Page 130 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

“Didn’t you.” Ark didn’t break stride.

Orlen stepped into his path, a hand raised. “Please. Your mother was firm in her instructions. You are not to be let into the house.”

Ark stopped. Looked at him fully—this old demon who’d been a part of his childhood. Was he in on this deception as well?

“You’ve known me since I had horns too small to see, Orlen. You think you can stop me?”

A pained expression passed through Orlen’s face. “You were always impossible when you’d made up your mind,” he said softly. “Even as a boy.”

“I’m no longer a boy.”

“You are not,” Orlen agreed. “It’s not for me to say, but if you would only speak to your mother first, perhaps⁠—”

“No.”

There was steel in Ark’s voice now—resolve, sharpened to a point. Orlen stilled. Then, he bowed and stepped aside.

Ark entered. The doors closed behind him with a muffled thud, and the hush of the Varil mansion closed in. Though the ball had ended only hours ago, all traces of a party had been eradicated, every nook and cranny swept clean.

He rushed past the enormous hearth, the tall arched windows with their heavy drapes drawn back to let in the grey morning light. He took the grand staircase two at a time, hand skimming the carved banister—the one he used to slide down as a child with Oromon, laughing while Orlen shouted after them.

He remembered those things in flashes. How wide the halls once felt, how high the ceilings loomed. How he used to race to his father’s study just to show him a drawing or ask about a constellation. But that door was always closed, his father busy with one important matter or another.

He’d never once stopped and wondered if those were the truths, or simply excuses made up to conceal a worse truth.

Deeper into the family wing he went. The air became colder. It had nothing to do with temperature, but everything with what he was about to uncover.

He realized then: he was afraid. Afraid he’d been wrong all along, that the thing which had shaped his youth, his anger, his distance, had never been what he thought it was. That he’d failed to grasp what lay behind the curtains.

At the end of the corridor stood the double doors to his parents’ bedroom—ancient, lacquered wood engraved with the sigil of House Varil. Always closed. Always private.

He felt his mother’s presence before he saw her.

“Ark.”

Her voice was firm, composed—the same voice that had shaped half his childhood. But this morning, the edge was unmistakable.

“Don’t,” she said, barricading the door. “Your father doesn’t want you to see him like this.”

He looked at her then, really looked at the lines around her eyes. The edge of fatigue that neither makeup nor glamour could hide. She couldn’t even hold his gaze for more than a second.

The truth clicked into place.

Ark thought of every missed visit. Every deflection in their correspondence. Every carefully chosen word from Orlen or his mother. He thought of his father, absent from every dinner, every holiday, every moment that might’ve mattered, including his graduations. He’d believed the implications: the Daemar was simply too busy. The Regency Council required his full attention. There simply hadn’t been time for his sons.

“I need to see him,” Ark said.

His mother touched his arm. “He doesn’t want to hurt you with the truth.”

He stared at the hand on his sleeve, then his eyes found hers. “What do you think this lie is doing to me?”

She didn’t answer. Her lashes lowered, and for a flicker of a second, the mask she always wore slipped. He saw, for the first time, not just the Daemaris, but a woman who had shouldered a solitary watch for years.

“He had . . . a difficult night,” she murmured. “I called the physician. Your father has just fallen asleep⁠—”

“I won’t wake him.” Ark’s voice was softer now. “I just want to see him.”

His mother hesitated, then gave a small nod. “Come into the sitting room when you’re finished. The physician’s still here. I’ll ask him to wait. You’ll have questions, I’m sure.”