He inclined his head. “Enforcer Graves.”
I gave him the smallest acknowledgement I could. “Mm.”
“A letter for Lord Solberg. From his father.”
“You will hand it to me.”
He hesitated and I let the silence take the shape it needed.
His gaze flicked once to the door behind me, then back to my face. “Lord Solberg is the intended recipient.”
“He is occupied.”
“I was instructed to deliver it directly.”
I continued to hold out my hand. Behind the door I felt Catalina’s attention settle on me, and I kept the line quiet.
The courier looked at my hand, then at the door, and when I did not move he placed the letter in my palm. The paper was heavy and expensive, sealed in dark wax with the Solberg household crest pressed deep enough to make a point. I turned it once and checked the fold, the wax, the edges, the weight, and found no powder, no scent-thread I could detect, no charm-work active enough to rise against my skin. Still, I did not like it. Private letters from fathers who had just lost public control were rarely simple letters.
“Acknowledged,” I told the courier.
He inclined his head again and turned to go.
I waited until he was four paces past me before I spoke. “Any further delivery to this door comes through me.” He stopped. “Private, household, clan-head, council. I do not care whose seal is on it.”
The courier looked back. I did not look away. “Nothing reaches Lord Solberg through this corridor unless I decide it does.”
I looked at the breakfast tray still sitting untouched outside her door, then at the sealed letter in my hand. Solberg’s father, reaching for her before she had eaten.
Behind the door, the bond had finally begun to settle, Catalina’s presence no longer pulling sharp through the line but spreading downward, warmer and steadier. I had given them as long as I could. I shifted the tray to one hand and knocked once, low on the door, where the sound would carry without startling her.
Catalina’s attention lifted, slow and exhausted. I waited until she said, “Come in.”
I opened the door with my shoulder and stepped inside.
Her room was warm. The bed had been used and the air still carried it, the close heat of two people with the deep pull of the bond running under it.
Solberg sat on the side of the bed nearest the window, bare to the waist. The mark Catalina had given him in council sat red and clean at the curve of his shoulder. His hair had not been combed. He held himself still, a big man taking up less room than he could, on purpose.
He looked at me when I came in. “Graves.”
“Solberg.”
Catalina was on the other side of the bed, in a robe, sitting up against the headboard. Her color was better than it had been in the chamber. Not good. Better. She was running on a second wind.
I set the tray on the small table by the wall. Coffee, and beside it a croissant, still warm, which was Solberg’s doing, ordered through the kitchen an hour ago. He was laying siege to the one front he intended to win, and he had the patience for it.
I had started getting the coffee right weeks ago because she ran on nerves and caffeine and needed to eat. I had kept getting it right because of the sound she made on the first sip, a small involuntary thing she did not know she did, that landed lower than I was prepared for. Solberg had found the same tell three days later and answered it with a croissant. We did not discuss this. We both, now, brought breakfast.
Catalina looked at the tray. Then at me. Then at Solberg, who had arranged his face into innocence.
She knew exactly what we were doing. She picked up the coffee anyway. Neither of us appeared to watch her. Both of us watched her. She took the first sip, held our eyes the whole way through it, and made no sound at all.
Then she rolled her eyes at the pair of us. “Amateurs.”
She set the cup down, and the humor went out of her face. “And the letter?”
I held it out. She took it and held it across her lap, one hand flat over the wax, and looked at me. “Tell me first?”
