"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."
***
The world had gone mad.
One moment, Lyra had been staring at her own death. An emerald necklace she'd never seen before, planted in her quarters like poison. The next, voices were shouting, accusations flying, and Marcus Grundy was backing against the wall like a cornered rat.
She couldn't follow the exchange between Thomas and Grundy. Ledgers. Embezzlement. Forged documents. The words washed over her like a foreign language. Numbers and dates and discrepancies. Evidence of crimes so vast they made the theft of a single necklace seem like a child swiping cookies from a jar.
The guards had let go of her when the commotion started. Their iron grip just vanished, like she'd stopped existing. She rubbed her wrists. Felt the phantom pressure of their fingers. The bruises were already forming beneath her sleeves.
This isn't possible.
Servants don't get rescued at the last moment. Servants die, and the world moves on. They're expendable. Replaceable. They disappear, and nobody asks questions.
But the tide had turned. Lord Blackwood's fury, which moments ago had been aimed at her, was now focused entirely on Grundy. The noble's face was purple. Spit flew as he roared about betrayal and the audacity of theft from his own coffers.
Thomas kept talking. His voice was steady. Relentless. He laid out evidence of financial crimes that made a stolen necklace look like pocket change. The footman had always been ambitious, always angling for a better position, but this wasn't ambition. This was righteous anger. The fury of someone who'd witnessed injustice and chosen to expose it.
How did he know?
How did Thomas discover what Grundy was doing? The steward was careful. Paranoid. He wouldn't have left evidence lying around for a footman to stumble across.
Lyra's gaze swept the room. Lord Blackwood's thunderous expression. The veins standing out on his neck. Leo's confused look, his heroic features marred by genuine bewilderment. The protagonist caught off-guard by a twist he hadn't seen coming. The servants crowding the doorway, their eyes wide with the realization that one of their own had been saved.
And then her eyes found Kaelen.
He was leaning against the doorframe at the far edge of the room. Apparently absorbed in examining his fingernails as if the drama before him was just a tedious play he'd been forced to attend. His posture spoke of boredom. A man who would rather be anywhere else. His grey eyes held no surprise. No shock. No reaction at all to the miraculous turn of events.
He looked like someone who had already read the end of the book and found it predictable.
While everyone else reacted with shock or anger or confusion, while the room churned with emotion, Kaelen Leone was the only person who didn't seem even remotely surprised.
No. That's not possible.
He's just Kaelen. The failure. The waste of noble blood. He barely has enough mana to light a candle. He can't even hold a sword properly.
But she couldn't look away from his face. Couldn't shake the creeping realization taking root in her mind.
Her hands began to shake. Not from fear this time. Something deeper. The tremor that came from realizing everything you thought you knew about the world was wrong.
The timing.
Thomas appearing at exactly the right moment with exactly the right evidence. When she was seconds away from being hauled before a magistrate. The way Grundy was caught completely off-guard, as if someone had anticipated his every move.
She thought about the past few days. Memories that had seemed insignificant suddenly took on new weight. Young Master Kaelen's strange behavior at dinner. His uncharacteristic humility when he'd asked her about the household schedules. The way he'd positioned himself during the search. Seemingly bumbling. Getting in everyone's way. But always in exactly the right place at the right time.
How he'd stumbled near Thomas. Whispered something she couldn't hear. Then retreated with an apology.
He knew.
Somehow, impossibly, he knew this was going to happen. He knew Grundy would frame her. He knew Thomas would have the evidence. He orchestrated every moment.
The argument was winding down. Grundy's protests were growing weaker as the weight of evidence crushed him. Thomas had produced enough documentation to damn a dozen stewards. Ledgers with altered figures. Receipts for purchases that never arrived. Testimony from merchants who'd been paid to falsify records.
"Arrest him," Lord Blackwood commanded. His voice was final. "Marcus Grundy, you stand accused of embezzlement, fraud, and conspiracy against a noble house. You will be held pending trial."
Guards moved forward. They seized Grundy's arms and hauled him upright. The steward's face crumpled as his scheme collapsed around him. All his power and influence evaporated in a single moment.
"The girl," Father said quietly. "What about the girl?"
Lyra's breath caught. Even now, even after everything, she was still just "the girl." Nameless. Faceless.
"Released, of course," Lord Blackwood replied. He waved a dismissive hand as if her near-death was merely an administrative error. "Clearly, she was meant to be a scapegoat. The real thief has been caught."
That's it?