Julian scratched the back of his head, offering a sheepish, boyish grin that made Evangeline's skin crawl. "My apologies, Your Majesty. I'm afraid I overslept. The pillows were far more persuasive than the alarm."
Evangeline didn't smile back. She felt a sudden, sharp ache in her chest—a memory of his empty throne, cold and silent, while the mob was screaming for her head. He had "overslept" through her execution, too.
"Fine," she said, her voice dropping into a weary, dead tone. "It doesn't matter anymore."
The Jack of Spades stepped forward. The sound of the parchment unrolling was like a blade being sharpened. He began the trial of the Three of Spades. The room held its breath, but it wasn't out of suspense; it was the habit of people waiting for a foregone conclusion. Everyone knew the script: there would be no mercy, no justice, only the cold, rhythmic fall of the axe.
A soldier—a nobody, a mere Three of Spades—collapsed at the foot of the dais. He didn't just kneel; he crumbled. His voice was a pathetic, ragged mess of snot and sobs.
"Please, Your Majesty! I didn't mean to fall asleep as your carriage passed! I was exhausted... three days on the border patrol... I meant no disrespect, I swear it!"
He looked up at her, his eyes wide and leaking terror. In her past life, Evangeline wouldn't have even looked at his face. She would have nodded to the guards, and his head would have been in a basket before lunch. She would have done it just to keep the schedule moving.
Julian leaned toward her, his breath smelling of expensive tea. "A bit harsh for a nap, don't you think, Eve? Maybe we just give him a few lashes and call it a day?"
Evangeline looked at the soldier, then at the Duke of Spades, who was watching like a vulture. She realized this was the moment. The first line of the script she was about to burn.
His pleas hit her ears like rain on a tombstone—hollow, noisy, and completely useless. Evangeline didn't even look at the man's face. She didn't need to. She just raised a single, slender finger, the motion as casual as flicking away a speck of dust.
"Off with his head," she murmured. "Next."
The cycle began. It was chillingly efficient, a factory line where the raw material was human life and the finished product was silence. The next prisoner's crime was a joke—an "aesthetic treason." He'd planted white roses in a garden that demanded only red. A gardening mistake turned into a capital offense.
"Off with his head."
For an hour, the courtroom was a slaughterhouse disguised as a ceremony. Ten souls begged, ten souls were judged, and ten times she spat out the same four words. Her voice never shook. Her heart felt like a block of frozen meat—numb, heavy, and dead to the world.
Finally, she stood. The rustle of her red silk was the only sound in the room, sharp and aggressive.
"The rest of the cases are deferred," she announced. She made her voice drip with a bored, sickly exhaustion. "I'm tired. I'm going to my chambers."
The assembly rose like a single, terrified wave, heads snapping down in reverence. But as Evangeline turned to leave, she didn't just walk away. She watched.
She looked at Julian. For the first time, she didn't see the handsome, useless consort; she saw a piece moving on a board. As she swept past, she caught the ghost of a movement—Julian's lips leaning toward the executioner's ear. It was a whisper so thin it barely existed.
"He is pardoned."
Evangeline kept walking, her face a mask of indifference, but inside, her mind ignited. In her first life, she had been too arrogant to notice his "mercy." She had thought he was just being weak. Now she saw it for what it really was: Julian wasn't just being kind. He was building an army of people who owed him their lives, one "secret" pardon at a time.
While she was playing the villain, he was playing the savior. And he was doing it right under her nose.
The world didn't just tilt; it felt like the floor had turned into liquid. Evangeline's mind raced, replaying those three words over and over. He is pardoned.
Could Julian—her golden, pathetic Julian—truly be countermanding her orders? Was he dismantling her authority behind her back, one whisper at a time?
No, her old self argued. It's impossible. Julian was a creature of soft edges and shallow thoughts. He was a decorative piece of furniture, a man who would rather oversleep than lead. He didn't have the stomach for defiance, let alone the spine for a conspiracy.
But as she retreated to her chambers, the silence of the palace didn't feel peaceful anymore. It felt heavy, like the air before a lightning strike. She paced the room, her red silks hissing against the floor, trying to convince herself it was a hallucination. You're traumatized, she told herself. You're seeing ghosts in the shadows because you were a ghost an hour ago.
But then, the memory of the rebellion flared up—not the fire or the screams, but the efficiency of it. The way the gates had opened so easily. The way her own hussars had stepped aside as if they were following a higher command.
She froze. The realization didn't just strike her; it felt like a bucket of ice water poured directly into her lungs.
"Damn it," she hissed, her eyes wide and wild in the dim light of her study. "I've been so focused on the vipers in the pews that I forgot the one sitting right next to me."
If Julian was secretly saving the people she condemned, he wasn't being kind. He was being tactical. He was buying the loyalty of her enemies with the very lives she was trying to take. He wasn't her "Golden Dawn"—he was the one who had turned the lights out.
Panic, hot and sharp, flared in her throat. She needed the only person who had never lied to her. The only person whose soul wasn't for sale.
"Where is Silver?" she demanded of the empty room, her voice a frantic, jagged rasp. "Where is that magnificent idiot?"