"Aye."
Evran leans against the stone wall and crosses his arms. The evening air is cool on his face, and from somewhere beyond the wall he can hear the distant sounds of the grounds being cleared, the clatter of wooden weapons being racked, the murmur of fighters and spectators heading to dinner.
"What else?" he asks, because Bran's expression says there is more.
"The poison on the blade." Bran shifts his weight, his massive frame settling into controlled stillness that says the next piece of information is important. "Leona worked with the Rendari healers to complete the analysis. It's not a quick-acting toxin but a crippling agent, designed to kill slowly, over the course of days or weeks. The victim weakens gradually. Fever, joint pain, eventual organ failure. It would look like an illness, not an assassination."
Evran's stomach turns. He thinks about Vaike weakening, Vaike in pain, Vaike's strong body failing by degrees while everyone around him scrambled to understand why, while healers searched for a disease that was not there, while Torsten sat in the wings and waited for the inevitable. The image is so vivid and so terrible that Evran has to close his eyes for a moment and breathe through the horror of it before he can speak.
"Making the guilty party harder to track," he says, and his voice is flat, controlled. He does not let what he is feeling show on his face because if he does he will not be able to think clearly and he needs to think clearly.
"Exactly. A slow death gives the killer time to distance himself. By the time Vaike succumbed, Torsten could be back in Windfar,hands clean, the perfect picture of a grieving half-brother stepping forward in his clan's time of need." Bran's mouth is a grim line. "The poison was not the assassin's own. He says it was given to him by the man who hired him. Provided in a vial, with instructions for application."
Evran files this away immediately. A vial. If Torsten provided the poison, he may still have more of it. Arrogant enough to believe no one would ever think to look, he might still have evidence in his possession. If they could find it, if they could tie it to the substance on the blade, that would be the proof they need.
But getting to it is another matter entirely.
"There's one more thing," Bran says, and his voice drops lower. "The assassin was given specific instructions about you."
Evran goes still. "What instructions?"
"He was told not to harm you. Explicitly. The man who hired him said there might be someone else in the room, the Warlord's husband, and that under no circumstances was he to be touched."
The words land in the space between them and sit there, ugly and cold.
Evran thinks about waking up to the sound of fighting, about Vaike shoving him off the bed, not because Evran was in danger but because Vaike did not know what the assassin's orders were. Vaike was protecting him from a threat that, as it turns out, was never aimed at him.
Because Torsten wanted him alive.
Because Torsten wants him intact.
Do you come with the throne?
Evran's jaw tightens until his teeth ache. He stares at the stone wall opposite and breathes and lets the cold fury settle into his bones, because fury is useful, fury is fuel, fury is the thing that will carry him through whatever comes next. That cruelty sharpens his resolve rather than dulling it. Torsten ordered aman killed and another spared, not out of mercy but out of acquisition, the way you might instruct a thief to steal the jewels but leave the box they came in because the box is also valuable and you intend to use it.
"He aims to lay claim to you," Bran says quietly, and it is not a question.
"Yes."
"Evran."
"I know." He pushes off the wall and faces Bran fully. "If Torsten provided the poison, there may be more of it in his chambers. If we could get to it, if we could match it to the substance on the blade, that's the evidence we need to bring before the council."
Bran's expression shifts. He sees where this is going, and Evran can watch the understanding move across his face, the recognition, the calculation, and beneath both of them a deep unease, the visible discomfort of not liking where the path is leading.
"If we had the vial," Bran says slowly, "and it matched the substance on the blade, that would be evidence enough. The assassin's testimony places a blond man with an eastern accent at the scene. The vial in Torsten's possession ties him to the weapon. Combined, it would be incontrovertible."
"Then we need to find it."
"Evran."
"We need it, Bran."
Bran's hands come up, palms out, trying to slow something that is already in motion. "We don't need to do anything drastic. There might be another way. Leona could search the room while Torsten is occupied elsewhere."
"Torsten's room is in the Windfar wing, which is guarded by Windfar warriors who answer to Merrik. Leona can't get in without being noticed, and if she's caught, it becomes aninternational incident." Evran's voice is steady but his heart is hammering. "I can get in. Torsten wants me there. He's been making that clear since we met."
The silence that follows is heavy.
