By the time the sun rose the following morning, there was no corner of the castle left untouched by what had happened in that guest chamber the night before.
Servants who had heard the commotion whispered it to other servants over the morning’s first fires.
Those servants whispered it to the delegations still packing for departure.
By midmorning, the story had traveled through every level of the household, growing small, cruel embellishments with each retelling, until Rachel could barely recognize the original truth beneath the accumulated gossip.
By the kitchens, the story had already grown to suggest Liora had screamed the castle awake, that Cassian had struck her, that Lady Cressida had laughed openly in her face.
None of it was true, but each fresh embellishment traveled faster and further than any of Rachel’s own quiet corrections could hope to catch up with.
She found herself, more than once that morning, biting back the urge to correct some servant’s whispered version of events, understanding that doing so would only confirm the gossip’s essential truth while failing entirely to slow its spread.
Ida found her early, her own face drawn with worry.
“Is it true, my lady?” she asked quietly, setting down a breakfast tray neither Rachel nor Liora had any appetite for.
“What they’re saying about the queen?”
“Some of it,” Rachel said carefully.
“Not all of it, I’m certain. But enough.”
Ida’s face fell, real sympathy plain in her expression.
“That poor woman,” she murmured.
“As if she hasn’t carried enough already, with everything the council keeps whispering about children and succession.”
“Please,” Rachel said, “if you hear anyone repeating cruel speculation, correct them where you can. She doesn’t deserve to be blamed for choices that were never hers to make.”
“I’ll do what I can, my lady,” Ida promised, though something in her tone suggested she understood, as clearly as Rachel did, how little difference a single maid’s quiet corrections could make against a story this juicy already spreading through every level of the household.
She found Liora exactly where she’d left her hours before, curled in the same chair in Rachel and Rex’s chambers where she’d finally cried herself into an exhausted, fitful sleep sometime before dawn.
Rachel had stayed beside her the entire night, unwilling to leave her friend alone with grief this raw, and now, watching Liora wake slowly to the same devastating reality that had greeted her hours before, Rachel felt her own heart breaking freshly all over again.
“Is it still true?” Liora asked, her voice hoarse and small, before she’d even fully opened her eyes.
“I kept hoping I’d wake and find it was only a nightmare.”
“I’m so sorry,” Rachel said softly, and the answer, gentle as it was, seemed to confirm everything Liora had already known.
Liora sat up slowly, wincing at the stiffness of having slept curled in an unfamiliar chair, her eyes red and swollen from hours of weeping.
She stared at nothing in particular for a long moment before speaking again.
“I keep replaying it,” she admitted.
“The sound before I even opened the door. I think some part of me already knew, standing there in the corridor. I think I opened it anyway simply because I couldn’t bear not knowing for certain any longer.”
“You don’t have to talk about it, if you’re not ready,” Rachel said gently.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready,” Liora said.
“But I find I need to say it aloud regardless, or it feels like it might simply consume me from the inside, left unspoken.” She wrapped her arms around herself, something small and lost in the gesture.
“I saw her face, Rachel. Lady Cressida’s face, when she realized I was standing there. She didn’t look ashamed. She looked almost amused, as though catching her in such a moment was somehow my own failure to manage, rather than anything she or Cassian had done wrong.”
Rachel felt fresh fury rise at that detail, imagining the particular cruelty of being met with amusement rather than remorse in a moment of such raw devastation.
“That says everything about her character, and nothing at all about yours,” she said firmly.
Cassian, for his part, showed remarkably little visible remorse in the hours that followed.
He appeared at the midday council session as though nothing at all had occurred, addressing matters of state with his usual composed authority, offering no public acknowledgment of the scandal now spreading through his own household like wildfire.
Several council members exchanged uneasy glances throughout the session, clearly aware of the scandal but unwilling to address it directly in formal proceedings.
Only Nerissa spoke plainly of it afterward, catching Rachel in the corridor as the council dispersed.
“He sat through that entire session as though discussing trade tariffs mattered more than his own wife’s devastation,” Nerissa said, something disgusted in her tone.
“I have rarely seen such casual disregard from a man who once seemed to genuinely love his marriage.”
“Do you think he still does?” Rachel asked, genuinely uncertain.
“Love her, I mean. Beneath all of this.”
Nerissa considered the question seriously, something unusually thoughtful crossing her sharp features.
“I think he does,” she said finally.
“Poorly, and with considerably less courage than love properly requires. But love badly expressed is not the same as love absent entirely. Whether that distinction offers Liora any real comfort is another matter altogether.”
“He hasn’t come to see her,” Rachel told Rex, disbelief plain in her voice, later that afternoon.
“Not once, since it happened. He simply carries on as though nothing occurred at all.”
“I intend to speak with him now,” Rex said, something cold and furious settling into his expression, the particular fury Rachel recognized from the night of the bandit attack, when nothing short of violence had seemed capable of expressing what he felt.
“Whatever composure he’s managing to perform for the council, he owes his wife considerably more than silence.”
They found Cassian in his study, and Rachel noted, with fresh disgust, that Lady Cressida’s presence had somehow already resumed its familiar place near his desk, the two of them apparently continuing some minor discussion of trade matters as though the previous night had changed nothing between them at all.
“Leave us,” Rex said to Lady Cressida, his voice carrying an authority that left no room for argument.
Lady Cressida rose slowly, something almost amused in her expression rather than any hint of shame.
“Of course, Your Highness,” she said smoothly.
“Though I confess I don’t fully understand the fuss. Marriages weather far worse than this, in courts considerably more sophisticated than yours seems to be.”
The casual cruelty of the observation landed like a slap, and Rachel felt her own temper flare sharp and immediate.
“You humiliated a woman in her own household, in front of an entire visiting court,” she said, unable to hold her tongue.
“I would think even your own sophisticated court might recognize that as considerably more than a minor fuss.”
Something flickered behind Lady Cressida’s composed features — not remorse, Rachel noted, but simple irritation at being challenged.
“Princess Rachel,” she said, something coolly dismissive entering her tone now.
“How touching, your loyalty to a woman who apparently cannot even provide her own husband an heir. Perhaps some marriages simply require… supplementing.”
“You speak of her as though she were a broken tool rather than a person,” Rachel said, fury sharpening every word now.
“Whatever grievances you imagine excuse your conduct, I promise you, they do not.”
“Grievances,” Lady Cressida repeated, something almost bored in her tone now, as though the entire confrontation bored her more than troubled her.
“I offered a distracted king a pleasant evening’s company. If your court chooses to treat that as scandal worthy of such dramatic confrontation, that reflects rather poorly on how little genuine excitement this household otherwise offers.”
The words hung in the air, vicious and deliberate, and Rachel watched Rex’s expression darken further, though it was Cassian who finally spoke, something sharp entering his own voice for the first time since the confrontation began.
“That is enough,” he said to Lady Cressida, though the rebuke felt hollow, arriving only now, only in response to her cruelty toward Liora rather than any recognition of his own betrayal. The source of this chapter is novelping(.)com.
“Enough,” Rex repeated, something disbelieving in his tone.
“You defend her honor now, after everything, while your own wife sits somewhere in this castle grieving a marriage you’ve apparently decided requires no explanation from you at all?”
“What would you have me say?” Cassian asked, something defensive rising in his own voice now.
“That I made a mistake? I know that already. I don’t require you lecturing me on a failure I am already fully aware of.”
“Awareness is not the same as accountability,” Rachel said sharply.
“You have not gone to her. You have not apologized. You continue meeting with the woman who humiliated her, as though nothing at all requires addressing beyond your own convenience.”
Cassian’s jaw tightened, something caught between shame and stubborn defensiveness warring visibly across his features.
“I don’t know what to say to her,” he admitted finally, quieter now.
“Every word I might offer feels insufficient against what she witnessed. I find it easier, some cowardly part of me, to simply avoid the conversation entirely rather than face how thoroughly I’ve failed her.”
“That cowardice is precisely the problem,” Rex said.
“Liora deserves your presence, whatever discomfort that presence costs you. Hiding behind council business and continued meetings with the woman who wronged her is not simply insufficient, Cassian. It is cruel.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Cassian’s composure finally cracked fully, something raw and wretched surfacing beneath his earlier defensiveness.
“I have replayed last night a hundred times already. Her face, when she opened that door. I don’t know how to look at her again without seeing that exact moment reflected back at me. I am not avoiding her out of indifference, Rex. I am avoiding her because I am ashamed beyond anything I know how to properly express.”
“Then find the words regardless,” Rex said, something slightly gentler entering his tone now, though the disappointment remained plain.
“Shame that keeps you from her serves no one, least of all the woman actually suffering because of your choices.”
Cassian sank into his chair, something utterly defeated in his posture now that Lady Cressida had finally departed the room.
“I have spent this entire day trying to understand how I arrived back here,” he admitted.
“After everything we promised each other, after the lake house, after truly believing I had finally learned to choose her properly. I don’t have a satisfying answer, Rex. I simply know that whatever weakness allowed this to happen once clearly remains present in me, waiting for the next moment of pressure to resurface again.”
Rachel studied Cassian carefully, some old compassion warring with her lingering anger at him.
“Have you considered,” she asked, “that the weakness itself might be worth examining honestly, rather than simply managing around it? Whatever pressure your uncle applies, whatever this crown demands, other men carry similar burdens without betraying the people who love them.”
“I have considered little else these past two days,” Cassian admitted quietly.
“I don’t yet have an answer I trust enough to offer you, or Liora, or even myself.”
“Then you must confront that weakness directly,” Rex said, “rather than simply hoping circumstances improve enough that it never surfaces again. Whatever pressure our uncle applies, whatever burden this crown demands, you cannot continue treating your marriage as something that survives only when convenient rather than something requiring constant, deliberate choosing.”
“I know,” Cassian said quietly.
“I simply don’t know, anymore, whether I’m capable of the constancy she deserves. Perhaps some men are simply built for easier arrangements than the kind of marriage she wants, and deserves.”
“That is precisely the kind of excuse that got you here in the first place,” Rex said sharply.
“You are not incapable of constancy, Cassian. You have simply chosen, twice now, to avoid the harder work constancy requires. Those are entirely different things, and I would ask you not to confuse them further, particularly not to Liora, should you ever find the courage to speak with her honestly.”
Lady Cressida, still lingering near the doorway despite the clear dismissal, offered one final, cutting observation before finally departing.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “perhaps this simply proves what half this court has already whispered — that a woman who cannot secure the succession has little grounds to complain when her husband seeks comfort elsewhere.”
She left before anyone could respond, the door closing softly behind her, and Rachel found herself shaking with barely contained fury at the sheer casual venom of the parting shot.
It was Halric who arrived next, summoned, Rachel suspected, by word of the confrontation already spreading through the castle’s upper halls.
He entered without knocking, his expression carrying none of the concern Rachel might have hoped for, given the circumstances.
“I have heard the full account,” Halric said, settling into a chair uninvited, something maddeningly composed in his demeanor.
“A regrettable situation, certainly. Though perhaps, if I may offer some perspective, not entirely without understandable cause.”
“Understandable cause,” Rachel repeated, disbelief sharpening her voice.
“Three years married, and still no heir,” Halric said, as though the observation alone explained and excused everything that had happened.
“A king under that particular pressure, faced with a wife who cannot resolve it, might reasonably seek comfort where comfort presents itself. I do not say this to excuse infidelity outright. Only to suggest that Liora’s own circumstances bear some consideration in how harshly this situation is ultimately judged.”
Rex’s expression went dangerously still.
“You are suggesting my brother’s betrayal is somehow Liora’s fault, for a matter of fertility entirely outside her control.”
“I am suggesting,” Halric said, unbothered by the fury plainly building in his nephew’s expression, “that Liora would be wise to accept this quietly, without further scandal, given her own position’s precariousness. A wife who cannot provide an heir and causes public scenes over her husband’s understandable frustrations does her own standing no favors whatsoever.”
“You believe she should simply be quiet,” Rachel said, her own voice shaking now with barely contained fury.
“Suffer this humiliation silently, so as not to inconvenience the man who caused it.”
“I believe,” Halric said, turning his careful attention to Rachel now, “that a court which watches its queen create public scenes over private failures will lose confidence considerably faster than one that observes quiet, dignified resilience. Whatever your personal sympathies, Princess, practical politics rarely rewards emotional displays, however justified they might feel in the moment.”
“Her grief is not a political inconvenience,” Rachel said.
“It is the entirely reasonable response to genuine betrayal. I would think, after everything this family has weathered this past year, you might finally understand the difference between practical stability and simple cruelty dressed up as pragmatism.”
“Get out,” Rex said, his voice low and dangerous.
“Before I say something considerably less measured than that instruction.”
Halric rose slowly, entirely unrepentant.
“I only wish to see this matter handled with discretion,” he said, “before it further embarrasses this family in front of every allied house still gossiping about it. Whatever you think of my perspective, Nephew, the practical reality remains the same. Discretion serves everyone better than public scandal.”
“The only embarrassment in this situation belongs to Cassian, and to the woman who so casually humiliated his wife,” Rex said.
“Not to Liora, whatever fertility timeline you and half this council seem so fixated upon.”
Rachel watched Halric’s retreating back with something close to disgust, understanding fully now the particular danger this man still posed to Liora’s standing, regardless of formal contingency arrangements or careful council statements made months before.
“He hasn’t changed at all,” she said quietly, once he’d gone.
“Whatever concessions he offered during the succession dispute, this proves he remains exactly as willing to weaponize Liora’s own body against her, whenever it suits some fresh purpose.”
“I fear you’re right,” Rex said grimly.
“I intend to watch him considerably more closely going forward. Whatever damage this scandal has already done, I will not allow my uncle to compound it further with his particular brand of cruelty disguised as concern.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said quietly, “for standing so firmly beside her through all of this. It means more than you likely realize, having a brother-in-law willing to challenge his own uncle on her behalf.”
“She is family,” Rex said simply.
“Whatever else this scandal has shaken loose in this household, that fact remains entirely unchanged.”
He departed without further argument, though his words lingered heavy and poisonous in the room long after he’d gone.
“He truly believes that,” Rachel said quietly, once he’d finally left.
“That Liora bears responsibility for Cassian’s choices, simply because her body hasn’t yet done what tradition demands of it.” Visit g.com for the full chapter.
“He has always believed cruelty dressed as pragmatism,” Rex said, something exhausted and disgusted in his voice.
“I had hoped, given everything else this family has weathered this past year, that even he might have finally learned better. I see now I was foolish to hope for that.”
The gossip, meanwhile, had already begun spreading well beyond the castle’s walls.
By the following day, word had reached the nearby village, carried by departing delegation members eager to share such delicious scandal with anyone willing to listen.
Rachel heard fragments of it herself, passing through the market square on an errand — whispered speculation about the queen’s failure to provide an heir, cruel jokes about a king’s understandable wandering eye, the particular casual misogyny that always seemed to find its way into stories like this one, blaming the wronged woman as readily as the man who had wronged her.
“Barren queens rarely keep their husbands’ full attention,” she overheard one merchant’s wife say to another, entirely unaware of who stood within earshot.
“Can’t say I blame him, truly, seeking comfort where a proper heir might actually come of it.”
Rachel walked away before she said something she might later regret, her hands trembling with restrained fury at the casual, careless cruelty of strangers who understood nothing of Liora’s actual grief, nothing of the years of quiet hope and private heartbreak that had already accompanied her friend’s difficulty conceiving, long before any of this scandal had ever touched their marriage.
By the week’s end, the story had traveled even further, reaching allied territories through departing delegations eager to carry such juicy gossip home with them.
Rachel received a carefully worded letter from her own father, gently inquiring after Liora’s wellbeing, having apparently heard some garbled version of events even from his own distant kingdom.
She wrote back immediately, correcting the wilder embellishments as best she could, defending Liora’s character plainly and firmly, though she understood even as she sealed the letter that her father’s kingdom was only one of many now speculating over a scandal that had never truly been theirs to judge.
It struck her, writing that letter, how quickly private pain became public entertainment once it crossed enough borders, how little consideration anyone spared for the actual woman at the center of the story once it had become simply another piece of court gossip to trade over supper.
“They’re already deciding it was somehow her fault,” Rachel told Liora that evening, unable to fully hide her own anger at the injustice of it.
“As though infidelity requires justification rather than simple accountability.”
“I expected as much,” Liora said, something hollow and resigned in her voice now, the earlier raw grief settling into something quieter and more exhausted.
“I have watched this particular story play out in other households, growing up. The wife is always somehow responsible, however plainly the fault belongs elsewhere.”
“That doesn’t make it true,” Rachel said firmly.
“No,” Liora agreed.
“But it makes it considerably harder to bear, knowing an entire kingdom has already decided my own body’s failures excuse my husband’s choices.”
“Has he come to you yet?” Rachel asked gently.
“Since Rex and I spoke with him?”
“He came to the door last night,” Liora admitted.
“He didn’t come in. I heard him standing there a long while, and then I heard him leave again without knocking. I don’t know if that counts as trying, or simply as one more failure to actually face me properly.”
“Perhaps it’s a beginning,” Rachel offered, though she understood the small comfort of the observation offered little real solace against such fresh, raw wounds.
Lady Cressida’s own conduct in the days following the scandal did little to help matters.
Rather than departing quietly with the rest of her delegation, as propriety and simple decency might have suggested, she lingered several days longer, citing vague continued business, her presence in the castle a constant, deliberate irritant that seemed calculated to unsettle rather than smooth over the situation.
She grew sharper with the household staff during those lingering days, servants reporting small, needling cruelties — a maid scolded harshly for a minor error, a footman dismissed rudely for arriving a moment late with refreshments, small displays of superiority that seemed designed less to address genuine failings than simply to remind everyone around her of her own perceived standing.
“She’s been positively vicious to anyone she considers beneath her these past few days,” Ida reported to Rachel, something wary in her voice.
“Snapped at poor Martha in the laundry so sharply the girl was in tears half the afternoon. I don’t understand how a woman capable of causing such damage to a marriage seems to feel so little need to soften her manner afterward.”
Rachel found herself, more than once, deliberately steering clear of Lady Cressida’s path through the castle, unwilling to grant the woman further opportunity for the particular casual cruelty she seemed to deploy so effortlessly against anyone who crossed her.
When their paths did cross, in a corridor near the great hall, Lady Cressida offered only a thin, knowing smile, entirely without remorse.
“Still playing loyal defender, Princess?” she asked, something mocking in her tone.
“I confess I find it rather touching, watching you exhaust yourself on a friendship that will likely crumble regardless of your efforts. Marriages built on such fragile foundations rarely survive scandal, however fiercely their friends might wish otherwise.”
“Our friendship isn’t built on Cassian’s fidelity,” Rachel said coolly.
“It’s built on considerably sturdier ground than that. I would suggest you focus your energy on your own departure, rather than speculating on matters that no longer concern you.”
Lady Cressida’s smile thinned slightly at that, though she said nothing further, simply continuing on her way with the same unbothered confidence that had characterized every interaction Rachel had witnessed from her since the scandal broke.
Rachel reached for her friend’s hand, wishing desperately she had power enough to simply silence every cruel whisper spreading through court and village alike.
“Whatever they say,” she said, “you are not facing any of it alone. Not the gossip, not Cassian’s cowardice, not his uncle’s cruelty. I meant every promise I’ve made you this past year, and I intend to keep meaning it for as long as you need me to.”
Liora managed a small, grateful smile despite everything, though it didn’t fully reach her exhausted eyes.
“I don’t know what comes next,” she admitted.
“For my marriage, for my place in this court, for anything at all. I only know that whatever it is, I am grateful, endlessly, not to be facing it entirely alone.”
Rex found Rachel later that evening, exhaustion and lingering fury both plain in his expression after another long, largely fruitless conversation with his brother.
“I don’t know how to reach him,” he admitted, sinking into the chair beside their own fireplace.
“Every conversation ends the same way — acknowledgment without action, shame without genuine change. I begin to wonder whether words alone can accomplish anything further here.”
“Perhaps they can’t,” Rachel said.
“Perhaps this is simply a wound that requires time, and consequence, rather than more careful conversation to properly heal, or to properly end, whichever direction it ultimately takes.”
“I worry for her,” Rex admitted.
“Watching my uncle’s cruelty toward her today, watching the village already deciding where blame belongs before anyone has even properly investigated the full truth of what happened — I worry this kingdom will punish her for a betrayal that was never hers to carry.”
“Then we make certain it doesn’t,” Rachel said firmly.
“Whatever it requires. I will not stand by and watch an entire court decide my closest friend deserves blame for her husband’s choices, simply because cruelty dressed as pragmatism proves easier to accept than genuine accountability.”
Rex studied her for a long moment, something proud and grateful in his expression despite the day’s heaviness.
“I don’t know what this family would have become, this past year, without your particular fierceness standing beside us through every difficulty,” he said.
“I am endlessly grateful for it, whatever comes next.”
“You would have managed regardless,” Rachel said, though warmth bloomed in her chest at the compliment.
“You’ve all shown considerable capacity for growth this past year, whatever difficulties keep testing it. I simply hope this particular test doesn’t cost Liora and Cassian more than either of them can properly recover from.”
“So do I,” Rex said quietly, drawing her close against him.
“Whatever the coming weeks demand, I intend to make certain my brother understands exactly what stands to be lost, if he cannot find his way to genuine change this time.”
Outside, the castle continued its uneasy business, whispers still traveling corridor to corridor, village to village, and Rachel found herself, watching her friend’s fragile composure hold against a tide of cruel, undeserved blame, more determined than ever to see some measure of justice restored to a situation that had already, unfairly, decided who deserved to carry its shame.
Whatever came next — for Cassian and Liora’s marriage, for Halric’s continued maneuvering, for the gossip still spreading through every corner of two kingdoms now watching this scandal unfold with cruel, hungry interest — Rachel understood, settling finally into an exhausted sleep beside Rex that night, that the coming weeks would demand considerably more from all of them than simple careful conversation had managed to provide thus far.
She thought, drifting slowly toward sleep, of Liora’s quiet resilience these past terrible days, of her own fierce determination to see justice properly restored, of Cassian’s fractured, uncertain path back toward whatever version of accountability he might yet manage to find.
Whatever the coming weeks held, Rachel understood one thing with complete certainty — she would not allow this family’s old habits of cruelty and blame, dressed up as pragmatism, to win out over the simple, stubborn loyalty she had learned, this past extraordinary year, to give so completely to the people she loved.