hapter 42 Fraying Blood Ties
No sooner had he finished yelling than Daisy and several servants hurried over.
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“Since you dote on Daisy the most, why not let her tend your wounds?” Sadie asked, a half–smile ghosting across her lips. “Come, Alex. Let’s go.”
She slipped an arm beneath Alexander’s and helped him rise. Though he limped badly, he still managed a peacock strut, flaunting the azure ribbon she had knotted around his injured leg as though it were a medal and the whole world his parade ground.
“I offered you a chance to come back!” Neville called after her, eyes bright with sudden tears. “You turned it down. Don’t you dare regret it later!”
Sadie did not so much as pause..
Defeated, Neville turned to Daisy. “Would you mind bandaging me, Daisy?”
Daisy remained silent.
Neville’s wounds were not as grave as Alexander’s, yet the long scrape along his left calf bled freely, grime clinging to torn flesh in a sight almost nauseating.
Daisy wore a newly tailored gown that had cost a fair bit of silver. She had no intention of soiling it.
Besides, Neville had proven disappointingly useless, unable even to best Alexander or seize the champion’s
banner.
From her vantage beyond the training field, Daisy had witnessed everything–and she remembered that even the venerable general had not spared Neville so much as a passing glance.
He can’t win me glory or profit, yet he dares expect me to sacrifice for him. When has the world ever offered such a cheap exchange?
Forcing a brittle smile, Daisy said, “I’d love to dress your wound as well, but the sight of blood makes me a little faint, Neville…” The sentence trailed off as her eyes rolled back, and she crumpled onto the flagstones. With Neville already injured, the Francis brothers now had two patients on their hands and no idea which way to turn, so they beat a flustered retreat from Flora Park in something close to disorder.
Meanwhile, Sadie and the rest had already climbed into a carriage and were rumbling back toward the Gates Estate.
“Please be at ease, Lady Talulla,” the resident physician said after replacing the dressings. “Mr. Alexander has suffered no lasting harm. Give him a month or two of quiet rest, and he will be completely healed, with no after–effects at all.”
Propped against a mound of cushions, Alexander kept the pennant he had won that afternoon standing proudly at the head of the bed. Grease shone on his fingers as he tackled a drumstick. “Told you I’m fine, Grandmother–no need to make a federal case of it,” he mumbled through a mouthful of meat. Talulla merely glared, then instructed the maids to watch over him as though he were incredibly fragile.
Sadie trusted no one else with the task. Driven by guilt, she saw to Alexander’s every need herself until the servants could do little more than hover at the threshold.
Midnight came and went before Alexander finally drifted off. Sadie smoothed the blanket one last time. then slipped quietly from the room.
13:37 Thu, 14 Aug O
Chapter 42 Fraying Blood Ties
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She had just reached the courtyard when she noticed a solitary figure beneath a tree. Moonlight pooled like water, branches cast restless shadows, and pale petals fell in silence, like spring snow. In that ghostly shower stood a young man, hands clasped behind him, the scarlet silk of his robe setting off refined features. Yet winter lived in his eyes–a keen, blade–thin chill that warned any who came too close.
Lowering her gaze. Sadie offered him a silent curtsey.
“I was wrong.” Sadie said softly, forcing herself to meet that glacial stare. “I never should have urged Alex to enter the martial trials. If he had stayed away, he would not be lying wounded now.”
Zephyr’s eyes grew colder still. “You used him as a cudgel against Neville. What exactly were you plotting?”
“I never imagined the tower would fall,” Sadie whispered, her nails biting into her palms.
In the previous life, Skyreach Tower stood firm. How could it collapse the very moment Alex joined the contest?
“Fool,” Zephyr said, his voice like ice cracking across a lake. “Do you think you alone know his talent? Do you think you alone wish to see him rise above a wasted life?”
The rebuke startled her. She lifted her head, alert to a deeper implication woven through his words.
Everyone in the Gates Estate knew Alexander possessed a rare gift for horsemanship and archery, yet an invisible chain kept him from seeking a soldier’s commission. Sadie’s thoughts flashed to the humiliation. Zephyr had suffered at Cranesong Academy and, in the same heartbeat, to the memory of another lifetime in which he had raised an army of his own and turned it against the throne.
Sadie’s brows drew together. “Does someone plan to turn their knives on the whole Gates family?”
His not only Zephyr and Alexander they wish to crush. The real quarry is the entire family. Then the beam that snapped at Aureum Delicacies last spring might not have been an accident at all. Someone wants the Gates line to end, so Zephyr intentionally made Alexander a useless fool to lull that enemy to sleep. Could it be the Emperor himself? I have stumbled into knowledge I was never meant to possess.
Petals of blossom drifted like fresh snow.
Zephyr watched the girl from a short distance, his thumb settling in silence on the hilt at his waist.
Moonlight skimmed the blade as it slipped half an inch free, throwing a fierce shard of light into Sadie’s
eyes.
She tasted the cold promise of death. To him, she was the one loose thread in the Gates Estate, and he imtended to sever it.
“Zephyr!” Alexander’s voice cut through the night.
Roused by their raised voices, Alexander levered himself into the corridor on his cane.
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