It took fifteen minutes for the guards to find the body.
The woman who screamed—Lady Ilennia Fross, noble of some irrelevant mid-tier house known for embroidery and gossip—was found dead in the guest wing. Face down. Neck at a wrong angle. Blood soaking into the velvet runner like a very expensive crime scene.
The weapon?
A ballpoint pen.
Not magical. Not cursed. Just a standard, mundane writing utensil. Jammed through her eye socket like a macabre punctuation mark. It wasn't subtle. It wasn't elegant. It was personal and messy and effective. Which, in a way, made it worse.
The Thornbridge estate went into lockdown almost immediately. Iron gates slammed shut. Wards activated with a hum so loud it rattled the chandelier. The main ballroom was sealed, and no one was allowed in or out. Not even birds.
Panic, of course, was next.
"This is outrageous!" shouted a red-faced duke whose beard looked like it had been sculpted out of white foam.
"We demand to leave immediately!"
"This is an affront to nobility!"
"I didn't come here to be murdered in my nightgown!"
And so on.
Servants were interrogated. Guests were counted. Guards were doubled. A noblewoman fainted twice, mostly for attention. At least three older lords attempted to form an "emergency committee," which, as far as Lysander could tell, involved drinking stronger wine and pointing fingers at anyone under the age of thirty.
Seraphine remained composed. Quiet, observing everything from behind her usual mask of disinterest. Her eyes scanned people the way a chess player watched pieces shift.
Lysander? He kept to himself. He answered the guards' questions with the same flat tone each time:
"I was headed to my room. No, I didn't hear anything before the scream. No, I didn't know Lady Ilennia personally. Yes, I'm always this pale."
They let him go. Eventually.
As the tension grew, alliances began to shift. Nobles who hadn't spoken in years suddenly found reason to whisper in corners. Someone accused an ice mage of having "murderous eyes." Someone else claimed the wine had been poisoned last night and cited "gut feelings" as evidence.
The Thornbridge hosts tried to control the flow of information. But they couldn't stop the bleeding. Not the metaphorical kind, anyway.
Lysander finally found a moment to himself near the upper balcony. The chaos below sounded muffled from here, like a party someone forgot to end.
He stepped into the night air.
The wind was cold, brushing across his skin like static. His cloak fluttered behind him, dark and sharp against the pale glow of moonlight.
He leaned on the railing and exhaled.
Pale skin. Jet-black hair, tousled by the breeze. Grey eyes that never quite reflected the world around them. He looked like someone sculpted from moonlight and insomnia.
The night sky stretched above him, full of uncaring stars.
He closed his eyes.
And sighed.
"So much for a peaceful life."