"A direct order." She says it with a measured precision that contains something just short of contempt. "You give orders. You don't ask. You don't explain. You station guards and issue instruction and assume everyone inside this manor will restructure their existence around whatever you've decided is necessary." She takes one step forward. "I have a leg that barely cooperates and a shoulder that woke me up twice last night, and I went to a garden. It's not up to you to make that into a military failure."
The cook has evaporated. The kitchen is empty behind her.
"Someone was at your cottage," I tell her.
She goes very still.
"Not the creature. Before it. They searched the building. They left markings in your garden and through the treeline aimed at the hollow where you gather the feverroot." I hold her gaze and don't soften what comes next, because softening it won't make it less true. "Three pointing stones and a carved anchor in the ironwood. That geometry wasn't aimed at the cottage. It was aimed at you. At your route, at your schedule, at the specific location you'd be at the specific time you were there." My voice has lost the controlled edge it usually carries. I notice it and can't recover it fast enough. "This wasn't random. You were chosen. Someone built that attack around your habits and that means they have been investigating you for a long time, and that means every minute in an unsecured garden is when I cannot guarantee anyone who is watching you doesn't use it."
The kitchen is very quiet.
She's glaring at my face. Her shoulders aren't squared against me anymore. She's reading me the way she reads her plants — carefully, looking for something underneath the surface.
"How long? How long do you think they were there, watching?" Her fist tightens slightly.
"They know you'd go back even after dark." My hands find the kitchen table edge and I stop there, four feet from her. "Which means they knew exactly which plants you would touch."
She breathes once, slow, through her nose.
"So the guards."
"Are not negotiable." Interrupting her before she can finish.
Another few silent seconds. The fight hasn't gone out of her, I can see it still there, but it's sitting alongside something else now. Something quieter.
"Then tell me what you find. When you go. When you investigate. Tell me what you find instead of deciding what I need to know."
It isn't concession. It's a condition.
I consider it.
"Yes."
She looks slightly surprised. Then she pulls in a breath and looks at the table beside her, covered in herbs she's been sorting, and the fight finishes leaving her for now.
"Fine," she responds.
I leave the kitchen the way I came and stop just outside the doorway, back against the wall, one hand at my side.
My heart rate is elevated.
I note it, deliberately, without commentary, and begin walking toward the war room where Vuldren will be waiting.
7
ELOWEN
The noise coming from somewhere in the manor reaches me before I understand it. Not the usual estate settling — a low, effortful sound, familiar in the way that makes my chest pull toward it before my mind names it. Someone's in pain.
I'm out of bed before I've finished the thought, satchel in hand. The slippers Nyssara left are where they always are, and I push into them without slowing. The noise leads me west to a door at the end of the passage that stands open, lamplight spilling out across the flagstone in a warm, uneven stripe. I stop in the frame.
The room is stone-shelved along one wall with supplies: clean linen, sealed jars, a row of instruments on a cloth. Three guards are laid out across the center tables. A fourth sits against the rear wall, one hand pressed hard to his upper arm.
Nyssara is at the first table. Her sleeves are already turned back, hands moving through an assessment I recognize — pressure points checked in sequence, not at random. She glances up when I enter.
"East patrol," she shouts. "Two hours ago."
I'm already crossing the room. "What did it?"
