27. Torgan #2
Caden moves half a step and stops himself.
"It feels like there's something on the other side of a door," Mirelle says. "And I keep…" She stops, and her hand comes down. Then she looks at him. "You kept sending me birds."
"Every day."
"They're badly carved."
"I'm getting better."
She looks unconvinced, and good, 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 take Princeton 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."
"Do you?" He looks up at me. "Because I told you at Ysolde's wedding that your sisters could marry for their hearts because you don't."
I remember every word of it. I've been saying it back to myself ever since, in his voice, the way a man rubs at a bruise to check it's still there.
My sisters can choose. I carry the family.
"I remember," I say.
Pa rubs one hand over his beard. "I was wrong."
"That sounded painful."
"Don't make me say it twice."
He looks back toward at the papers the Vosses left behind on the table, and for a moment he doesn't go on.
"I told you the danger was humans hunting for a reason to think less of us."
"You did."
“A human stood at that table this afternoon and took a duke apart with receipts, in front of two lawyers and a Crown auditor, and every one of them wrote down what she said.” He grunts. “Choosing that woman does not diminish this family.”
I stare at him.
Is he saying what I think he's saying?
"There will be no political marriage," Pa says. "I have four daughters, cousins enough to fill this Hall twice over, and no reason to make my son miserable to prove the line continues."
"And Lissy?"
"The woman who brought the Crown enough evidence to save our trade." He grunts again. "I can survive her."
"She won't live here."
"I assumed as much. You have duties at this Hall. Do them, and then go back to Starling Vale."
"And I stay heir."
"Unfortunately."
He leaves before I can answer, which I suspect is the point.
Then the Hall is empty except for the two of us.
When I return to the long table, Lissy is taking the pins out of her muslin one at a time. I sit down across from her.
Not beside her. Not yet.
"The Vosses are finished," she says.
"The Crown may take years to finish with the Duke."
"Finished enough."
My letter is still in her apron. Hers is still against my chest. Is she waiting for me to say it, or is she waiting for me to be quiet long enough that she can? Eight days of that. I'm finished waiting for a better moment than this one.
"You wrote when they were finished," I say.
"I know what I wrote."
"Do you want to go home first?"
"No."
She takes out the last pin and puts it carefully into a small tin. Then she looks up at me.
"Now?" I ask.
"Now."