"They're badly carved."
"I'm getting better."
She looks unconvinced, andgood, because that look is hers. Not the fake Mirelle that we’ve had since she drank the draught.
"I put them on my windowsill," she says. "All of them. I don't know why."
Caden's face folds for half a second. He doesn't move toward her.
"You don't have to know yet," he says softly.
That is what finally brings the Duke to his feet. Not his younger son standing against him. Not Mirelle on the stairs. The Crown auditor writing down every word of it.
The Duke looks around the room and does what he has always done when the price gets too high.
He cuts away the losing piece.
"My son acted alone."
"Father," Princeton says. "Father, you know I never…" His voice cracks and stops.
The Duke doesn't look at him. "He acted without my knowledge and against my instruction, to the lasting injury of both houses." He turns to Pa, already negotiating. "Lord Garran. Terms."
"No," Pa says.
He stands and puts one hand flat over Brynna's papers. The other rests on the table our family has eaten at for six generations.
"No terms. The Crown has your books. The magistrates have your son. My daughter has weeks of poison left in her, and when it runs out she will wake to everything your family did."
He leans forward.
"You came here to resolve all outstanding matters." He looks toward the doors. "They are resolved. Harek. Show the Duke out. The magistrates can decide which Vosses leave with him."
They takePrinceton through our front doors with a magistrate on either side of him. There is no shouting and there are no shackles yet, only a smiling male who has stopped smiling, walking between two patient officials into a gray afternoon. His father's carriage is already moving by the time he reaches the bottom step.
Caden doesn't watch either of them go. He stands at the foot of the gallery stairs, looking up at Mirelle.
"Noemi says the draught may last another two weeks," Mirelle tells him with that same detached expression that she’s had all this time. "Possibly three."
"I'll be at the gate."
"That seems like a great deal of standing."
"I'm bringing a chair."
A small crease appears between her brows. It isn't a smile yet, but it's hers, and she lets her sisters take her upstairs.
The lawyers leave. The auditor gathers his papers, and Noemi goes with him to give another statement, complaining the whole way that the Crown's forms leave no room for reasonable explanations. Brynna carries her ledgers off like victorious soldiers.
Eventually the Hall empties. Pa is the last to leave.
"Torgan."
He has stopped near the doors, a long way down the Hall from the table where Lissy is working the pins out of her muslin one at a time. He waits until I've crossed the floor to him before he says anything else, which tells me he doesn't intend her to hear it.
"You're still my heir."
"I know."
