SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant Chapter 889: The Cup

Vaelis said nothing. For several seconds, Trafalgar wondered whether he had decided to ignore the question entirely. Until now, the First Heir had answered everything put in front of him, sometimes directly and sometimes with enough distance to avoid giving more than necessary.

This was different. Trafalgar watched him without speaking. After so much time around nobles, commanders and people who survived by choosing every word carefully, he had become good at recognizing patterns. Not at reading minds, but at knowing when someone had decided silence was safer than an answer.

Vaelis was doing exactly that. Conversations like this had become exhausting over the years because words were rarely just words around people with power. A careless sentence could become evidence, a promise or an admission depending on who repeated it later.

Trafalgar waited until Vaelis finally looked at him again.

"How much do you actually know?" His voice was calm, but the question was sharper than anything else he had said since Trafalgar entered the room. "You don't sound like an observer anymore."

Trafalgar held his gaze. "Are you going to imprison me for that?"

"If I intended to, I would've done it already. Answer the question."

Vaelis had already answered more than Trafalgar expected, and if he wanted the man to keep talking, he would have to give something back.

"A lot," Trafalgar said. "More than I probably should. I was asked to look into what happened here, so I did."

Vaelis didn't interrupt.

"I know you removed those pages from the archive." Trafalgar kept his voice even. "But I don't think you did it to protect yourself."

Something shifted in Vaelis's expression. His eyes moved toward the fountain for a moment before returning to Trafalgar, and when he spoke again his voice had lost some of its earlier firmness.

"I found out too late."

Trafalgar stayed quiet, and Vaelis continued.

"Meer prepared something for my mother every evening. Medicine, tonic, wine. The name changed depending on what he claimed she needed." Vaelis spoke almost mechanically. "She drank it for months."

Trafalgar thought of the medical entries again. Fatigue, tremors, loss of appetite, a woman growing weaker while everyone around her called it illness.

"Did she know?"

"I think she understood near the end. Maybe not everything, but enough." Vaelis looked down at his hands. "By then, there was nothing she could do."

He was quiet for a moment before adding, "Meer wasn't the one who carried it into her room."

Trafalgar already knew the answer to the next question would explain the missing pages.

"Who did?"

Vaelis took longer this time.

"Ilyra."

Trafalgar frowned. "Your youngest sister?"

Vaelis nodded once before continuing. "She carried the cup to my mother every night. Meer would prepare it, and Ilyra would take it in. My mother always had a softer side for her. She trusted her in a way she didn't trust most people in that house."

He looked away again. "Ilyra liked doing it. She was eleven. She thought our mother asking for her instead of a servant meant it was something special between them."

Trafalgar didn't answer immediately. The missing attendance pages finally made sense.

Family members were not recorded the same way as ordinary visitors, but the people around them were. Meer appearing at the same times, servants coming and going, guards on the landing. Enough days together would show the routine even if Ilyra's own name wasn't written every night.

"Does she know?"

"No."

The answer came immediately.

"She doesn't know what she was carrying?"

"No."

"And you're keeping it that way."

Vaelis's expression hardened for the first time. "Yes."

Everything Trafalgar had found in the archive fell into place. The strange gaps, the blocks of missing days, the untouched medical records and the fact that whoever removed the pages had never tried to erase Nyssara's decline.

"You removed the attendance pages."

"The ones I could find."

That explained why the gaps were incomplete. Vaelis had not cleaned the entire archive. He had removed enough to break the pattern before anyone else noticed it.

"The medical records never named Ilyra," Trafalgar said.

"No."

"So you had no reason to take them."

Trafalgar thought about the last two years. Every accusation, every meeting, every person who had looked at Vaelis and seen a man who murdered his mother for a seat.

"You let everyone believe it was you."

Vaelis's face barely moved. "Clearing my name would've put hers in its place."

"She didn't know what she was doing."

"I know that." His voice lowered. "You know that now. Do you think everyone else would care?"

Trafalgar had no answer, and Vaelis continued.

"She was a child. She still is. Someone used her because my mother trusted her, and because nobody questions a girl carrying a cup to her mother's room."

There was no anger in the way he said it. He sounded tired, as though he had repeated these facts in his own head so many times there was nothing left to add.

"I won't let her grow up believing she killed our mother."

Trafalgar understood why Vaelis had agreed to see him so quickly. Maybe he had been waiting for someone to ask the right question, or maybe carrying it alone had finally become useless.

Either way, Trafalgar had the truth now, or at least the part Vaelis knew.

"So Ilyra didn't kill Nyssara. Someone used her."

"Yes."

"Meer?"

"Meer prepared what she carried." Vaelis met his eyes. "That doesn't mean he was the one who decided she should carry it."

Trafalgar thought of the warehouse, the Tide authorisations and the material Rhosyn had recovered. There was still someone above Meer, someone who had arranged the pieces and left local hands to do the rest.

Vaelis stepped away from the window. "If what you've found can lead you to that person, then do it. Find whoever used my sister."

Trafalgar nodded once, but Vaelis was already looking toward the door.

"That's all I'm going to tell you. Leave."

Trafalgar didn't argue. Pushing further would only make Vaelis close himself off again, and he already had more than anyone in Meraval had managed to get from him in two years.

He left the room and walked into the corridor alone.