"How completely frustrating," Gillian groaned. He was pacing back and forth like a caged animal, his fingers aggressively running through his hair. "No development at all. They are doing nothing but running around in circles, shouting orders that make absolutely no sense."
Having run back and forth between the imperial guards and his sister’s bedside often enough to qualify as an official courier, Gillian knew more than anyone about how the investigation was progressing.
And from where he stood, the investigation had all the grace of a wagon rolling downhill without its wheels.
Iryna let out a small, tired sigh from her mound of plush white pillows, her eyes tracking her brother’s frantic, repetitive movements.
"Well, I think it’s going to be incredibly hard for them to find any definitive answers," she murmured, her rough but elegant voice drawing everyone’s immediate attention. "Especially seeing that even this thing failed us completely."
Iryna lifted a hand to the lace-trimmed collar of her nightgown. Her fingers hooked around a fine gold chain, pulling out a hidden pendant that had been resting against her chest.
Cherion, who was leaning casually against the bedpost with his arms crossed and a lazy smirk on his lips, tilted his head in mild curiosity. The silver strands of his hair caught the sunlight as he looked closer. "What’s that about?"
"It’s the Solis Tear," Iryna explained, holding the necklace so the light could catch it.
The piece was exquisitely made, a teardrop ruby nestled inside a gold-engraved setting so elegant it looked as though a dozen master artisans had argued over every tiny detail until they all agreed it was perfect. "It’s a high-tier protective artifact given only to the direct bloodline of our royal family. Its only function is to reveal poison. If there is even a single drop of lethal poison in something we are about to eat or drink, the stone will warm at once and blaze a deep crimson to warn us. Gillian and I both wear one at all times. We never take them off."
Gillian stopped his frantic pacing dead in his tracks. His eyes widened slightly as he stared at the ruby dangling from his sister’s fingers, a look of sudden realization washing over his face.
"Wait... Iryna," Gillian stammered, stepping closer to the edge of the bed. "Did your necklace really not get hot last night? Not even a single fraction of a degree before you raised that wine glass to your lips?"
Iryna shot her brother a dry, thoroughly deadpan glare, her eyebrows twitching with a mixture of annoyance and disbelief.
"Gillian, please," Iryna fired back. "If it had suddenly turned into a burning coal against my chest, do you really think I would have still swallowed the wine? Do you think I’m so eager for a tragedy that I’d willingly gulp down fire? Believe me, I much prefer all my blood to stay strictly inside my body, not painted across the banquet floor like a messy centerpiece."
Gillian frowned deeply, his hand instinctively flying up to his own collar. He pulled out his matching pendant, his thumb rubbing across the smooth, cold surface of the ruby. He gave it a tight, desperate squeeze, as if expecting it to magically give him an answer.
"Did your necklace heat up last night?" Iryna asked him, tilting her head.
Gillian shook his head, looking utterly baffled and deeply unsettled. "No. It’s completely cold." He looked over at Cherion, then back to his sister. "Could they... is it possible they simply broke? Did the magic run out?"
"Both of them? At the exact same time?" Iryna raised an eyebrow. "I highly doubt it."
From the shadow near the edge of the room, Marielle stepped forward. Her arms were crossed tightly over the front of her chest.
"Wanna test it?" Marielle offered. "I happen to have my personal dagger right here. It’s freshly coated in a highly concentrated poison. Quite lethal."
Without a shred of modesty or concern for capital etiquette, Marielle casually hiked up the side of her long dress, exposing the sturdy leather sheath buckled tightly to her pale thigh. A quick twist of her wrist sent a dark-steel blade into the open. It flashed beneath the daylight, its edge carrying an eerie green sheen that practically announced, Touch me, and you’ll regret it.
Gillian instinctively took a half-step back, his eyes darting to the blade, but Iryna didn’t even flinch. Instead, a brilliant, thoroughly amused smirk spread across the princess’s face.
She gestured with her free hand, beckoning Marielle forward. "Bring it over. Let’s see what happens."
Marielle stepped up to the bedside. She leaned over the mattress and pointed the deadly, poison-slicked tip of the dagger directly toward Iryna’s chest, stopping the cold steel just a mere inch away from the ruby pendant.
There wasn’t even a heartbeat of delay.
The dormant, deep red ruby suddenly flashed a brilliant, angry crimson. Heat burst from the stone at once, making the air around Iryna’s collar waver like a summer road beneath the sun.
Gillian gasped from a few feet away, quickly reaching up to touch his own matching pendant, only to find that it, too, was rapidly growing uncomfortably warm just from being within the defensive radius of Marielle’s blade.
"So they aren’t broken," Gillian murmured, stepping back as his chest heaved. He stared at the glowing ruby with a new, profound kind of dread sinking into his stomach. "The artifacts are working perfectly."
Zarius, who had been watching the entire display silently from the foot of the bed. His eyes remained locked onto the slowly dimming ruby in Iryna’s hand.
"It seems whatever substance was slipped into the banquet wine is entirely undetectable by standard artifacts," Zarius stated, his deep baritone carrying an absolute certainty.
Cherion pushed himself off the bedpost, crossing his arms tighter over his chest as he thought through the implications. "Is that even possible? A poison can disguise itself so well that even something like this can’t tell it’s there?
"It could be," Marielle answered smoothly, sliding her dark dagger back into her thigh sheath. She let her dress fall back into place, her posture returning to normal.
Iryna let out a soft hum, a grim, highly respectful smile touching her lips as she leaned back and looked out the window toward the vast, sprawling imperial grounds of the host country.
"Auzelian truly is a terrifying place," Iryna whispered, her voice laced with dark appreciation. "To think someone under our noses possesses the knowledge to completely bypass the protection of the Solaric Empire."
Cherion let out a quiet huff, a smile creeping back onto his face. He turned toward Zarius, a faint smile tugging at his lips as his next move fell into place.
"It seems we have a lot of digging left to do," Cherion murmured. "What do you think, Zarius? Feel like taking me on a quiet date to the library?"