He pulls my mouth to his and kisses me fiercely, swallowing the sounds I make, his hips driving up into me faster as my walls close tight around him. He groans into the kiss and his whole body goes rigid, his hands locking at my hips, his release hitting in deep, shuddering pulses.
We stay tangled together while the fire burns low.
Eventually we find the blanket folded over the couch's arm and pull it across both of us. I rest with my head on his chest, his arm around my shoulders, the room warm and quiet.
"A house," I say. "Eventually. Not the forge — the forge stays the forge. But a house with a room for the baby and a kitchen that doesn't smell of coal."
His chest moves with something close to a laugh. "Done."
"And Finn can come and go as he wants."
"Obviously."
"And Papa's leg gets a proper healer, not just the apothecary."
"Already arranged." He kisses the top of my head. "Anything else?"
I think about it. The fire. The warm cup. The birch trees outside and the creek in the distance and Nyrius's heartbeat steady under my ear.
"Ask me in six months," I say. "When the baby's here and I know what we actually need."
His arm tightens slightly. "Six months."
I close my eyes and let the quiet exist around us, unhurried and uncomplicated, and I don't count a single cost.
38
NYRIUS
The final picture takes three weeks to assemble.
Cyran spreads the last documents across the camp table the night before the formal presentation — shipping ledgers from four territories, correspondence between magistrates that shouldn't exist, financial records from six noble estates showing irregular payments disguised as levies and road maintenance. The payments are consistent. The timing is consistent. The language used across all of them is identical.
This wasn't Malrec improvising. This was Malrec executing a design that someone else built.
"The rebellion rumors," I say, looking at the correspondence column. "Who seeded them initially?"
Cyran points to a set of letters, unsigned but cross-referenced by handwriting against documents we know. "At least three nobles in the eastern territories. The goal wasn't to suppress rebellion — it was to create the appearance of rebellion to justify increased levies and expanded authority over human settlements." He pauses. "Keep the humans frightened enough of dark elf response to stay compliant. Keep the dark elvesfrightened enough of human unrest to authorize the resources. Profit from both ends."
I lean back from the table.
I've governed border territories for thirty years. I've approved levy assessments and patrol expansions and emergency resources based on reports about unrest I now understand were manufactured or significantly exaggerated by the men who would profit from the response. I haven't been governing. I've been a mechanism in someone else's arrangement.
"How many nobles?" I ask.
"Confirmed involvement in the financial trail — seven." Cyran refolds the correspondence. "Probable involvement based on territory patterns and timing — closer to fifteen. But probable isn't what holds up before a court."
Fifteen nobles implicated, seven confirmed. If I bring this forward now, before the documentation is airtight, the other eight scatter. Records disappear, contacts go silent, the investigation narrows to whoever I can prove and the rest walk away clean.
I look at the seven confirmed names. Then I close the folder.
Thalen comes alonethe next morning, which tells me he's arranged it deliberately so there's no record of the meeting.
He sits across the table in my tent and looks at me with an expression that tells me he's already decided what he wants to say and is gauging how to present it.
"I know what you've found," he says.
"I know you know."
