At first, Adon did not know who was approaching Rosslyn.

He heard her call out a name: “Celeste!”

The Princess’s voice had risen almost to a shout. She sounded surprised and pleased at seeing this person.

Adon searched his memory banks quickly and came up with an answer almost immediately. He was not particularly recovered from his exertions of recent hours, but his brain was robust enough to review its records with great speed even when he was tired—especially when the task seemed urgent.

As Celeste stepped closer, Adon, still sheltered behind Rosslyn’s hands and nestled against her stomach, could not see her. However, he heard the second set of footsteps advancing with her, and from that, he deduced that she was not approaching alone.

“Sir Ringan, you can let Celeste and the other knight come closer,” Rosslyn said quietly. Her voice rang with trust, and Adon doubted himself for a moment.

Was it possible that woman with the twisted mind, Matilda, had confused him? Could she have adjusted the way she thought about past events to give him an incorrect understanding? That would have required that she knew someone might read her mind, at the least, but it seemed plausible somehow from her.

“Your Highness, please forgive me for failing to attend you in your chambers this evening,” Celeste said in a low, apologetic voice. “I had a minor personal emergency I was seeing to, when—”

“Highness, I caught this woman trying to leave the palace,” said the knight who had approached alongside Celeste—who seemed to have her arm locked in his grip. “I have not searched her yet—I did not have others nearby to assist me—so I ask that you stay back for the moment. If you wish to talk to her, Sir Ringan can keep an eye on her movements while I check her for weapons.”

Adon did not know what Rosslyn thought of that—he had deactivated Telepathy for the moment—but her body seemed to stiffen. She hesitated for a moment, deciding what to do. The butterfly reactivated his power.

Rosslyn, I’m pretty sure she’s one of the people Matilda overheard plotting to poison your father, he sent quickly.

The Princess must have shown some visible reaction to what Adon had transmitted, because the world suddenly moved very quickly. Adon sensed a rapid movement from the front, and Rosslyn’s hands moved from Adon, letting him drop.

No one was in a position to notice the butterfly’s sudden appearance, though.

All eyes were on the maid.

The knight who had suggested searching her was clutching his stomach, where Adon guessed Celeste had just struck him. Despite looking relatively small and harmless in her uniform, Celeste now stood in a defensive posture, as if ready for an attack from either side of the hallway.

“My apologies, Your Highness, I just prefer not to be touched,” she said. The woman wore a strange, manic smile—as if she believed that if she just pretended things were normal for a few more seconds, she might get away with something—or accomplish some objective she had yet to achieve.

Rosslyn held still for a second, and Celeste seemed to take that as Rosslyn showing weakness or being too surprised to move.

The maid reached a hand into her apron pocket—and then Rosslyn moved faster than Adon could see.

A sharp, piercing cry echoed through the hall, along with a crunch of snapping bone.

Rosslyn pulled Celeste’s hand—the wrist twisted in an impossible way—from the maid’s pocket, and a stiletto dropped from Celeste’s grip and clattered across the floor.

“Well, that settles that, I suppose,” Rosslyn muttered, kicking the knife further away from Celeste’s grip.

Adon heard Rosslyn’s immediate thought about what had happened—her first reaction after having disarmed the maid.

How could it be you? How? I have known you since…

Though her expression did not show it, the Princess was in some distress.

Adon fluttered up out of sight onto a high, shadowy place on the wall where no one would be able to spot him.

Then Celeste’s jaw moved in a strange way. Adon thought it was only the unusual angle from which he observed her that allowed him to see it.

I think she’s trying to swallow something! he sent in a rush.

The Princess’s right hand moved, again, more quickly than Adon’s vision could track without Mana. He could tell vaguely what was going on from the way Celeste’s body moved. It appeared as if Rosslyn’s hand had forced open Celeste’s mouth, darted into it, grabbed something inside her mouth, and then withdrew as quickly as it had entered.

“Damn you!” the maid growled.

Adon heard her thinking, That was my only escape from this…

“I will help you escort her to the cells,” Rosslyn said, still gripping Celeste’s broken wrist with her other hand. The knight Celeste had elbowed had stepped in to secure Celeste’s other arm.

“Is that truly necessary, Your Highness?” the maid asked, grimacing in pain now. “You have already disarmed me.”

“Shut up, traitor,” Rosslyn hissed. Her right hand shook as she restrained what Adon sensed was a strong urge to slap the other woman.

Many unspoken words flowed through the Princess’s mind.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

How could you? You bitch! To my father. These, and a hundred variations and different mixtures of phrases. Adon gathered that Rosslyn had felt close to this maid—and now she was betrayed in equal measure. He could not avoid hearing these thoughts without deactivating Telepathy, which he did not want to do while Rosslyn was standing there, in case she had something she wanted to tell him.

After a few seconds, the knights selected a handful of their number to accompany Rosslyn. They took Celeste from the hall by gripping both her arms firmly, two hands on each. With Rosslyn there, Adon could not imagine how the maid could escape, but now he supposed her incarceration was doubly certain.

When Rosslyn was out of sight, he finally deactivated Telepathy and allowed himself to rest.

It had been a long evening, though Adon imagined it had been far longer for the Princess than it had for him.

—

After Rosslyn had parted from the knights and left Celeste in the darkest, most isolated cell she could find, she did not return to the servants’ quarters to continue her work immediately.

She still had it in mind to test the loyalty of as many people as she could that evening. She recalled that according to Adon, Matilda had heard Celeste speaking to someone about the plot to poison the King, implying that there was at least one more conspirator, but it was hard for the Princess to make herself take up the task after she had locked up one of her longest serving companions.

Celeste was a woman she had thought of as almost a friend. It was a reminder that in the world she inhabited, there were very few people she could truly trust. She had been foolish to believe that Celeste ever cared about her beyond what was necessary to fulfill the duties of Celeste’s job—and apparently Celeste had not even cared about her job except as a means of getting at the King.

When Rosslyn escorted Celeste down into the darkness, the Princess raised only one topic of conversation with the poisoner.

“How long?” Rosslyn asked in a low voice. She barely managed to keep the words from coming out with a quiver. “How long were you planning to betray us?”

Celeste had shaken her head as if confused, then twisted her neck so that she could look backward into Rosslyn’s eyes. Something had apparently convinced her that it was a sincere question—or perhaps she saw some other persuasive feature in the Princess’s face. Rosslyn did not have the strongest control of her facial expressions as she walked the maid into the darkness.

“Always,” Celeste replied. “And from the phrasing of your question, I understand that Your Highness is confused, so I will speak more clearly. I was always an employee of the Demon Empire. There can be no betrayal where there was never any loyalty.”

“You never had any loyalty,” Rosslyn repeated. “Of course. I should have known better than to even ask. We hear tales of how the Empire’s assassins are trained. You never had any agency. You were twisted from childhood into becoming this.” There was pity in Rosslyn’s voice then. Even though this woman had poisoned her father, murdered Sir Domnhall, and lied to Rosslyn’s face for years, none of it was entirely her fault. Celeste could never be forgiven, of course, but neither was she entirely blameworthy. She was effectively a soldier of an enemy nation—one that considered espionage and assassinations as merely warfare by another means. Which it was.

“Make no mistake,” said Celeste in a strained tone of voice. “I had no loyalty to you, because I was loyal to the Empire. That was a choice. I am not some brainwashed puppet. I even developed some affection for you personally as I watched as you grew into a beautiful and strong woman. But all of that only convinced me that what I was doing was right.”

“You are not making any sense,” Rosslyn said.

It seemed as if a mask had fallen away from the would-be assassin, but she was not being clear.

“It was right to destroy you, because otherwise, you would be destroyed by the Empire,” Celeste said softly. “Of course, I did all this mainly for my family. If your father dies from my poison, they will be richly rewarded. Even if he does not, they will be looked after in compensation for my loyal service. But I also did this for you. You are too weak to defeat them, Princess—you and your father together. Death by poison is more mercy than the Emperor would give you if you were to fall into his hands.”

“How lovely,” Rosslyn replied coldly. “Well, think of all the mercy we will show you in gratitude.”

The rest of the walk was completed in silence. A part of Rosslyn wanted to slap Celeste across the face, or spit on her, or find some other heinous way to punish her for what she had done. Instead, she simply turned the key in the cell door, ordered one of the knights to stand guard, and then took the key with her. She wanted to leave no opening for Celeste to escape or be mysteriously killed by some other hidden agent of the Empire.

Now her feet took her to the chapel—to her father, to report that at least one of his would-be assassins had been identified, and more than one traitor locked up.

When the knights standing guard admitted her, she found her father in much the same condition he had been in before. He appeared pale and sweaty, but he did not look as if he was in great pain or as if his condition had worsened. She took some comfort there.

“I am glad to see you still well, Rosslyn,” he said.

“Thank you, father,” she said. “I have come to report on my progress.”

So she told him what had happened, what she planned to do next, and how helpful Adon had been. That was the one positive of the evening, she could not help emphasizing. Without his Telepathy, the night’s activities would have been completely impossible.

Her father stroked his beard and smiled and spoke little until near the end of her recounting.

“Well done,” he said. “Please identify any other traitors as best you can, but make certain that you allow the butterfly to get some rest. You have my permission to lock the palace down for the next several days. These results are excellent. I almost want to suggest spreading the process to the city as a whole, but I cannot imagine the strain it would place on Adon…”

“What will become of Celeste?” Rosslyn could not help but ask.

“The one traitor you actually knew well,” her father said in a sad tone. “You know what will happen, Rosslyn. Do not ask questions you already know the answers to, unless you only want to hear them spoken aloud.”

“She will be questioned,” Rosslyn said.

“Questioned sharply, yes,” the King said firmly. “Our professionals will extract any information that they can from her. Then she will be put to death.”

Rosslyn nodded. It was as she had expected. She abhorred torture, but in cases like this, she understood the necessity of it. Celeste was a foreign assassin and likely spy. She might know—would likely know—something of the Demon Empire’s planning and invasion timeline. Otherwise, she would not have known the best moment to make her move. Even if she did not have that information, she would have knowledge of methods, practices, and techniques that the Empire and its assassins practiced. It could be invaluable, and it would be illogical not to extract that information when they had one such assassin in their grasp.

There was only one thing Rosslyn could do for Celeste.

“I request that I be her executioner,” Rosslyn said.

Her father stared at Rosslyn for a moment, mouth slightly agape.

“Are you that angry with her?” he finally asked. “I suspect that I know the toll that would take on you.”

“It is not anger,” Rosslyn replied. “It is simply that I have a steady hand, and I would make it quick—and I finish what I start. I caught her. She should die by my hand—or Adon’s, if he preferred, since he is as responsible for our success as me. But I suspect he would cede the honor to me.”

The King finally nodded slowly.

“If you still feel that way when the Kingdom is done with her, then by all means, do it.”