A breathless hush fell over all those present, highborn and low, as the king uttered the words that sealed not only his fate, but that of the palace’s garrison.

Silently observing as the king’s advisors approached to dissuade the inflexible monarch from his decided course of action, Zephyrin briefly found his own lack of reaction curious, before realizing that, deep down inside, he had suspected this outcome all along. For good and for ill, Rudolf XIII was a man for whom the vagaries of fate, however adverse, held no especial dread.

It was while Zephyrin was considering his next move that the queen stepped forward in a swirl of skirts to reason with her husband. Most intimately acquainted with the king’s temperament out of all those present and yet unburdened by that knowledge, Adelaide-Estelle brought to bear her most trenchant line of argumentation.

“Monsieur, it is one thing to let oneself be led to the people, but we have received convincing proofs that it is not tradesmen and fishwives who are after your life, but treacherous characters of a different stripe. If it is a dialogue with the people you desire, then these infiltrators must be vigorously resisted!” urged the queen, not yet ready to abandon the interior battle raging in her husband’s soul.

“We do indeed seem to have grounds to fear a conspiracy of some sort,” murmured the king’s confessor in a concerned accent. The king gave no indications of hearing him. “Madame, I comprehend your reticence,” he replied to his wife, a touch of irritation coming through in his tone. “Sound not a king’s every wherefore and why. I least of all wish to see loved ones—”

“DIE!!”

The world seemed to become more vivid, the damascened golds and purpurin velvets of the richly furnished King’s Apartment to come into sharper contrast as the latent violence of the moment flared and crystallized in Zephyrin’s mind. Reflexively drawing upon the well of his power as a guttural yell tore through the air, he instinctively grasped its implications and those of a direr sight, of the red-scarfed baseblood half-raised on the parquetry, blood flowing from a gash in his temple, lip curled in hate, a pistol upheld and pointed unwaveringly.

Most of all, as the man’s finger pulled the trigger before his mana could emanate as a deflective stream from his palm, Zephyrin understood the trajectory the bullet would take, and who was intended to receive it.

“Sire—” screamed a voice—whether male or female, he couldn’t tell—only to be drowned in the terrible crack that ensued.

Hand in his pocket, Rudolf XIII did not so much as flinch as the sound faded into sullen stillness. Neither did any of those present move in his direction, instead remaining as immobile as if the King’s Apartments were a stage and they its obedient actors, invisibly bound and awaiting an unseen director’s cue.

Still propped up on his elbow, the man’s features contorted into a pained grimace, then relaxed as his eyes glazed over. Before the astonished company he slumped forward, his locks soon to be dyed crimson by the growing pool of his own blood.

There had been no muzzle flash, no gushing of acrid smoke. Before the royals and nobles recovered their senses Zephyrin and the captain lifted their eyes from the lifeless rebel to look out into the corridor, where a corpulent figure could be seen. Uniformed arm raised and cane extended, the man waited for the residual sparks at its tip to die down before clacking it down on the inlaid marble and deftly stepping around the unconscious bodies.

“Marshal dy Cassade!” exclaimed a noble, and several of those present raised a ragged cry of joy at the old veteran’s appearance.

“Did-Did Marquis Euvarhnal send you, monsieur?” stammered a councilman. “Has the Royal Guard—”

“Regrettably, the Marquis cannot be counted upon at present,” rumbled the retired marshal, before fixing his watchful liege with a keen eye. “And if Monsieur will not disdain to accept my counsel, nor should his services be accepted even if offered.”

The king seemed unperturbed. “I’ve known of the Marquis’s backdoor dealings for some time now, baron.”

“And Euxenus?” The marshal threw out the name casually but couldn’t keep a grim smile from forming beneath his mustache in seeing the queen start at his words. “If Your Majesties wished for a liaison between the Crown and the Third Estate, better would have been an individual unsullied by ashes.”

The queen’s startled movement was succeeded by an expression of open puzzlement. “Ashes? Marshal, to what do you refer?”

“The good baron means the Incensi,” said the king composedly but with a stern, warning light in his eye. “A less than ideal state of affairs, to be sure: however, I will not condemn a man on so slim a pretext.”

The marshal made no response and instead strode over to a groaning rebel lying by the broken door frame. He matter-of-factly planted his cane in the man’s stomach, pinning him hard; a maid gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. Sparing a paltry glance for the wheezing man writhing beneath him, he called out in a loud voice: “Extend your senses, if you have the training to do so! This ‘commoner’”—a merciless twist of the mana conductive implement—“is a blueblood, a moderately powerful one at that, and far from the only of this miserable bunch. Taken as a whole, they had enough strength to overpower Your Majesties.”

More now than when it could have been thought that a bullet would imminently penetrate his heart, the first stirring of apprehension made itself known on the king’s rounded face. “Marshal, I forbid you from speaking further.”

“And yet I must, for to leave an evil unnamed is to let it conquer.” A pulse of magic passed from the marshal’s cane to the pinned blueblood’s abdomen; the man shrieked, then fell silent. After a deeply sympathetic look in Madame d’Aurellis’s direction, which hardened to iron after she closed her eyes in response, Marshal dy Cassade’s gaze swung back to his monarch. “Monsieur, should I encounter him, do I have leave to kill Monsieur’s brother, the Count of Aurellis?”