"I will stop," Lucen said. "Starting with Brynna."
He told her, then, in the blue light, with the dragon listening like a court that could not be bribed with tone. He told her about the Blackwater ford and the missing Grell steel. About his father's mark on a surety line that named Vorath. About the uncle's letters that framed the marriage as romance while quietly racing Grell's claim to the equinox. About how opening the doors was supposed to be a clean political win—alliance proof, inheritance key, one night of ceremony—and how Lucen had known, somewhere under the burgundy and gold, that clean was a story sold to people who needed to walk corridors without vomiting.
Brynna listened without interrupting. When he finished, she looked at her own hands.
"I knew about Isera," she said. "I did not know you were using our marriage to outrun a debt that could make a dragon into a coin. I walked here thinking we were brave. I was being managed."
"Yes," Lucen said. No defense. Defenses were how uncles talked.
"I am angry," she said.
"You should be."
"I am also not leaving you alone with this," she added, and the addition was not forgiveness. It was logistics with a pulse. "Anger that runs away is Grell's favorite weather. Anger that stays and inventories is mine."
Vorath made a sound that might have been approval or merely air moving through a large throat. "Good. Begin your inventories. At dawn you will send two letters: one to Grell naming the season and denying exclusive claim; one to Marrow naming the uncle's omissions. You will not send separate secret copies. You will read each other's ink before it dries. Shared burden means shared paper."
"And food?" Brynna asked, practical as frost. "What does a bound witness eat when men remember he is not a metaphor?"
"Meat," Vorath said. "Truth. Occasional silence. I will not be soothed with songs."
Lucen almost smiled. "We can manage two of those."
"Manage all three," Vorath said. "Or manage failure."
They left the chamber with the doors not fully shut—ajar by Vorath's command, a visible refusal of private markets. The corridor seemed longer going up. Every torch sconce watched them. Brynna walked beside Lucen now, not behind, her shoulder nearly touching his undamaged side. When they reached the upper court, night had settled over the castle in a hard clear cold. Stars sat above the battlements like indifferent clerks.
Word went out before dawn, as promised.
The first days were ugly in the way of necessary ugliness.