Her curls are loose and fan across my chest in dark strands. Her breathing is slow, she's asleep. She makes a small sound and shifts, her fingers push against me for a moment before going lax again.
One hundred and forty-three years. I have spent them building a structure — internal and external — that doesn't collapse under pressure. That can't be leveraged. But here, a loose curl against my collarbone makes me realize structure means nothing.
I am not used to not knowing what to do. I make the choice to extract myself carefully. Her breathing dips, and I'm upright and dressed before she stirs. She opens her sleep-soft eyes whenI'm pulling the coat closed. I study her and feel something I'm unsure of.
"Morning," she smiles.
"Get dressed," I reply. "Nyssara will be looking for you."
It comes out short. I turn away and step out without looking back. Because if I stay any longer, I may forget every reason I should be careful.
Vuldren is at the guard post, which is exactly where I expected him to be with a patrol log spread open and a cup of something he's decided is acceptable at this hour. He reads my expression. Reads everything else too, because he's not a man who misses things.
"I need additional guards assigned around the east quarters," I command. "Two more on the hall rotation, one stationed at the garden-side access. Overnight coverage."
He doesn't write it down immediately. "She won't like that."
"She won't know about it. Keep them off the main corridor. Use the auxiliary passage."
"And if she notices."
"Then she notices." I let the words settle while watching him carefully. "Write it down, Vuldren."
He does. But his mouth twitches like he's wondering whether to push something.
"You trust her?" He questions finally.
"That's not the question you're asking."
"I'm asking because we're allocating more guard positions to a human woman who hasn't given us a reason to be certain she isn't exactly what someone sent through the chaos to get close to you."
The pause that follows is mine, and I use it deliberately.
"Because someone built a mechanism around her movements and aimed it at this manor. And because the mechanism is still running, which means she's not the threat— she's the vulnerability being exploited by one. You protect those. You don't expose them." I pull my coat straight. "Is that sufficient."
Vuldren writes the rest of it down and picks up a folded parchment, passing it to me. The seal is Zevrik's. The handwriting is his too — composed, extremely upright. Three paragraphs. The first covers House Eldren's formal request for a meeting. The second contains the current list of settlements that have declined their routine trade agreements with Mournhold for the quarter. The third is Zevrik's assessment of the political climate that he has described as increasingly untenable. I fold it.
"He's not wrong about the optics," Vuldren states.
"Noted."
"The houses have been waiting for something to point at. The corruption, the attacks, the beast reports from Duskmire — none of it originally traced back to here, but if someone has been shaping the narrative?—"
"Someone has."
Vuldren's mouth tightens. "Malrec has been careful. He has not said Mournhold caused the corruption outright. He has only asked why every road, every breach, every dead thing seems to lead back here."
"Rumor dressed as concern."
"And landing better than it should."
"I'll speak with Zevrik. Get him to meet me in the study." I pocket the parchment, and head that way.
Zevrik arrives with his hands folded and his face arranged into an expression of concern. He covers the political ground efficiently, one of his better qualities.
"The perception," measuring the word like he's aware of its weight, "is that Mournhold is not in control of its own territory."
"That is being manufactured."
