Royal Blood- Rayne
"The assassin was a woman... I remember that. Her tone, she said something about...Ghosts... Fulfilling a contract." Penelope's face paled. "...Something about visiting another royal family... The only one anywhere near here would be..."
Mikan's eyes opened widely as she finished the thought. "... Renalta." She looked at the rest of the party. "... This just became personal."
Rayne was not an emotionless person, but rarely were his true feelings visible to others. A weakness of his, however, was the feeling of being toyed with. And the fact that they expected him to believe the lies was downright insulting. Personal indeed. One did not need to be observant to see the true anger on Rayne's face, and he was completely fine with this. Finally, after so many days of showing none of himself to his companions, the persona and the true man inside agreed on something: this assassin wasn't fooling anyone, and would pay dearly for attempting to do so.
But perhaps the others did not see what he did. Lying convincingly, Rayne had learned over the years, was much easier than getting someone to believe the truth they did not understand. This conversation had to be moved in the right direction for the group to properly do their job, and who better to steer it than him?
Realizing that this would require Rayne to 'discover' the truth with the rest of the group, he allowed them to believe that his anger was a reaction to the news that his queen was being targeted and moved on with a perfectly reasonable question, one to bring the right later questions forward despite the answer being meaningless. "Wait, Penelope... How did you hear the assassin speak of this other planned attack? Who was she talking to?"
"I don't know..." She said. "If there was someone else in the room, I... I didn't see..."
Allowing a moment for that to sink in with the rest of the group, he continued with another question, slipping a bit of Confused Farmboy into his expression while asking "Penelope, where were you during the attack? Did the assassin see you? Why would she say these things in your presence?"
"I was... I was in the middle of the room. I'm not sure why I wasn't killed... The assassin must have seen me. I'm not sure why... This is all too much..."
"I'm sorry if this is upsetting you," Rayne lied. He then looked to his fellow Blades. "From what I can gather, this means that the assassin was aware of Penelope's presence, likely knew exactly who she was, and fed her the information she has told us of a contract, ghosts and our Queen being in danger." Of course, anyone could have already come to this conclusion on their own, but bringing Rayne along on a journey of played out discovery allowed for even the slowest of companions to keep up. "We must warn the queen of impending attack despite the fact that she is likely not truly a target of this assassin. I suggest we stay in the city and investigate further, find out how the assassin was so able to walk through these halls unseen, and question the former ranger on what he knows."
Turning to the Crown-Prince, he continued. "You and your daughter are the likely targets of this assassin, who I assume is still in town, waiting for your bolstered defenses to return to normal in the wake of the forged discovery of her intention kill Queen Kouri. If you can manage to somehow put even more defenses between your family and harm, do so as soon as you can. Keep watch over your daughter." A raised eyebrow over the last statement, adding other meaning than spoken, hopefully told the observant Xavier that he should not trust Penelope. Looking then to Mikan and the other party members, he concluded "I intend to go to the Rat Skull Charmé shop. If you've nothing to add to all to this, we should send that message to Kouri and go there immediately."
