The Signet's Secret

The air in the cellar tasted of sulfur and singed hair, a scent Julian Silas had come to associate with survival.

He held his breath, his eyes narrowed behind protective goggles as he tilted the crucible. A river of molten silver, bright as a captured star, poured into the mold. His hands, scarred by years of burns and blackened by coal dust, were steady. They were the hands of a master, though the world believed them to be the hands of a servant.

"Is it done yet, boy?"

The voice boomed from the top of the stairs, followed by the heavy, impatient thud of boots descending the stone steps.

Julian didn't look up. He couldn't. The silver was cooling, and the timing had to be precise. "A moment, Lord Aris. The metal needs to settle."

"Your 'moments' are costing me gold," Aris grunted, stepping into the dim light of the workshop.

Lord Aris was a man of expensive velvets and cheap morals. He had married Julian’s mother three years ago, just months before the fever took her. Since then, he had taken everything: the estate, the fortune, and the name of the Silas foundry. He had rebranded it "House of Aris," a title that made Julian’s stomach turn every time he saw it stamped on a crate.

Julian set the crucible down and picked up his tongs. With a practiced flick, he cracked the mold open. Inside lay a filigree brooch, shaped like a wreath of laurels. It was exquisite. It was perfect.

Aris snatched it up with a greedy hand, ignoring the residual heat. "Finally. The Duke of Oakhaven has been badgering me for this for weeks."

"Be careful," Julian warned, removing his goggles to reveal eyes the color of polished slate. "The clasp is delicate. It requires a gentle touch."

"I don't need a lecture on jewelry from a cellar rat," Aris sneered, holding the brooch up to the singular, grimy window. "I need you to clean up this mess. Bastian and Giles are preparing for the announcement, and I won't have you dragging soot through the upper halls."

"The announcement?" Julian asked, wiping his hands on his leather apron.

Aris smirked, a jagged expression that didn't reach his eyes. "The Royal Proclamation. Queen Althea has finally stopped playing scholar and decided to take a husband. A masquerade ball.

Next week."

Julian felt a strange pull in his chest. He knew of Queen Althea—not personally, of course, but through the city gossip. She was the "Cold Queen," the one who spent more time in the Grand Library than at court. The one who had commissioned the Royal Observatory instead of a new summer palace.

"Everyone of rank is invited," Aris continued, tucking the brooch into his pocket. "Which means my sons will need new tie pins. Gold. Showy. Something that catches the candlelight and says 'wealth.'" He paused, looking Julian up and down with disdain. "And you, Julian... you will polish the carriage."

Aris turned and marched back up the stairs, the heavy door slamming shut behind him, plunging the room back into the silence of the furnace.

Julian stood still for a long moment. He was twenty-two years old, the true heir to the greatest metallurgical legacy in the kingdom, and he was being told to wash a carriage while his work was paraded around the necks of dukes.

He sighed, the sound lost in the roar of the fire. He walked over to the far corner of the cellar, where a loose stone sat near the foundation. He pried it open with a chisel.

Inside wasn't gold or gems. It was a small, velvet-wrapped bundle.

Julian unfolded the cloth. Resting there were two cufflinks. They were unlike the gaudy, heavy things Aris demanded. These were silver, darkened with a specific oxidation process his father had invented. They were shaped like swans in mid-flight, their wings comprised of hundreds of microscopic, individual feathers etched with a needle-point graver.

On the back of each swan was a tiny symbol, invisible unless you knew where to look. The Cigna. The Sign.

To build is to speak, his father used to say. And the Cigna is our voice.

Julian ran his thumb over the cool metal. They were the last things his father had made before he died—a gift intended for Julian’s twenty-first birthday. Aris didn't know they existed. If he did, he would have sold them or melted them down for the raw weight.

"A masquerade," Julian whispered to the empty room.

Upstairs, he could hear the thumping footsteps of his stepbrothers, Bastian and Giles, likely arguing over which velvet doublet would best hide their lack of personality. They would go to the palace. They would preen and posture. They would present Julian’s work as their own taste.

Julian looked at the silver swans. For the first time in years, the heat of the forge didn't feel like a cage. It felt like a challenge.

If the Queen was looking for a husband, she would be surrounded by peacocks. But Julian knew something about Althea from the few public decrees she’d written: she valued truth. She valued structure.

He gripped the cufflinks tight. He wouldn't just polish the carriage. He was going to that ball. Not to marry a queen—that was a fool's dream—but to breathe the air of the palace, to see the art on the walls, and to wear his father’s name, hidden in plain sight upon his wrists.

Julian put the swans back into their hiding place and picked up his hammer. He had work to do. If Aris wanted "showy" tie pins for his sons, Julian would make them. But for himself, he would forge a plan.