“Don't be ridiculous, Janet. You’re my escort. And besides, this cake is a peace offering for Barakiel. I can't very well show up empty-handed.”
Janet’s face lit up, a wide, genuine smile breaking through her usual stoicism. “I knew you wouldn't leave me behind, my lady. I’ve sworn my life to you.”
I looked at her, my skepticism still a cold knot in my stomach. Why had she defected? Why had she chosen a "dead" princess over the Duke of Brant, the man who had quite literally given her a second life? She hadn't even told Eric I was alive. If she had, he wouldn't be wasting his Transcendent power dredging a river for a corpse that wasn't there.
*Is she doing this to protect Eric from the scandal?* I wondered.
The legal case against the Dowager and Madeleine was built on sand. The "poison" tea bags in my room and the letters between the conspirators were damning in the court of public opinion, but a skilled lawyer could argue they were circumstantial. The Dowager was already claiming the Taisalchu was for her menopause.
But legal innocence didn't matter. The Emperor now had the leverage he needed to dismantle the Brant political machine. And Madeleine—the girl who had written so gleefully about seeing me bleed—was socially dead.
I thought back to the gossip I’d heard in the salon. *“Perhaps he finally regrets everything.”*
The idea was so absurd I couldn't help but let out a hollow, jagged laugh. Eric Lennon Brant didn't know the meaning of regret. If he was searching the river, it was for the same reason he did everything else—to maintain his image. He couldn't be the "Hero of the Frontier" if his wife’s death was shrouded in the stink of domestic murder. He was searching for a body to bury the scandal, nothing more.
The carriage jolted to a stop in front of the One Flower Workshop.
Nancy, Barakiel’s perpetually harried assistant, met us at the door. She looked at me, then at my chestnut hair and brown eyes, and blinked.
“It’s a remarkable change, Your Highness,” she whispered. “The transformation potion worked perfectly.”
“It did,” I said, stepping into the dim, herb-scented interior. “But I didn't come here for compliments. Where is Barakiel?”
“In the laboratory, ma’am. He’s... well, he’s in a state.”
I moved toward the back of the shop, only to be nearly bowled over as the laboratory door flew open. Barakiel stumbled out. He looked like a man who had been through a centrifuge—his dark green hair was a bird's nest, his silk cravat was missing, and his eyes were so swollen from crying that he looked like he’d been stung by a hive of bees.
He saw me and stopped. His monocle fell from his eye and shattered on the floor.
“G-ghost!” he shrieked, his voice cracking. “A haunting! A beautiful, vengeful haunting!”
“I’m not a ghost, Barakiel,” I said, handing the cake box to Nancy. “I’m a woman who needs a large shipment of transformation potions by Friday.”
Barakiel stared at me for a long, silent minute. Then, without a word, his knees buckled and he fainted dead away.
“He’s been like this since the news reached the capital,” Nancy sighed, stepping over her unconscious master to take the cake. “He thought he’d lost his primary investor. And, in his own weird way, I think he actually liked you.”
I looked down at the alchemist. It was a strange feeling—knowing that the only person in the capital who had truly mourned me was a mad scientist worried about his research grant.
***
An hour later, after several smelling salts and a large cup of tea, Barakiel was sitting across from me, his hands still shaking.
“I’m leaving the capital in three days,” I told him. “I’m heading East, toward the port cities. I need enough potion to keep my identity hidden for six months.”
“East?” Barakiel whispered. “But... please, Your Highness. Let me come with you! I can set up a laboratory on the road! I can develop the bulletproof vest while we travel!”
I offered him a small, sad smile. “No, Barakiel. I need you here. I need you to be my eyes and ears in the capital.”
Barakiel’s expression shifted from pleading to curious.
“In my first life,” I said, my voice dropping low, “the rebels who burned the capital got their weapons from this workshop. Not from you, but from the man who will eventually come to replace me as your patron. I want to know who that man is. I want to know who is funding the insurrection before the first shot is fired.”
Barakiel went still. He was a man of science, but he understood the weight of treason. “You want me to be a double agent?”
“I want you to be a survivor,” I said. “Record every name. Every transaction. And when the time comes, I’ll send Sardin to collect the ledgers.”
***
While I was planning the future of the Empire, the past was catching up to Madeleine Arguin.
In the grand solar of the Arguin estate, the air was thick with the scent of lilies and the sound of sobbing. Marchioness Arguin was on her knees before her husband, her face a mask of grief.
“Please, my lord! Madeleine is our only daughter! You cannot let her be sent to the Tower! Bribe the guards, beg the Emperor—do something!”
The Marquis of Arguin, a man with silver hair and eyes like frozen emeralds, looked down at his wife with a cold, terrifying detachment. He didn't see a daughter. He saw a liability.
“And risk the entire Arguin lineage for the sake of a girl who was stupid enough to cut a chandelier in her own store?” the Marquis asked, his voice like cracking ice. “The Emperor is looking for a reason to crush us, and she handed him the sword. No. Madeleine made her bed. She will sleep in it alone.”