CHAPTER 4: THE SCHOLAR'S MASK
1856 Words
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The Summit's opening feast begins at sundown.
I don't want to attend. Every instinct I possess screams at me to stay in my chamber, bar the door, and let the rulers of Eryndral play their games without me. But hiding has never saved anyone. Hiding just means you don't see the blade coming.
So I dress.
The servants have left another outfit — this one finer than the riding clothes. A gown of deep amber silk that matches my eyes, cut simply but expensively, with no house colors and no sigil. Still unaligned. Still a blank slate. The neckline is modest but the back dips lower than I'm comfortable with, exposing the knobs of my spine. I leave my hair down. Let them see the silver streak. Let them remember what I am.
The great hall has transformed since I arrived.
Chandeliers blaze with hundreds of candles now, dripping wax onto tables draped in ivory cloth. Musicians play something soft and stringed from a gallery above. The circular table at the center — the Table of Crowns — remains empty, waiting for tomorrow's formal negotiations. Tonight is for softer warfare. Wine instead of swords. Smiles instead of threats.
I pause at the entrance, scanning the crowd.
Kael is already here, surrounded by northern lords in heavy furs. He catches my eye across the room and gives the barest nod — acknowledgment, nothing more. Evander Ashford holds court near the far windows, a glass of something dark in his hand, his serpent-green eyes tracking me even as he laughs at someone's joke. Commander Risha Veyne, the Naval Empress, arrived this afternoon — I spot her near the center, tall and striking in a coat of deep blue, her silver hair cropped short, three gold rings in each ear. She doesn't look at me. She's studying Kael with the intensity of someone calculating fleet movements.
And there, near the eastern archway, surrounded by scholars in pale robes, is a man I have never seen before.
He must be Soren Vallis.
I expected someone older. Someone severe. A master manipulator with cold eyes and a thin smile. Instead, the Scholar Prince of the West looks like he wandered out of a library and accidentally found himself at a party. He is young — perhaps twenty-five — with unruly dark hair that keeps falling across his forehead. His robes are ivory and gold, the Book and Star of the West embroidered over his heart, but they're slightly rumpled, as if he slept in them. He wears spectacles. Actual spectacles, sliding down his nose as he gestures enthusiastically about something to a bored-looking lord.
This is the man who summoned me here?
This is the schemer who has been pulling my strings for months?
I don't believe it. Which, of course, is exactly what a good schemer would want me to think.
I move into the hall.
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I don't make it ten steps before Evander appears at my elbow like a summoned ghost.
"You look exquisite," he murmurs. "Amber suits you. The exact color of the poison I slipped into the northern delegation's wine seven years ago."
I stop walking. "That's not funny."
"It wasn't a joke." He takes a sip from his own glass, entirely unbothered. "Don't worry. I'm not poisoning anyone tonight. The Summit has rules about that sort of thing." A pause. "Mostly."
"Why are you talking to me?"
"Because you're the most interesting person in this room." He gestures vaguely at the assembled nobles. "Everyone else here is predictable. Northern lords want land. Southern merchants want trade routes. Western scholars want access to ancient texts. But you — you're a variable. No one knows what you want. Not even you, I suspect."
I don't answer. I hate that he might be right.
"Also," Evander adds, "Prince Soren has been staring at you since you walked in. I wanted to see how long it would take before he worked up the courage to approach." He leans closer, breath warm against my ear. "My money's on five more minutes. He's terribly shy, you know. Or terribly good at pretending to be."
He melts back into the crowd before I can respond.
I count to thirty. Then I look toward the eastern archway.
Soren Vallis is no longer listening to the bored lord. He's looking directly at me. When our eyes meet, he startles — actually startles, like a deer caught in torchlight — and immediately drops his gaze to his shoes. His ears turn pink.
Terribly shy. Or terribly good at pretending to be.
I start walking toward him.
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The crowd parts differently for me now. Word has spread — the hybrid who spoke back to the Wolf King, who walks without a house sigil, who arrived escorted by northern riders but wears no one's colors. I am a curiosity. A danger. An opportunity.
Soren looks up as I approach. Up close, his eyes are the pale blue of winter sky. Behind his spectacles, they're wide and slightly panicked.
"Lady Varenya." His voice is soft. Almost a stammer. "I — I was hoping to meet you. Eventually. When I'd prepared something to say. I haven't prepared anything to say."
"Then don't say anything prepared." I stop an arm's length from him. Close enough to watch his pulse flutter in his throat. "Tell me something true instead."
He blinks. "Something true?"
"Unless the Scholar Prince of the West finds truth too difficult."
That lands. Something flickers behind his eyes — a flash of something sharper, something older than his boyish face suggests. Then it's gone, replaced by a rueful smile.
"You're testing me," he says. "That's fair. I deserve that." He adjusts his spectacles. "All right. Something true. I've read every book in the Great Library of Vallis Keep — all twelve thousand volumes — and none of them prepared me for this Summit. For any of this. I'm holding a glass of wine I don't want because someone told me it makes me look approachable, my feet hurt because these boots are new, and I've been trying to find the courage to speak to you for the past hour because you're the only person here who looks as uncomfortable as I feel."
I stare at him.
He stares back, earnest and terrified.
This is not what I expected. This is not the cold manipulator who wrote my name in elegant script and set this entire Summit in motion. Unless it is. Unless every awkward blink and stammered confession is a mask so perfectly crafted that even I can't see through it.
But my instincts say otherwise. My instincts say this man couldn't scheme his way out of a library, let alone orchestrate a continental political summit.
Which means either my instincts are wrong, or Kael's letter was wrong.
Or someone else is playing a much deeper game.
"Why did you want me here?" I ask quietly.
Soren's brow furrows. "I — I didn't. I mean, I voted for the Summit, yes, but I didn't specifically request your presence. No one did. It was supposed to be a general gathering to discuss trade disputes and border tensions. Your invitation came from the collective — "
"Someone called this Summit specifically for me," I interrupt. "Someone has been maneuvering for months. I have proof."
His face goes very still. "Proof?"
"Don't." My voice comes out harder than I intended. "Don't pretend you don't know."
"Varenya." He says my name like a question. Like a plea. "I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about. I swear to you — on the Book and Star, on my mother's memory, on anything you want — I did not summon you here. I didn't even know your name until three months ago when the Summit was first proposed."
Three months ago.
The letter in my vest. The elegant script. The name that condemned him.
I want to believe him. That's what scares me most.
Before I can respond, a gong sounds — deep and resonant, vibrating through the marble floor. The feast is beginning. Guests begin drifting toward the long tables. Servants appear with platters of roasted meat and glazed vegetables. The moment fractures.
Soren reaches out — not to touch me, just to gesture, an aborted movement full of frustration. "Wait. Please. Whatever you've been told, whatever proof you think you have — let me help you understand it. Tomorrow, before the formal session. The eastern gardens. Just you and me. I'll answer any question you ask."
His eyes are desperate. Honest. Or brilliantly deceptive.
"Please," he says again.
I think of Kael's warning. Evander's games. The name on the letter. The five rulers and their five agendas and me at the center of all of it, a hybrid queen in a game where queens are just pawns with prettier titles.
"Fine," I say. "Eastern gardens. Dawn."
I walk away before he can thank me.
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The feast passes in a blur of too-rich food and too-sweet wine. I sit at a side table, away from the rulers, away from the politics. I watch and I wait and I learn.
Kael drinks nothing. He watches the room the way a wolf watches a herd — patiently, hungrily, waiting for one weak member to stumble.
Evander drinks everything and somehow grows sharper with each glass. He catches my eye once and raises his glass in a mocking toast. I don't return it.
Risha Veyne eats efficiently, speaks rarely, and spends most of the meal in quiet conversation with a woman in naval uniform. Her gaze flicks to me exactly twice. Both times, her expression is unreadable.
Soren picks at his food, glances at me repeatedly, and spills wine on his ivory robes. He looks miserable. He looks young. He looks like a man carrying a secret too heavy for his shoulders.
Or he looks like a man who wants me to think exactly that.
I retire early, pleading fatigue.
In my chamber, I pull out the letter and read it again. The elegant script. The damning name. The wax seal the color of dried blood.
Soren Vallis.
If Soren didn't write this letter — if he's telling the truth — then someone wants me to believe he did. Someone planted this evidence. Someone is playing me against the Scholar Prince, trying to turn me into a weapon aimed at the one ruler who might actually be an ally.
But who?
Evander, who collects secrets like other men collect coins? Risha, who calculates fleet movements while pretending not to notice me? Kael himself, who handed me the letter with a warning about being maneuvered — while perhaps maneuvering me himself?
Or someone I haven't met yet. Someone still in shadow. Someone who is watching all of us and smiling.
I fold the letter carefully. I hide it beneath the loose stone I found earlier beneath the window, where the mortar has crumbled with age.
Tomorrow at dawn, Soren Vallis will explain himself.
And I will decide whether to trust him, destroy him, or do something far more dangerous — use him.
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- Writer
