The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort-Chapter 605: The Family of Wolves (4)

The barracks lanterns guttered low as Cerys whispered the command. Fresh chill swept the hall, stirring dust off rafters and making the torch-flames bow like servants before old kings.

"Inheritance protocol," she said again, voice steady despite the prickle running the length of her spine.

A pulse raced across the flagstones. Lines of pale azure split the floor into a rosette of sigils—family crests interlocking like linked shields. Each ring of light rose into a misty pillar, shaping itself into figures clad in bygone plate and chain. Where a heartbeat earlier there had been emptiness, now stood a semicircle of Arundel legends.

Their colors were muted, like moonlight on tarnished silver, yet details remained sharp: frayed surcoats stiff with ghost-blood, greaves dented by claws, helms etched with prayer runes. Eyes the color of cold embers fixed on her as though distance, death, and years were trivial inconveniences.

Sir Darion, the First Wolf-Knight, strode forward, sorrel beard braided with iron rings. His voice rolled like gravel down a mountain.

"Why this modern frippery in your arms, child?"

His gaze raked her steel-alloy guard plates, the light composite greaves. "Where is true wolfsteel?"

Cerys tightened her grip on her sword. "Wolfsteel is scarce, Sir Darion. I wield what our smiths can forge today. Steel does not define an Arundel—will does."

A dismissive snort echoed.

Next to him, Dame Ysolde materialized—helm under one arm, scar cleaving brow to cheek. She eyed Cerys’s practical ponytail, strands escaping the leather cord.

"Your hair is wrong," Ysolde said, tone as clipped as a drill sergeant’s. "That loose braid betrays your form. A true knight tucks weakness away."

Cerys inhaled through her nose, feeling heat rise. "This braid keeps sweat off my eyes and doesn’t snag under a helm. If it moves, the head beneath has already moved first."

The dame’s lips quirked, half approval, half doubt.

Baron Thane, battle-standard slung across his back, stepped in. His bulk filled the air like a siege tower.

"You court politicians," he rumbled, "rather than honor codes. Feasts, treaties, and soft words—are these your tournaments?"

She could almost smell the iron of his shield, polished though criss-crossed with scar gouges.

"Politics are weapons," she answered. "I wield them to guard the border you died defending."

He folded thick arms, weight shifting as though unsatisfied.

Then Marcelline, archivist-commander of the third age, glided from the line. Her mail was lighter, her fingers ink-stained even in spectral form. "You ally with a foreign prince," she said, voice gentle yet stern. "Neglecting your house’s pledge. Why trust those outside our blood?"

The words cut deeper than any mace. Cerys’s jaw tensed. A fleeting image of Mikhailis laughing over broken circuits flashed before her.

"Because the world’s grown too wide for one house alone," she replied. "And because he kept his word when many here would not."

Marcelline’s brow lifted, studying, measuring.

One by one they questioned and criticized, each striking a hidden seam. Cerys parried words as surely as she parried blades: defending her leather-reinforced grips, her choice of patrol routes, her refusal to marry for alliance. Yet with each answer her breathing grew shorter, her knuckles whiter. It was like sparring while chained to memories—every block slowed by the weight of expectation.

Finally the ranks parted, and Matron Avaline emerged—her mother’s mother, the last shield-bearer to hold the northern pass. Avaline’s features were kinder, yet her gaze held storms. She carried no weapon; her authority needed none.

Avaline extended an incorporeal hand, brushing Cerys’s cheek without touch. "What will your legacy be, child," she asked softly, "if you win no allies?"

The hall fell silent but for torches guttering. The question seemed to reverberate against every stone rib of the vault.

Legacy. Allies. Cerys felt the word settle on her shoulders with the full weight of her house’s pennants.

She lowered herself to one knee, palm pressed against the glowing runes. Stone felt warm as a living pulse, humming with ancestral pride... or accusation, she couldn’t decide.

"I will be my own champion," she said, voice steady yet raw. "And I will earn allies who choose me, not chain me. That is enough."

Avaline regarded her. For a heartbeat Cerys feared condemnation—then the matron’s lips curved, almost invisible. The hologram bowed its head and, like dust caught by a sudden breeze, dispersed into glittering motes.

One by one the others followed, specters unraveling until only Sir Darion remained. The old knight touched two fingers to his helm in a soldier’s salute before his outline broke apart, the shimmer sinking back into the floor runes. Light drained from the sigils, leaving plain stone once more.

Cerys remained kneeling, chest rising and falling, the hush now cavernous. Shadows crept longer, wrapping the pillars like mourning cloth.

"Rodion," she whispered at last, throat tight, "shut down all holograms."

Sigil sparks winked out. The only glow left came from her visor’s faint interface. Silence pressed close, intimate.

She stood too quickly; her legs trembled. Stars pricked her vision. She forced steady breaths—four in, six out—until the room quit spinning. The torches seemed to bow in solemn respect, their light gentler now.

Boots scuffed as she strode across the arena, cloak swishing over stone. She passed racks of practice spears, each haft carved with the crest of campaigns long past. Dust lay thick; few squires used this deep hall anymore. In that abandonment she felt seen, oddly comforted.

A narrow side passage waited behind a half-collapsed tapestry—her father thought it sealed. She ducked through, brushing aside moth-eaten cloth to reveal a torch she kept hidden. A tinder spark, a puff of breath, and muted flame bloomed, painting limestone walls with fresh gold.

The corridor angled downward, older than the barracks above. Here the air smelled of parchment, oil, and the sweet rot of time. Her footsteps echoed off vaulted ceilings just high enough to discourage spiders.

At a corroded bronze door she paused, tracing the relief: two wolves intertwined, staring at a single star. With a grunt she shoved. Hinges screamed but obeyed, dust billowing in dry clouds.

The Arundel archives greeted her like a frozen forest: shelves of cedar warped by centuries, parchment scrolls bound with faded ribbon, stacks of ledger tablets stamped with obsolete math sigils. Cobwebs draped in gauzy curtains. The air tasted of long-kept secrets.

She lifted her torch high. Tiny motes danced in the beam like snowflakes. Her eyes adjusted, cataloging rows by instinct: battle reports, marriage contracts, crop tithe logs. Far back a stone chest crouched under a ragged wolf pelt.

She knelt, pried the lid. Dry hinges shed flakes of rust. Inside waited scroll tubes sealed with wax as pale as bone. Titles penned in archaic shorthand: Duello Arundelis — Codex Primus. Ghost Clause Addendum. Pre-Unification Challenge Rites.

Her pulse quickened. She selected a thin parchment, untied brittle twine, and unrolled it with patient care. Spidery runes crawled across the page, illuminated every few lines by sketches of crossed blades.

Clause XVII-b caught her eye. She traced the words aloud, roughening them to modern tongue.

"’When bloodline faces coercion, the Lady may name a champion unseen—that champion may fight in her shadow, their face unspecified, provided a royal archivist’s seal confirms intent.’"

A loophole, hidden for ages, forgotten like coins between stones.

Hope sparked and chilled in the same breath. A ghost champion—someone else could bear the danger. She imagined Mikhailis smiling, offering to wear a hooded helm for her. She imagined Elowen’s gentle refusal, the queen’s concern. They would help. They would sign.

She exhaled sharply, parchment crinkling. Dependence. Chains again—only braided from affection instead of politics. No.

She reread the clause. Royal archivist’s seal. In Silvarion that meant one of two people: the Queen... or her prince.

Her hand curled into a fist, parchment crackling. Autonomy or safety—always the same forked road. She folded the scroll, pleats crisp, then slipped it under the cuirass plates snug against her heart.

"I will forge my own code," she murmured, words echoing off dusty shelves. "No ghost needed."

She stood, forcing her spine star-straight. Fingers brushed the wolf pelt atop the chest—rough, old, loyal. Its faded eyes seemed to approve.

Extinguishing the torch, she let darkness embrace the archive. Only the faint gleam of her visor remained, a single floating star guiding her back up the secret corridor. Stone sighed beneath her boots, the house feeling less like a tomb, more like a forge.

She would temper herself here, in the silence between ancestors and the world above. Let courts conspire. Let Aldric sharpen slurs into spears. She would emerge carrying a code no one could bend.

Instead she folded the parchment and stashed it in her breastplate. She would forge her own code—no ghost needed. She would become her own champion.

The source of this c𝓸ntent is fr(e)𝒆novelkiss