“Or,” Elara said, stepping forward from where she’d been studying a map of the capital, “his timeline has simply accelerated. Whatever his plans are, whatever he’s trying to accomplish, he’s moving faster than anticipated.”

“The religious coup,” Viktor said, and watched the room go very still. “That’s what he’s planning. That’s what all of this has been building toward.”

Daemon’s expression didn’t change, but his hands went very still against the table in front of him. The specific stillness of a man about to make someone very dead.

“Explain,” the king said quietly.

Viktor took a breath and began to unburden himself of every piece of knowledge he’d been carrying.

“Marcus has been working with the High Priest for months,” Viktor said, his voice shaking but steady. “Longer than that, actually. Years. They’ve been building a coalition of traditionalist council members, leveraging the Church’s moral authority to gain legitimacy for what they’re planning to do. The official narrative is that they’re simply trying to prevent moral corruption. The actual plan is much larger.”

He paused, organizing the pieces in his mind.

“If Marcus can paint you as fundamentally unfit as a king whose moral degeneracy is destroying the kingdom he can use the Church’s endorsement to trigger the Regency Clause. Eight council members vote for regency, and you’re removed. He becomes regent until such time as a suitable replacement can be installed. But here’s the part that Marcus has been very careful not to discuss directly: the ‘suitable replacement’ isn’t actually you reformed. It’s a new form of government entirely.”

“A theocracy,” Elara said, understanding blooming across her face. “He’s planning to install a theocratic government with the Church as the primary authority.”

“Yes.” Viktor nodded, desperate to make them understand the magnitude of what he was describing. “The High Priest becomes something beyond what he’s ever been before not just a spiritual authority but a governing authority. Every law passes through Church approval. Every decision is weighed against religious doctrine. And Marcus becomes the regent who bridges the gap between Church and Crown, the man who’s responsible for ensuring the king’s obedience to Church law.”

“He becomes Pope-King,” Daemon said, his voice dropping into something very dark. “He becomes the instrument of the Church’s will in the political realm.”

“And he justifies it,” Viktor continued, the words coming faster now, desperate to explain, “by pointing to you. To your relationship with Cassian. To what he frames as the moral corruption of the crown. He’s been building this narrative for months sermons about moral decay, council discussions about the kingdom’s spiritual health, quiet conversations with nobles about whether a fundamentally corrupt king should be allowed to maintain power.”

“The blackmail,” Rowan said, understanding. “The blackmail was never about exposing you. It was about forcing you into a position where you’d either marry and appear legitimized, or refuse and appear defiant. Either way, he could use it against you.”

“Exactly.” Viktor felt something in his chest break open relief mixed with horror, shame mixed with the specific catharsis of finally admitting the truth. “The marriage to Princess Elara was designed to force you to either accept an ally of his choosing or reject legitimacy entirely. The Vale family documents were designed to prove that your closest advisor was a traitor, that your judgment was compromised, that you couldn’t be trusted to make decisions. And once enough of the council believes that, once enough people are convinced of your unfitness, the Regency Clause becomes viable.”

“How many council members has he already turned?” Daemon asked.

“Six, possibly seven. He has solid commitments from Lord Donovan who’s being blackmailed for his own embezzlement, the same way I was from Lord Thorne, from Lady Morgana indirectly through intimidation. He’s working on the others. He’s using different leverage with each one. Fear, blackmail, religious pressure, promises of power. It’s been very sophisticated.”

The king was silent for a very long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was absolutely flat.

“Where is the High Priest in all of this?”

“Conflicted,” Viktor said immediately. “The High Priest is a good man. He genuinely believes he’s saving the kingdom from moral corruption. But he also trusts Marcus, and Marcus has been… has been interpreting doctrine in ways that are deliberately designed to support his position. There’s a chance that if someone presented the High Priest with clear evidence of what Marcus actually intends, it might shake his commitment to the plan.”

“Or it might not,” Elara said pragmatically. “Religious conviction is powerful, and the Church is hierarchical. Once the High Priest commits to this course, reversing course becomes an admission of fallibility he might not be willing to make.”

Viktor watched the calculation happening behind Daemon’s eyes. The king was rapidly assessing leverage, identifying weaknesses, understanding that the religious coup represented an existential threat to everything he’d worked to build.

“Where is Marcus now?” Daemon asked.

“He’ll be at the council chambers,” Viktor said. “It’s Tuesday night. There’s a closed session scheduled one of the secret meetings where the conspirators coordinate. He’ll be there with at least four guards, possibly more. And he’ll be expecting you to either move against him directly, or continue to hide.”

“And Elena?” Rowan asked.

“Still in holding,” Viktor confirmed. “But if Marcus has decided you’re about to move against him, he might move against her preemptively. She’s become a liability instead of an asset.”

Daemon’s expression shifted into something far more dangerous.

“Elara,” the king said, “I need you to do something for me. Something that’s going to require you to be absolutely ruthless.”

“I’m listening,” Elara said.

“I need you to arrange Morgana’s escape. I need her to reach the council chambers tonight with documentation of Marcus’s financial crimes, his correspondence with the High Priest, everything you can gather in the next three hours. I need her to look like she’s betrayed Marcus to save herself. I need her to testify against him in front of every council member who’s still undecided.”

Elara smiled, and it was the smile of a predator that had just been given permission to hunt.

“Consider it done,” she said. “Morgana’s been looking for an exit strategy for days. She’s terrified of what Marcus will do when everything collapses. A chance to testify, to save herself, to position herself as having been coerced all along? She’ll take it.”

“And in exchange for her cooperation,” Daemon continued, “she survives. She maintains her title, her lands, her position. She becomes a protected witness.”

“Very generous,” Elara noted. “But then, you need her testimony more than you need revenge.”

She was right. This wasn’t about justice anymore. This was about survival.

Viktor watched the king and the princess coordinate the movements that would save him, would destroy Marcus, would fundamentally alter the trajectory of the kingdom. And he understood that he’d been part of setting this in motion from the moment he’d agreed to be blackmailed.

He’d thought he was serving Marcus. He’d thought he was protecting his wife. But in reality, he’d been a piece on a board, moved according to forces far larger than himself, and now those forces were moving toward their conclusion.

The only question remaining was whether Viktor himself would survive to see it.

Rowan was watching him with an expression that suggested he already knew the answer.

“Your wife,” the Captain of the Guard said quietly. “Is she safe at the theater?”

“As safe as anyone can be,” Viktor replied. “Why?”

“Because you’re going to disappear tonight,” Rowan said with the kind of blunt honesty that left no room for false comfort. “You’re going to provide testimony against Marcus, and then you’re going to need to vanish before his remaining allies have an opportunity to silence you permanently. The king will provide resources, money, documents, a new identity in another kingdom. But you need to understand that the life you have now is over.”

Viktor nodded, because he’d already understood that. The moment the hooded man had revealed knowledge of Viktor’s embezzlement, the moment Viktor had agreed to betray the crown, the moment he’d accepted that his wife’s survival depended on his cooperation with forces beyond his control, that was when his old life had ended.

All that remained was the question of whether he could build something new from the ashes.

He suspected he couldn’t. But he would try anyway, because the alternative was to surrender completely to the despair that was currently screaming through his nervous system.

“What do you need me to do?” Viktor asked.

Daemon turned to him with eyes like ice.

“Tell me everything you know about the High Priest’s involvement. Every conversation you’ve overheard, every sermon you’ve heard him deliver, every moment where he seemed to hesitate or doubt the direction he was being led. I need enough information to either turn him or neutralize him. And I need it right now.”

Viktor began to speak, and the words came in a flood of confession and desperation and the specific release that came from finally admitting the truth after months of lies.

The game was reaching its climax.

And Viktor Thorne, broken and terrified and fundamentally compromised, was going to be one of the witnesses who testified about how the kingdom had nearly fallen to a man’s grief transformed into ambition.