Chapter 6
The Price of Being Seen
The first horn for evening court had not finished fading when Mrs. Corvin began dressing Isolde for the trap.
Not silk. Not jewels. Not anything that might make her look like she belonged near the high table.
A clean servant dress.
A stiff white collar.
A black apron tied tight enough to remind her she was expected to bend.
Isolde stood in the small dressing room beside the servants’ hall while Ma?lle sat wrapped in a blanket near the hearth, pale but watching everything.
Perrin hovered by the door with a tray he had no reason to carry.
Thierry leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded, looking far too calm for a man who had bled through his sleeve twice that afternoon.
Lucian had not moved from the window.
The evening light carved him in hard lines. He held the council notice in one hand and the servant roster in the other. Isolde did not need to see the papers again. The words had already burned themselves into her mind.
Assigned to serve the high table beside Lady Morgaine Valcour.
“Absolutely not,” Lucian said.
Mrs. Corvin pulled the collar straight. “You have said that six times, my lord.”
“And it remains true.”
“It also remains useless.”
Perrin lifted a hand. “For the record, I agree with useless truth.”
Thierry looked at him. “No one asked for the record.”
“Someone should. We keep losing books.”
Ma?lle coughed, and Isolde turned at once.
“I’m fine,” the old woman said.
“You are not.”
“I am alive. At my age, that wins most arguments.”
Lucian crossed the room. “You will not serve tonight.”
Isolde met his gaze. “If I refuse, the council will ask why.”
“Let them ask me.”
“They already suspect you.”
“I can survive suspicion.”
“Can you survive proof?”
That stopped him.
Not because he had no answer, but because she had found the one he did not want to give.
Thierry pushed away from the wall. “Morgaine wants a public reaction. From him. From you. From the mark, if she can manage it.”
“Then I won’t react,” Isolde said.
Perrin gave her a look. “You say that like feelings ask permission.”
Mrs. Corvin tied the apron at Isolde’s back, careful not to touch where the mark lay hidden beneath linen and wool. “Your task is simple. Carry the wine. Do not stand too close to candles. Do not let Lady Valcour touch your collar. If she speaks, answer as little as possible.”
“Charming dinner,” Perrin muttered.
Lucian’s voice lowered. “If Morgaine reaches for you, step back.”
“And if stepping back exposes me?”
“Then I will end the dinner.”
Ma?lle’s eyes sharpened. “That is exactly what they want.”
Lucian looked at her.
The old woman’s thin hands tightened around the blanket. “A dragon lord defending a human servant before the council. The bond will be plain before any mark is seen.”
Isolde felt the room close around her.
The truth was simple. No path was safe.
She crossed to Lucian and held out her hand.
“The roster.”
His eyes searched her face, then dropped to her open palm. “Why?”
“So I can walk into the room knowing the trap. Not imagining it.”
For a moment, he did nothing. Then he placed the paper in her hand.
Their fingers brushed.
The mark on her back warmed, but did not flare.
Lucian noticed. His breath shifted.
So did hers.
Thierry looked at the ceiling as if asking patience from stone.
Isolde folded the roster and tucked it into her apron pocket. “I will serve.”
Lucian’s jaw worked once. “And I will watch.”
Ma?lle whispered, “So will they.”
From the great hall below, the second horn sounded.
Mrs. Corvin opened the door.
“Then walk like a maid,” she said, “and listen like a woman who wants to live.”
The great hall glittered like a knife washed clean.
Black candles burned along the walls. Silver plates caught the firelight. Dragon nobles sat beneath banners marked with wings, claws, crowns, and old family colors. Their voices were low, their smiles measured, their eyes sharp with the pleasure of watching a house under pressure.
Isolde entered with the other servants through the side arch.
No one looked at the servants first.
That was the habit of power.
Then Morgaine Valcour turned her head.
Isolde felt the glance touch her like a cold finger on the back of the neck.
Morgaine sat three seats from Lucian, dressed in deep green tonight. The color made her pale hair shine and her eyes look almost kind from a distance. Close up, there was nothing kind in her.
Lord Renaud sat at the head of the table, severe and silent. Lucian stood near his chair until Isolde entered, then sat with controlled slowness. Thierry took his place below him, where advisers belonged but seldom remained quiet.
The council rider from earlier lifted his wine cup. “House Blackthorne has offered generous hospitality.”
Thierry murmured, “We weren’t given time to hide the knives.”
Lucian’s mouth did not move. “Behave.”
“Poorly or not at all?”
“Quietly.”
Isolde took a bottle from the wine tray and moved along the table with two other maids. Her hands were steady. That surprised her. Fear sat inside her, yes, but it had become a hard shape she could carry.
She poured for Renaud first.
He did not look at her.
For that, she was almost grateful.
Then the council rider.
Then Morgaine.
Morgaine covered the top of her cup with one gloved hand. “Not that one.”
Isolde lowered the bottle. “My lady?”
“The red from the lower cellar. The older one.”
Mrs. Corvin, standing near the wall, stiffened.
There was no red from the lower cellar on the service table. The lower cellar sat beneath the west side of the keep, near the sealed passages.
Isolde understood at once.
Morgaine wanted her away from the crowd.
Away from Lucian’s direct sight.
Lucian began to rise.
Isolde spoke first. “Of course, my lady.”
His eyes cut to her.
She did not look back. If she did, the whole hall would see the argument between them.
Morgaine smiled. “Take the side stairs. The main corridor is crowded.”
Thierry set down his cup. “I can send a footman.”
“How thoughtful,” Morgaine said. “But I asked the girl.”
The council rider watched with open interest now.
Renaud’s fingers tapped once against the table. “Let the servant fetch the wine.”
Lucian’s gaze shifted to his father.
That small betrayal landed harder than any insult Morgaine could have offered.
Isolde curtsied. “I will return shortly.”
She left through the side arch, but not alone.
Perrin appeared at the far end of the passage with an empty basket under one arm.
“No,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he whispered back.
“Go back.”
“I was told to carry linens.”
“There are no linens in the cellar.”
“Exactly. No one will suspect such a bad lie.”
She almost smiled. Almost.
They took the side stairs down. The air cooled with each step. At the bottom, the corridor split: wine cellar to the right, west passage to the left.
A lantern burned at the split.
Beside it, pinned to the wall with a small black knife, was a folded note.
Isolde’s name was written across it.
Perrin’s humor vanished.
“Do not touch that.”
Isolde already had.
The note opened with one line.
Leave before dawn, or the council sees your back.
Below the words was a smear of gray powder.
Firebane.
Behind them, the stair door clicked shut.
Locked from the other side.
Perrin pulled at the door until the handle rattled.
“It’s locked.”
“I heard.”
“I said it for hope. Hope enjoys being wrong.”
Isolde held the note away from her body. The gray powder clung to the bottom edge, dull and harmless-looking. Harmless things rarely needed to be hidden in threats.
“We need another way up,” she said.
Perrin backed away from the door. “Wine cellar has a dumbwaiter shaft.”
“Large enough?”
“For bottles, bread, maybe a very confident cat.”
“Not us.”
“Not unless we change shape, and I missed that blessing.”
A sound came from the left passage.
Not footsteps.
Metal dragging stone.
Perrin went still. “Tell me that was plumbing.”
“In this house?”
“Fair.”
Isolde folded the note around the powder without touching it again and tucked it into the empty basket Perrin carried. “Take this if we get separated.”
“Why would we get separated?”
The sound came again.
Closer.
A man stepped from the west passage.
He wore no livery. His coat was plain brown, his boots muddy, and a strip of black cloth covered the lower half of his face. In his right hand, he held a hooked blade. Behind him came two more men.
Paid hands.
Morgaine’s.
Or Baldric’s.
Perhaps the difference no longer mattered.
Perrin lifted the basket. “We’re fetching wine.”
The first man looked at him.
Perrin lowered the basket. “Too weak?”
Isolde grabbed a cellar bottle from a rack near the wall and threw it.
It shattered against the lantern.
Fire burst up.
The men cursed and stepped back. Isolde caught Perrin’s sleeve and ran toward the wine cellar. He did not need urging twice.
The cellar door stood open. They rushed inside.
Rows of bottles lined the walls, green and brown glass sleeping in dust. The floor sloped toward a drainage grate. Barrels crowded the back wall.
Perrin slammed the door and dropped the bar across it.
It shook a second later.
Hard.
“That won’t hold,” he said.
“Find the shaft.”
“I am finding. I am deeply finding.”
Isolde moved between the shelves, scanning for anything that might serve as a weapon. A corkscrew. A broken bottle. A rusted iron rod tucked beside a barrel.
She took the rod.
The cellar door shook again.
Wood cracked.
Perrin found the dumbwaiter near the far wall and pulled it open. “Good news. Bigger than a cat.”
“Bad news?”
“Still smaller than me.”
“Then send a message.”
“To whom? The kitchen?”
“To Lucian.”
Perrin stared. “You want me to send a note to a dragon lord during dinner through a bottle lift?”
“You have a better plan?”
The door split down the middle.
Perrin grabbed a scrap of wrapping paper from a crate and a bit of charcoal from the floor. “What do I write?”
Isolde looked toward the breaking door.
Then at the cellar walls, the note, the firebane powder, the men forcing their way in.
“East stores were a distraction. Morgaine sent men below.”
“That’s too long.”