Argen waited.
He watched the formula inscribed on his wife’s pale neck fade to nothing.
And then, a moment later:
“The tea’s gone cold. Bring fresh water.”
He dropped back into his chair as if nothing had happened at all, and gestured toward the servants standing at a distance.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
One of them moved forward without a sound and poured fresh tea into his cup.
Argen breathed in the warmth rising from the cup.
Across from him, Grace sat with the expression of someone who had just woken from a nightmare, staring at him with undisguised fear.
“…Argen. You…”
“What is it.”
“…You — what are you—”
Her mouth stopped mid-sentence, as suddenly and cleanly as a mechanism clicking into place.
“…”
She exhaled. Nothing came out. Her lovely light-green eyes fixed on him in silence, blazing with something that had no name yet.
“How much more beautiful you are when you keep quiet, Grace.”
Argen settled back in his chair and released a long, satisfied breath. He felt something in his chest loosen for the first time in days.
He had guessed the purpose of this tea invitation the moment it arrived.
Aisha. The dark magic.
And the exhibition match, which had reached her ears easily enough.
He hadn’t wanted to do this. But Grace was, to his considerable misfortune, a meticulous and brilliant woman — far too sharp to remain as his ordinary queen.
So he had accepted the invitation. And come prepared.
The aim was simple: to silence this sharp-tongued woman, once and for all.
“The more you try to speak the forbidden words, the more it will feel like the air is being pressed out of you. So please — ease that expression, and give it up.”
“…”
Grace’s jaw worked silently. She drew a breath. The fury in her eyes was incandescent.
“Beautiful.”
Exactly what he had always wanted. Quiet. Lovely. Present, but not troublesome.
For the first time in a long time, he thought his wife quite pretty.
“The binding has many words woven into it, so conversation will be difficult for you. But if you can manage to stay out of external affairs and remain peacefully within society’s circles, the situation needn’t be so terrible for you.”
The binding was, in fact, extensive.
Dark magic. Every phrase that circled around it. Aisha — and any word that could stand in for her. Krost. Duke. Creatures. Magic and formulas. Events connected to his actions. All of it sealed.
The result: Grace had lost everything.
From the study of Creatures and magic she had devoted herself to since childhood, to House Krost — the allies she had trusted as partners.
Her entire identity, stripped away.
“…You…”
Grace bit down on the words. Her eyes filled slowly, quietly, and then two tears slipped down her pale cheeks.
“I don’t know what’s going through your mind… but one day… I will get it all back.”
“Ha — hahaha! Terrifying!”
Argen could only laugh.
He had hesitated, at first, before using forbidden dark magic. But once he began, the hesitation disappeared. It was the same now, with Grace.
A woman who could no longer mention magic could not break the spell that had been placed on her. And to anyone who didn’t know — to the vast majority of the world — she would appear exactly as she always had. The Queen Consort of the Kingdom of Frozen, unchanged.
“Enjoy the rest of your tea. I’m afraid I have business to attend to.”
He gave her one last look — her eyes bright with tears, her throat working against words she couldn’t say — and then King Argen left the glass greenhouse.
The number of people who could speak of his crimes had dropped from two to one.
Lady Aisha.
It was time to take care of the girl.
“…”
Grace sat alone in the greenhouse, watching the shape of him disappear through the glass. Then, quietly, she lowered her head.
She felt exactly like a bird sealed inside a cage.
✿∘˚˳°∘°✿∘˚˳°∘°✿∘˚˳°∘°
King Argen’s aide, Tri, had been watching the King with growing unease.
He had clawed his way up from nothing, barely scraping together enough skill in magic to earn a post at the royal court — and now his duties consisted almost entirely of spying on Queen Consort Grace and spying on Duke Krost.
And for reasons Tri could not account for, the King had recently been wandering around in the finest of moods, humming cheerfully to himself, while giving Tri all the miserable work.
“Your Majesty.”
“What is it?”
“The boy named Eivin has been confirmed as a legitimate illegitimate son of House Foss.”
Tri’s current assignment was an investigation into a young boy who had arrived in the kingdom some time ago.
“Is that so. I did wonder how he was managing to use Poison Affinity — of course, House Foss blood.”
Argen scanned the report, and the corner of his mouth curled faintly upward.
Tri watched him and quietly suppressed a sigh before speaking with careful deliberateness.
“…Your Majesty. If I may be so bold.”
“Go ahead.”
“The boy you’ve taken in has remarkable abilities, certainly. But if his Poison Affinity were to be made public, the reaction from the populace could prove unfavorable.”
“Hmm.”
“After the Duke Foss incident, there is a great deal of revulsion already attached to Poison Affinity in the public’s mind. And was not this very exhibition match arranged specifically to quiet the unrest from that incident?”
Argen listened to the concern with a slow nod, then replied:
“Speaking of the boy — how did he escape? I understood that the Doctia side sent everyone connected to House Foss to prison.”
He had moved on entirely.
Tri swallowed yet another internal sigh at the sight of a king who simply didn’t listen.
“It seems that despite being a son of the Duke’s, he was treated as though he barely existed. Doctia apparently had no record of him at all.”
“Oh, interesting.”
This is not the time to be marveling over some illegitimate boy.
Tri pressed his lips together as Argen continued to exclaim in quiet satisfaction.
That was always how it was with him. The only things Argen ever truly wanted were Queen Consort Grace’s extraordinary magic and Duke Krost’s impossible Affinity.
I should have become the Queen Consort’s aide instead.
He was entertaining dark thoughts about resignation — though the status that came with being the King’s aide was too valuable to throw away — when it happened.
“Tri.”
“Y-yes, Your Majesty!”
The abrupt address jolted him back to full attention.
“Are you my man?”
Argen was watching him steadily.
Tri bowed his head and answered reflexively.
“Without question. Every person in this kingdom belongs to Your Majesty.”
“No. I’m asking whether you are my man. Whether you walk at my side, whatever the road. Whether you and I are in the same boat.”
He met Argen’s grey eyes again, and the words lodged in Tri’s throat.
On any ordinary day, Argen was — well. Petty, envious, given to griping about others while neglecting his own duties. But the man who looked at Tri now bore no resemblance to that person. He was serious in the way of someone who was about to do something very large.
Tri understood what this was. An implicit constraint was being laid on him. The kind attached to conversations that could never be shared with anyone — conversations that might require him to cross lines he didn’t want to cross.
“O-of course, Your Majesty. I am your man.”
He didn’t want to say it. But refusing wasn’t an option either.
He squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his head even further, and from across the room came a low, satisfied laugh.
“Then come with me. There’s something I’d like to show you.”
Argen rose abruptly and left the office, walking in the direction of the lower levels. This was where the royal family’s treasures were kept — a place that was strictly off limits to anyone not of royal blood. Tri had never so much as glanced at the entrance.
Argen pressed his hand to a door finished in ostentatious gold and swung it open, revealing a corridor lined in deep, composed wine-red.
Three doors stood within.
One held the treasury of the Frozen royal lineage, passed down through generations.
One held the treasures belonging to Queen Consort Grace.
And the last belonged to Argen.
“I’ve come across something rather rare. Wanted to show it to you.”
Argen chuckled to himself and opened the door to his room.
Tri swallowed hard.
The door seemed to open in slow motion, though he knew perfectly well that was only his nerves and his imagination fighting each other. What was so precious that the king of this country kept it hidden down here?
A chandelier of first-grade crystal? No — if it were something like that, Argen would have displayed it, not concealed it.
Then what? What could it possibly—
The gap widened, and Tri’s eyes widened with it.
And then:
“Hello.”
Sitting in the room beyond the door was a small boy. Seven years old, perhaps, if that.
“…Your Majesty. That boy—”
“Yes. The illegitimate son of House Foss. Eivin.”
Tri scanned the room in bewilderment, searching for something that could be called a treasure. All he found, beyond the boy, was a handful of strange vials arranged on an aging display stand.
Surely… the King hasn’t lost his mind so thoroughly that he’s calling this child a treasure…
He threw Argen a deeply suspicious sideways glance.
He was contemplating a complete change of allegiance — to the Queen Consort’s side, effective immediately — when:
“Eivin. Show Tri what you can do.”
“Yes, sir.”
At Argen’s crisp command, goosebumps rose along Tri’s arms.
In a room with no draft, no open window — not a breath of moving air — a sudden chill pressed in from nowhere.
