The demon prince they erased

CHAPTER 8: WHAT THE HOUSE BURIED

I couldn’t sleep after what happened in the sparring hall. The counter that knocked me flat kept looping in my mind not just the sting of losing to an F-rank in front of half the year, but Ashe’s face when our blades locked. The way his jaw tightened, the tilt of his head as he looked past my guard like he was calculating something older than the both of us.

I’d seen that look before. In an oil painting, in a room my grandfather always kept locked for reasons he never bothered explaining.

“You’re up early,” my father said, catching me in the east wing before breakfast. I was still wearing yesterday’s training gear. House Ashgrave’s manor never really slept servants moved through the halls with that careful, heavy silence families learn over generations, the kind you use when noise just invites questions you don’t want answered. “Something on your mind, Corvin?”

“The gallery,” I said. “The room Grandfather kept locked.”

Something flickered across his face, quick but clear as day. “It’s just a storage room. Nothing worth your time.”

“So you won’t mind if I take a look.”

I could see he minded. That split second before he masked it the way he froze, weighing the cost of a lie. “It’s early. Eat first.”

But I didn’t eat. I waited until he left for his morning business, then found the key hidden right where it always had been: behind a false panel in his study. That patch of missing trust spoke louder than any lock. I let myself in, stepping into a space I hadn’t seen since I was little back when I still asked questions before figuring out which ones just got me sent to bed without answers.

The portraits hadn’t changed. Rows of Ashgrave ancestors stared down in formal attire: war-era commanders with medals and severe, shut mouths, all lined up facing the same direction, like a silent jury. I walked the line until I found the one I remembered. It was tucked at the end, smaller than the rest, almost forgotten. A man in dark court robes, wearing an expression that unsettled me as a kid for reasons I couldn’t put into words.

Now, I got it. That same tilt. That same sharp calculation in his eyes.

There was no nameplate. Every other portrait had one brass and proper. This one? Just empty space with screw holes where the plate should’ve gone, like it’d been ripped off, not forgotten.

“Sir?” A voice behind me. Maren, the manor’s oldest steward she’d kept the records longer than my father had been alive. She’d followed me in, and by her look, she already knew which painting caught me. “Your grandfather asked that no one enter here unsupervised.”

“Why?”

“That isn’t for me to say, Master Corvin.”

“Who is he?” I stayed in front of the portrait. “No nameplate. Every other name in here is recorded. Why isn’t his?”

Maren’s silence answered better than words could.

“There are records,” she said finally, choosing every word like it cost her. “In the archive vault, beneath the study. Ledgers from your great-great-grandfather’s time, before the current standards, during the war. I’ve catalogued them over the years.” She paused. “There’s a page missing from the war ledger. It’s been missing as long as I’ve worked here. When I asked about it once, they told me never to ask again.”

“Show me the ledger.”

“Master Corvin…” she hesitated.

“Show me.”

She led me down through the study into an archive vault I didn’t even know existed. Shelves lined with bound records stretching back centuries, so much dust you could see nobody ever came down here unless they had to. She found the war ledger right away she’d looked at it far more than her orders should’ve allowed.

The cut was direct. One page sliced out, so close to the binding you’d never notice unless you knew where to look. Maren did. Once she showed me, I couldn’t unsee it. The pages before talked troop movements and supply requests just house business during the Alliance’s final campaign. The pages after picked up mid-entry, referencing something that must’ve been on the missing page: “following the incident at the eastern courtyard.” Then, nothing. No explanation, no details. It just moved on, like whatever happened was important enough to mention, but dangerous enough to erase.

“The eastern courtyard,” I said slowly. “That’s where the execution happened. Where Draven died.”

Maren stayed silent. That alone answered plenty.

“My family was there,” I said. “At the execution.”

“Your family,” she answered carefully, “was present at many events during the war, Master Corvin. Not unusual for a house like ours.”

“It’s unusual the only page referencing it is gone.” I closed the ledger, my hands shaking just a little. “Someone cut this out on purpose. Someone with access, who knew exactly which page mattered.” I looked back at the stairs, toward the gallery above. “The portrait. The missing nameplate. It’s all connected, isn’t it?”

Something shifted in Maren’s eyes. Not fear exactly, but something old and brittle starting to crack. “I’ve already said more than I should have.”

“Then say one more thing.” I pressed. “Was my family there at the execution… or were they responsible for what happened?”

She looked at me for a long time, balancing her loyalty against the weight of decades spent cataloging a hole in history. I watched her decide.

“I don’t know, Master Corvin,” she said quietly. “All I can say is the person who cut that page did it with professional care and it happened while your grandfather was in charge, not before.” Her gaze dropped to the ledger in my hands. “And a portrait doesn’t just lose its nameplate by accident.”

I stayed down in that vault long after she left. The gap where the missing page should’ve been felt heavier than the ledger itself. My mind wandered back to the sparring hall, Ashe’s face a F-rank orphan making the same expression as the man my family had scrubbed from history.

I didn’t know how the two were linked yet. But I wasn’t going to let it go. Somewhere inside, some cold, certain part of me already knew: the price of finding out might be everything I believed about my own family name.