Chapter 336: Not Like That
Two days after the Emperor’s funeral, Ivy Cassia boarded her carriage back to Cassia. That day, Ivy stood on the carriage step, one hand resting on the polished wood of the door frame.
She was dressed for travel, practical layers in the Cassian style, warm wool dyed in deep blues and silvers that complemented her fair hair. The effect was striking without being ostentatious.
She leaned in and pressed a kiss to Damon’s cheek.
Yes, it might be scandalous for Iondorans. But in Cassia, this was nothing. An everyday greeting and a comfort between friends. Cheek kisses, embraces, casual intimacies.
Cassia had not built their entire culture around emotional repression and meaningful eye contact from across crowded ballrooms after all.
At the same time, it was a useful device. Damon understood this. These greetings, kisses, hugs, easy physical affection, that Cassians deployed, gave everyone an impression that Cassia and Iondora were good friends. Close allies.
The day before, they had discussed things.
"I’ll tell you my plans for solving the Emperor’s assassination problem, since you’re still unsure about my suggestion."
Damon’s brow furrowed. "I am listening."
"Let us replace the Saintess."
Ivy began.
"Replace?" Damon asked carefully. "You know how Ruby Vaiva ascended to sainthood. She proved she was ’true’ by prophesying weather patterns. The genders of unborn children. A hundred small, verifiable things that built her credibility brick by brick. You cannot simply replace that."
"So?" Ivy smiled. "What if we have a candidate who is able to prophesy even more accurately?"
Damon’s eyes widened.
The Cassians had someone like that? A prophet? Someone who could match, no, surpass, the Saintess’s visions?
This suddenly became dangerous.
No. More than dangerous.
For hundreds of years, Iondora had been the only nation chosen by the temple to produce and host a Saintess. The only empire whose rulers were permitted to sanctify them.
It was an old oath, after all. It even existed before the kingdom became an empire. It was an oath between the temple, the Dragon Lord, and the Founder of Iondora.
A Saintess must be or become an Iondoran. A Saintess must remain at Iondora’s Main Temple. A Saintess was theirs, and theirs alone.
If Cassia had a candidate, someone whose prophecies could rival or exceed Ruby Vaiva’s, the balance of spiritual power on the continent would shift.
"But as you know," Ivy continued lightly, conversationally, "only Iondora can sanctify a Saintess. Even though candidates are found across the world, they cannot ascend without following this ancient rule."
Her blue eyes held his.
"So you want me to sponsor a completely different Saintess." Damon’s voice was flat. "When the current one just accurately prophesied my father’s death and her credibility has never been higher?"
"That is precisely why we should kill her. Ruby Vaiva."
Ivy concluded.
Ha—
"That’s what she said," Damon sighed.
Seven days later, two days after the mourning period ended, Damon sat across from Cecilia.
The morning light that filtered through the windows of the private sitting room was clean and pale. It caught the dust motes floating in the air and turned them to gold, tiny constellations suspended in the stillness.
He was dressed plainly. No court robes or ceremonial accessories. No crown, no sigil, no visible marker of his station. Just a simple dark tunic, well-made but unadorned.
His violet eyes was the one feature he could never disguise, though. The Iondora birthright written in his irises, standing out starkly against the simplicity of everything else.
Without the court’s trappings, he looked almost... ordinary. An average man with extraordinary eyes. He was still handsome as usual too. Handsome the way crown princes were required to be handsome. Especially the clear skin. No dark circles underneath his eyes.
After all, two of his major problems had taken care of themselves.
His father. And his stepmother.
One in the ground. One under house arrest.
Cecilia sat across from him, her veil discarded somewhere on the arm of the sofa, her eyebrows creased.
"That’s what she said..." Cecilia muttered, more to herself than to him. Her eyes narrowed, focused on some middle distance that contained neither Damon nor the tastefully decorated sitting room. Then, she solemnly asked, "Is that not a phrase usually said after someone says, ’I cannot believe you came’?"
If the morning light, which had been doing such a lovely job of making everything look soft and contemplative, had a head and a hand, it would facepalm itself by now.
Damon removed one of his slippers, rising it into the sky like a scepter.
"AHHH! SORRY! SORRY! I KNOW WE WERE DISCUSSING SERIOUS THINGS!"
Cecilia shrank back into the sofa cushions, both hands flying up to create a measly shield in front of her body.
"WHEN DID YOU BECOME A PERVERT, HUH?!"
"SINCE I GOT THREE HUSB—AaAa~"
Cecilia, curled into the smallest possible version of herself behind her upraised hands, had an epiphany.
Ah.
So this was why Angela was the way she was.
Even as she braced for the slipper’s descent, she felt something warm in her chest. This brother of hers was simply too fun to tease.
His outrage was music to her ears. Every twitch of his eyebrow, every darkening of his violet eyes, every single time he rose to the bait like a fish who had learned nothing from the last hundred hooks, it was delicious!
No, no. Perhaps this was not about Angela at all.
Perhaps this was simply what it felt like to have an older sibling. Someone who would threaten you with footwear and mean it. Someone whose dignity you could puncture with a single well-placed comment and watch deflate in real time.
Someone who, despite all evidence to the contrary, would probably not actually murder you.
Probably.
How could she resist rage-baiting him, though?
"But what does that have to do with solving the assassination problem?" Cecilia asked, her voice slightly muffled by her own defensive posture. She was still shrinking, hiding behind her arms and peeking at him through the gap.
"Answer me first." Damon’s voice had dropped from its righteous peak, but the slipper remained aloft like the sword of Damocles rendered in fine leather. "How did you know the Cassian Twins wanted to kill Ruby Vaiva?"
Cecilia’s eyes, visible through the gap, flickered with amusement. "I don’t want to answer that yet. Not before you tell me how that is connected."
The slipper wavered.
Damon stared at her. She stared back, or as much as she could stare while still technically hiding behind her own hands.
"Fine."
Damon lowered the slipper. He did not put it back on. He simply held it, a compromise between violence and peace.
"Ivy planned on blaming the assassination on a well-known assassin. One who had never failed a job." He said. "His name is Roarke."
Cecilia’s eyes widened a fraction.
"I would be the one to choose who the commissioner was, plant the evidence and make it stick. Meanwhile, Ivy would communicate with this assassin, tell him to also kill the Saintess. And to claim that he was the one who killed the Emperor as well."
Damon’s jaw tightened. "She said she would pay him double or something. It seems they are close."
He sighed tiredly.
"That woman..."
Cecilia lowered her hands, slowly, cautiously. Her eyebrows were drawn together in something else entirely. Something that looked, if Damon was not mistaken, like the beginning of a very complicated smile.
"Roarke," she repeated. "Were the Cassian Twins the ones who ordered him to kill the southern beast lords?"
Damon’s brow furrowed. "I don’t think so."
"That assassin must also accept other sources of commissions. He is not exclusively theirs. The guilds, private contracts, anyone with enough coin and the right connections... a blade like that does not sit idle waiting for two princesses to find a use for it."
Cecilia could see that it was plausible. After all, everything she found until today also suggest that the Cassian Twins had nothing to do with the assassinations of the southern beastlords.
Professional assassins of Roarke’s caliber were mercenaries by nature, not retainers. They went where the money was, and the money came from everywhere.
Especially because Cecilia was sure that not even the Twins were able to control Roarke Raul.
Roarke Raul’s true loyalty lay on the feet of Arkai Dawnoro, after all.
But Cecilia was not looking at the logic. She was looking at Damon.
"How are you so sure?"
She asked.
Damon’s eyes narrowed.
"Ivy and Isla Cassia are not like that." His voice came out flatter than intended, defensive in its flatness. "Alright?"
Cecilia tilted her head.
"Not like that?" There were curiosity in her voice. "Even after knowing they have prepared a new Saintess Candidate, one this empire knew nothing about?"
Damon was quiet for a long moment. But then...
"Cecilia." Damon warned.
"They are not the kind of people who would destabilize an entire region for political gain." Damon’s jaw tightened. "They are not schemers. Not the way people think. Not the way I am."