Noemi gave me an empty bottle from the same glassmaker who supplied the stolen vial. The same pale glass. The same narrow neck. It isn't evidence.
It's bait.
I set it down on the table.
Look at it.
Princeton's eyes go to it before he can stop them.
"The second matter," I say.
"Torgan." The Duke's voice turns gentle. "I heard about your sister's unfortunate episode. You have my deepest sympathies. Young hearts sometimes?—"
"Yes," I say. "Young hearts. You told me that already."
I keep my attention on the Duke and Princeton at the edge of my sight. He isn't looking at the bottle anymore. He is trying very hard not to.
"A vial like this one went missing from my coat at Saskia's wedding," I say. "I bought the draught in Starling Vale half a year ago."
Noemi looks straight ahead. Lissy does too.
"That shame is mine. My family knows it. The Crown knows it. I've answered every question anyone has put to me." My jaw still aches where Caden hit me, and I'm glad of it. "Noemi examined my sister. She identified the effects of her own working."
"A village spellworker's opinion," the Duke says.
"A licensed witch's statement," Noemi corrects him calmly. "Supported by my formula records, my sales ledger and my inventory."
The Duke turns his eyes on her. Noemi smiles at him.
He looks back at me.
"The draught was given to Mirelle after the wedding and before she ended her engagement," I say. "We know what wasstolen. We know when it was used. We know why somebody wanted that courtship finished." I put both hands flat on the table. "What we don't have is the hand that poured it."
"Then you have nothing." The gentleness is gone. "You have a bottle that isn't even the stolen bottle. A witch's opinion. An accusation you are too frightened to make out loud." He leans back. "Finish it or don't, Lord Torgan. But understand what finishing it will cost you when you cannot prove a word of it."
"He isn't going to finish it," Princeton says.
Those are the first words out of him since Pa told him to sit.
Keep talking.
He leans back, copying his father and getting it slightly wrong. Two days of Crown seals have done something to him. Two days of officials asking him questions instead of accepting his answers. He needs to be the cleverest male in the room, and worse than that, he needs the rest of us to know he is.
"He can't finish it," Princeton says. "Anybody could have taken that vial. Two hundred guests. Servants. Clan cousins. Half the gathering drunk on mead." He smiles. "You'd need a witness who put me at the coat rack. Then you'd have to carry that bottle from the rack to Mirelle's elderflower cordial at the welcome supper. You'd need to prove I poured it before she drank."
His smile widens.
"And you can't."
The Hall goes silent.
Did they all hear it?Did the auditor get it down?
Princeton's expression stays satisfied for one heartbeat too long. Then he hears himself.
I never named him. I never mentioned the coat rack. I never mentioned a welcome supper, and nobody in this room said one word about elderflower cordial.
Ma rises slowly.
