Chapter 114: The Final Night Before the Wedding

The wooden sphere held. Not comfortably, not without cost, but with the kind of resistance measured in creaks and in the constant pressure of tons of rock pushing from every angle at once, but it held.

Lucian kept his hands pressed against the inner surface of the sphere, eyes closed, with the focus of someone holding something together as much with will as with magic, feeling every point of tension in the wood and reinforcing it before it could fully give way.

Ebony kept the purifying fire active on the outer layer, feeding it with what little reserves she had left, which wasn’t much since she had already burned through everything she got from the restoring apple, but it was enough so that anything trying to break through the wood from the outside would face a second problem before reaching them.

The noise lasted longer than either of them would have liked. Rock against rock, earth shifting, the dull and continuous roar of a massive structure collapsing in layers upon itself until it finally went silent.

“Are you alive?” Ebony asked without opening her eyes yet.

“Relatively.” Lucian’s voice sounded exhausted beyond physical fatigue, his magic reserves completely drained from his last fight. “You?”

“I still have all my limbs, so I think so.”

“Good. Let’s get out of here before this settles any more.”

Roots began to grow from the base of the sphere outward, pushing through rock and compacted earth with the slow care of something that couldn’t rush without breaking, finding gaps between fragments and widening them just enough to create a path upward.

The climb was slow and dark, with the walls of dirt pressing in on both sides and the smell of dust and burned magic filling every breath. Ebony moved behind Lucian, one hand on his back so she wouldn’t lose contact in the darkness, and neither of them spoke during the entire ascent.

The first sign of the surface was the air. Colder, more open, carrying that distinct early morning moisture that slipped down the tunnel before they could see anything. Then came the gray light of dawn, faint and dull, illuminating the edge of the opening where Lucian’s roots had broken through.

Ebony placed her hands on the edge and pulled herself up.

What she found above was not the garden of the Melian mansion. It was a field of rubble. Stone, wood, fragments of walls and ceiling mixed with overturned earth in a stretch that covered the entire property and part of the adjacent street, as if someone had taken the entire building and pushed it down into the ground with their hands.

“(Well.)” Ebony thought, looking at the destruction from the edge of the hole. “(At least the killer is buried somewhere in all of this.)”

Lucian climbed out behind her and stood there, looking at the wreckage with an expression that wasn’t surprise, but the tired recognition of someone who already knew he’d find something like this and still needed to see it to fully believe it.

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

Then they heard metal. The distinct sound of armor moving in formation, of swords being drawn at the same time, of boots striking the ground with the disciplined rhythm of people trained to do exactly this.

They emerged from the rubble from three different directions. Soldiers in full armor, swords extended, their tips glowing with the pale blue magic of treated weapons, forming a semicircle around Ebony and Lucian with no angle left uncovered.

There were at least twenty. Probably more behind them.

Ebony looked at the swords. Looked at the soldiers. Looked at Lucian.

Lucian looked back at her with the expression of someone far too tired to come up with anything more elaborate that night.

Daniel stood among the soldiers, his hands already tied behind his back, wearing an expression that mixed resignation with genuine relief at seeing his companions alive. One soldier held him by the arm with the firmness of someone unwilling to go through the trouble of capturing him again.

“By order of the Sapphire Port Council, you are under arrest on suspicion of murder and destruction of property.” The soldier at the front spoke in a professional, flat tone, the voice of someone who had said those words enough times for them to lose any dramatic weight. “Do not resist.”

“Murder?” Ebony frowned at them. “Of who?”

“Miss Kanary Melian, heir of the Melian family.” The soldier didn’t change his tone. “In addition to the complete destruction of the family estate, whose value exceeds any compensation individuals of your status could offer.”

Ebony opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all night, and the night’s been long.”

The soldier didn’t respond. Two of his men stepped forward with ropes ready, and Ebony and Lucian exchanged one last look before both deciding at the same time that they didn’t have the energy for a fight against twenty armed soldiers after everything that had happened.

The prison cell of Sapphire Port smelled of dampness and old stone, with a small, high window letting in a strip of gray light that didn’t reach the corners. There was a wooden bench along one wall and a stone floor with no concessions to comfort.

The three of them sat on the bench in the silence of people who had reached the limit of what their bodies could process in a single night and needed a moment before speaking.

Ebony spoke first. “Veronica? Kanary?”

Daniel shook his head. “When I got out, there was no one on the surface. I went looking for them, but they weren’t anywhere.” He paused. “No trace.”

Ebony frowned, staring at the cell floor. Veronica had been thrown upward from the cavern before the collapse, with enough force to reach the surface, but in what condition and where she had gone afterward was information she didn’t have. And Kanary had been unconscious in her room all night, which meant someone had moved her before the mansion collapsed or after. Neither option was reassuring.

“I don’t understand anything.” She said it quietly, more to herself than to the others.

“Welcome to the club.” Lucian leaned back against the stone wall with care, his legs still suffering from the acidic burns. “We’ve been in it all night.”

Hours passed. The strip of light in the window shifted slowly, marking time with the indifference of something that had no interest in the situation of the three prisoners beneath it. At some point all three closed their eyes without announcing it, and at some point they opened them again when footsteps in the hallway outside the cell signaled someone approaching.

The woman who appeared on the other side of the bars was not a guard. She was older, with dark blue hair neatly tied back and the clothes of someone used to letting quality speak before she opened her mouth. Her eyes were the same blue as Kanary’s, but colder, with the specific temperature of someone used to things going according to plan.

“Where is my daughter?” The question carried no trace of maternal concern. It was an administrative demand, the tone of someone claiming mismanaged property.

Ebony looked at her from the bench without standing.

There was something about that woman that didn’t match what the eyes saw. It wasn’t the clothes, the posture, or the way she spoke, but something deeper, something Ebony’s passive Healer ability picked up without needing to focus. The woman’s life signature was strange. Too dense for a single body, with layers overlapping in a way that wasn’t natural, as if more than one presence inhabited that immaculate exterior.

“(Interesting.)” she thought without changing her expression. “(But right now I don’t have enough energy to figure out exactly what that means.)”

“We don’t know where your daughter is.” Lucian answered with cold courtesy. “We left her in her room before things escalated.”

The woman looked at each of them with calculated coldness, then turned and left without another word, her footsteps fading down the hall with the same precise rhythm she had arrived with.

“That woman’s weird,” Ebony said as soon as the steps disappeared.

“Everything in this city is weird,” Daniel replied.

“No, this is different.” Ebony kept staring at the empty doorway, frowning. “Her energy isn’t normal. It’s like she has more than one life inside her or something like that. I couldn’t tell clearly because I’m exhausted, but there’s something.”

Lucian looked at her carefully. “Like the assassin?”

“Not exactly. Different. But weird.” Ebony rested her elbows on her knees. “Let’s leave it there for now.”

Night fully settled, and the cell was left in darkness broken only by the torchlight from the hallway filtering through the bars. The three of them were too exhausted to hold any meaningful conversation, and at some point the silence stopped being tense and became simply the silence of three people who needed sleep and saw no reason not to take it.

The noise came without warning.

A small scratch in the corner of the cell near the floor, followed by the sound of something moving between the stones with the discretion of something small that had practiced being unnoticed.

A mouse emerged from between the stones. Gray, ordinary, with nothing remarkable at first glance except for its eyes, glowing with a faint red that had nothing natural about it.

All three were awake before it fully came out.

“Congratulations.” The voice from the mouse’s mouth was unmistakable, deep and calm, with the tone of someone enjoying the situation without needing to show it. “You won. It was more entertaining than I expected, which is saying a lot given my expectations.”

Ebony narrowed her eyes. “Give us back our friends.”

“Of course.” The mouse sat on its hind legs with the absurd composure of a small animal adopting a business posture. “Veronica and the Melian heiress are safe and sound. I’ll return them without condition, that part is already settled. But I have an additional proposal that would be a shame not to hear before tomorrow morning’s guard decides he has enough evidence to send you to the gallows.”

“Talk,” Lucian said.

“Sapphire Port has been looking for a convenient culprit for weeks regarding a series of misfortunes that have affected the city. The three of you are currently the perfect candidates. A foreign revolutionary force that infiltrated the mansion of the city’s most important family, murdered the heiress, destroyed the property, and destabilized public order.” He paused. “There’s more. Kanary’s mother declared this morning that her husband’s body was found days ago. Lord Melian has been dead for some time and no one knew until now.”

No one spoke for a moment.

“With her husband dead and the heiress missing, Lady Melian is in a position to make decisions for the family. Including marrying the man who arrived from afar to, according to her, save Sapphire Port.” The mouse tilted its head slightly. “A marriage that, interestingly, was originally meant for Kanary.”

“How convenient.” Ebony’s voice was flat and cold.

“Very.” The mouse remained calm. “In any case, my proposal is simple. If you agree to join the Blood Ruby, my guild will get you out of here tonight and the charges will disappear. If you refuse, the trial proceeds tomorrow and the odds are not in your favor, especially without the heiress to testify for you.”

It dropped something from its mouth onto the cell floor. A small, perfect red pearl rolled a few inches across the stone before stopping, glowing faintly from within.

“That’s a communication item. If you accept the offer, use it and you’ll be received.” The mouse looked at them one last time with those tiny red eyes. “It’s been a genuine pleasure. I don’t say that often.”

It exploded.

Not violently, but with the abruptness of something that simply ceases to exist, leaving behind the scent of blood magic that faded in seconds and a small puddle of what had been the mouse’s body on the cell floor.

Daniel looked at the puddle. Then at the red pearl. “Why do they always explode?”

“It’s their thing.” Ebony picked up the pearl and held it between her fingers, looking at it. The irritation from the explosion was real, but beneath it was something closer to relief, confirmation that Veronica and Kanary were alive and that the assassin had kept that part without conditions.

The three of them looked at each other in the silence of the cell.

“I don’t want to lose my head,” Daniel said with his usual blunt practicality.

“None of us do.” Lucian stared at the ceiling with his arms crossed. “The only clean way out is for Kanary to show up and tell the truth. But for that we need to know her condition and whether she’s able to speak, and right now we don’t have that information.”

“And if she doesn’t show up in time, the trial goes forward and the assassin guild is our only alternative.” Ebony closed her fist around the pearl. “Which is just fantastic.”

No one argued with that assessment because it was accurate.

They thought about it a while longer, going over the same angles without finding a comfortable one, until exhaustion won the argument without anyone consciously deciding it. The three of them fell asleep on the wooden bench, leaning against each other with the casualness of people too tired to care about positions, and didn’t move for twelve hours.

Morning came with the sound of locks.

Ebony opened her eyes sluggishly, like someone who had slept too deeply and whose body didn’t agree with waking up. The light from the small window was full daylight, high and direct, meaning they had slept well into midday.

The guards opened the cell without speaking at first. And behind them, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed and an expression mixing exhaustion with something harder to define, stood Kanary.

Her blue hair was messy, and the clothes she wore were not from the night before but something simpler, without the weight of the Melian family in every stitch. But she was standing, breathing, with the color of someone who had gone through a rough night and survived it.

“You’re coming with me.” She said it quietly, with a firmness that wasn’t the arrogance Ebony had seen the first night, but something different, steadier, more serious. “And to be clear, they still don’t know I’m alive. It’s a secret for now.”

Ebony looked at her for a second. Then at Lucian. Then back at Kanary.

“Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then let’s go.”

They were escorted by only a few soldiers, not the formation of twenty from the night before but four, with a discretion that showed Kanary had arranged this carefully to keep it as unnoticed as possible. They exited through a side door of the prison into a narrow street where a carriage waited, unmarked, without family insignia or city colors.

They climbed in, and the carriage started moving before they were fully settled, leaving the city through routes that avoided the main streets with efficiency that was clearly intentional.

“What’s going on?” Ebony asked once they were far enough from the prison for the question not to seem reckless. “And why are you acting so weird?”

Kanary looked out the carriage window for a moment before answering. “My mother planned everything.” She said it without inflection, like someone who had already processed the information. “The contract with the assassins, the declaration of my father’s death, the engagement to that man from outside… all of it was her.”

The carriage kept moving. No one spoke for a moment.

“He was her lover.” Kanary kept looking out the window. “They’ve been planning this for a while. They needed me gone so she could take control of the family and marry him without anyone with enough authority to object.”

“And where are we going now?” Lucian asked.

“Outside the city. Veronica is waiting for you there.” A pause. “She’s fine, but you need to get away as soon as possible and recover. Both of you.”

Ebony listened, then stayed silent until the carriage reached the edge of the city. When she spoke again, her voice had its usual direct tone, without softening anything.

“What are you going to do?”

Kanary turned from the window and looked at her. “I am the rightful heir. I have ruling rights my mother can’t erase just by declaring me dead. I’m going to do what I have to do… even if that means killing my mother and marrying Regulus to save Sapphire Port…”

The silence that followed was uncomfortable in a very specific way, the silence of three people processing something they hadn’t expected and didn’t know how to answer.

Daniel looked at Lucian. Lucian looked at Ebony.

Ebony looked at Kanary with her usual direct expression. “I respect the resolve. I really do.” She said it sincerely before continuing. “But that’s stupid.”

Kanary frowned. “I am the rightful he—”

“Your mother already tried to kill you once, and she has enough power right now to do it again with a lot less trouble.” Ebony didn’t raise her voice, but she didn’t soften it either.

“If you stay and face her directly, sooner or later she’ll find a way to finish what she started… Right now you’re an obstacle, and obstacles don’t last in situations like this. And besides… even if we think all of this happened because those two are lovers, we still don’t know if there’s something even worse behind it…”

Kanary didn’t respond immediately.

“The best thing you can do right now is leave with us,” Ebony said seriously, looking at her.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep