CHAPTER 3: The King’s Bastard

The gardens were nearly deserted when I arrived, the moonlight painting the marble statues in shades of bone. Frost had begun to gather on the hedges, and the night air bit at my cheeks as if urging me to turn back.

I didn’t.

I moved through the gravel path, my emerald cloak drawn tight around me. The soft crunch beneath my slippers echoed louder than I liked. The ballroom music was a faint hum now, the laughter of the nobles reduced to a faraway murmur.

I found him near the fountain.

Cassian Veyra leaned against the carved edge, his coat collar turned up against the cold, a silver flask in hand. The moon caught in his dark hair and glinted off the gold ring on his finger a signet seal I knew he rarely wore.

“Lady Serina,” he said, as if I’d kept him waiting far too long. “You walk like a woman who doesn’t care if she’s followed.”

“I do care,” I said, approaching. “I just make sure they regret it.”

That earned me the ghost of a smile.

Up close, I could see him better the faint scar at his jawline, the crease at the corner of his left eye that spoke of a man who’d laughed more before life had turned sharp. He had the look of someone perpetually leaning back in his chair at a card table, confident he knew the ending before the game began.

“You said you wanted to discuss… strategy.” I stopped an arm’s length from him.

He tipped the flask toward me. “A drink for courage?”

“I have courage enough.”

“Then drink for luck.”

The liquor burned going down, smoky with a hint of sweetness expensive, rare. “You didn’t invite me out here just to get me drunk,” I said.

“No. I invited you because you have the look of someone who knows how to turn the tide of a war.”

“And you’re offering to be my army?”

He gave a slow shrug. “I’m offering to be your blade. Sharp enough to cut through more than silk.”

I tilted my head, studying him. “And what do you want in return?”

Cassian’s gaze slid over my face, deliberate, lingering just long enough to make the air between us feel taut. “I want Damien Morvain to bleed,” he said simply. “And I want to watch you make it happen.”

For a moment, the night felt sharper, the frost biting harder.

“In my first life,” I thought, though I did not say it, “you were just another casualty of his greed. I buried you without ever knowing you could have been my ally.”

Now, I would not waste him.

“Information,” I said at last. “That’s what I can give you. Where Damien keeps his gold. Who does he pay to keep quiet? Which of his allies can be bought?”

Cassian smirked faintly. “And in exchange?”

“I want his alliances broken. Quietly. I want his trade partners to find better offers elsewhere. I want his debts to multiply.”

“That,” Cassian said, taking another sip from the flask, “I can do.”

We stood in silence for a moment, the fountain’s frozen water glinting like shattered glass between us.

“Tell me,” he said suddenly, “why now? Why start this war on the eve of your wedding?”

I met his gaze, unflinching. “Because the last time I married him, I didn’t start soon enough.”

For the briefest moment, something unreadable flickered in his eyes not pity, but recognition.

The sound of a door opening behind us broke the moment.

Damien stood on the terrace, framed by the golden spill of light from the ballroom. His expression was unreadable at a distance, but his gaze was locked on us.

Cassian didn’t move, didn’t even turn. He took a long, lazy drink, then leaned toward me. “Let him watch,” he murmured.

I stepped back just enough to make the distance look like my choice, not his. “We’ll speak again,” I said.

Cassian’s eyes glinted. “Soon.”

I left him by the fountain and walked toward the terrace, feeling Damien’s gaze rake over me as I passed. His jaw was tight, his voice low.

“Enjoying the evening?”

“Immensely,” I said without slowing down.

Inside, the heat and scent of the ballroom hit me like a wave. I let the noise swallow me, the music masking the racing of my pulse. Cassian’s words still echoed in my head Let him watch.

Because that was the point, wasn’t it? Not just to destroy Damien, but to make him feel it. To let suspicion gnaw at him, piece by piece, until he couldn’t tell friend from enemy.

In my first life, I had been the last person he ever suspected of betrayal. In this one, I would be the 

When the banquet finally ended, I let Damien offer his arm for the carriage ride home. His hand was warm against mine, but there was a tension in his body a coiled spring.

“You seem to be making… interesting acquaintances,” he said once the carriage doors shut.

I leaned back against the seat, the leather creaking. “I speak with those worth speaking to.”

“And you think Cassian Veyra is worth your time?”

I let a slow smile curl my lips. “I think he’s far more entertaining than most of your friends.”

His hand twitched against his knee, as though he wanted to strike the thought from my mouth but couldn’t risk it. Not here. Not yet.

The carriage jolted over cobblestones, the silence between us growing heavier.

“Be careful, Serina,” Damien said finally. “Some men will cut you open just to see how you work.”

I met his gaze in the dim carriage light. “And some women will let them try.”

His eyes darkened. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

I looked away, the faintest smile still on my lips. “It’s the only kind worth playing.”

That night, as I lay in my bed, I could still taste the smoky burn of Cassian’s liquor and the sharper burn of Damien’s suspicion.

The first alliances had been drawn. The first cracks in the Duke’s perfect image had begun to spread.

All I had to do now… was make the entire façade crumble.