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Midnight had teeth in the de Valois estate.

Anna pressed herself against the corridor wall, counting seconds between guard rotations, her heart beating so hard she was certain it would give her away. The Duke's private wing was exactly three hundred forty-seven steps from her bedroom. She had measured it twice during daylight hours, memorizing every corner, every portrait, every creaking floorboard that might betray her presence.

The council meeting had started at eleven. She had two hours before the Duke returned.

The library door was unlocked, which should have been reassuring but only made her more nervous. Unlocked meant the Duke felt no need for physical barriers. His reputation and cruelty were security enough.

Anna slipped inside and closed the door with trembling fingers.

The library was smaller than she expected, lined floor to ceiling with leather-bound volumes that smelled of old paper and expensive tobacco. A single window let in moonlight that painted everything in shades of silver and shadow. The desk dominated the center of the room, its surface meticulously organized with correspondence stacked by priority.

Anna forced herself to breathe slowly. The game's lore had been specific: Behind The Imperial Charter, Third Edition, in the southeast corner, there is a hidden compartment containing documents the Duke would kill to protect.

Southeast corner. Third shelf from the bottom. She ran her fingers along the spines, reading titles by moonlight.

The Imperial Charter, First Edition. Second Edition.

Her fingers stopped on a spine embossed with faded gold lettering: The Imperial Charter, Third Edition.

Anna pulled the volume free and nearly dropped it when the shelf mechanism clicked. A section of the wall swung inward with the whisper of well-oiled hinges, revealing a compartment no larger than a hatbox.

Inside was a single ledger, bound in black leather.

Her hands shook as she lifted it free and opened to the first page. The handwriting was the Duke's, meticulous and cold. What she found inside made her blood run cold for entirely different reasons.

It was not just bribery. The ledger detailed a network of illegal activities spanning a decade: embezzlement from the imperial treasury, blackmail of court officials, falsified trade agreements that enriched House de Valois while starving border towns. Names, dates, amounts. Everything documented with the precision of a man who never expected to be caught.

And near the end, one entry that made her stomach drop: Payment to the Eastern Temple: 50,000 gold crowns for the procurement and preparation of the replacement child.

Replacement child. Anna.

Emily de Valois had not been adopted out of charity. She had been purchased and positioned as a placeholder for Jennifer. A temporary daughter, disposable once the real heir returned.

This cannot be real, Anna thought, but the evidence was there in the Duke's own hand.

She could not take the original. Its absence would be noticed immediately. But she had come prepared.

Anna pulled paper and pencil from her pocket and began copying entries with the speed born of seven years transcribing research notes in dim library corners. Her hand cramped. Her back ached. The moonlight shifted across the desk as minutes bled into an hour.

She copied everything relevant: the treasury fraud, the blackmail network, the falsified trade agreements. Most importantly, she copied the payment record that proved Emily's adoption was a purchased transaction.

Leverage. This was leverage.

Anna replaced the ledger carefully, closed the compartment, and returned The Imperial Charter to its position on the shelf. The mechanism clicked shut with a sound that seemed impossibly loud in the silence.

She had just reached for the door handle when footsteps echoed in the corridor outside.

Anna's heart stopped. The council meeting should not be over for another thirty minutes. She glanced frantically around the library, searching for hiding places. Behind the desk? Too obvious. The window? Three stories up with guards below.

The footsteps grew closer. Two sets, she realized. Two people moving with purpose toward the library.

"I told you the meeting would be pointless," Dorian's voice, clipped and irritated. "The Duke has already made his decision about the Hunt. He is sending Emily as a political pawn."

"Which makes no sense." Robert's voice, slurred slightly with wine. "Since when does Father care about courting Prince Richard's favor?"

The door handle began to turn.

Anna did the only thing she could. She dropped to her knees behind the large leather chair facing the fireplace, pressed herself into the smallest possible shape, and prayed that neither brother needed to actually sit in that particular seat.

The door opened. Light from the corridor spilled across the floor, and Anna held her breath so tightly her lungs burned.

"You see?" Dorian said. "Empty. You are being paranoid."

"I saw a shadow move." Robert's footsteps entered the room, moving closer to her hiding spot.

Anna's fingers tightened around the folded papers in her pocket. If they found her here, in the Duke's private library after midnight with copied evidence of his crimes, no amount of clever dialogue would save her.

"You saw your own reflection in the window," Dorian said with barely concealed contempt. "Now come. I have work to finish before morning."

"Fine. But I am telling you, something about Emily is wrong. She is too different, too controlled. It is as if she became an entirely different person overnight."

"People do not become different people, Robert. They simply reveal what they were hiding all along."

The door closed. Their footsteps receded down the corridor.

Anna counted to one hundred before she moved. Then another hundred before she stood. Her legs were numb from kneeling, and her hands would not stop shaking.

The system chimed, startling her so badly she nearly cried out.

QUEST COMPLETE: Acquire the Duke's Ledger Reward: +10 Intelligence, +5 Wisdom NEW ITEM: Copied Ledger Entries (Blackmail Material) WARNING: Dorian de Valois is investigating you

Anna pressed her forehead against the cool wood of the door. She had survived. She had the leverage she needed. But Dorian's suspicions were no longer theoretical. They were active, and active suspicions led to active investigation.

The ledger had bought her a weapon, but her eldest brother had just become an immediate threat.

She slipped back into the corridor, back through the measured three hundred forty-seven steps to her room, and did not feel safe until the lock clicked shut behind her bedroom door.

Then, and only then, did she allow herself to collapse against the wall and shake.