Chapter 10
"Do you accept?"
The word yes sits on my tongue like a coin I don't want to spend.
I look at the room instead. The three adjudicators, patient as stone.
The Vane advocate with his precise cuffs.
Emric's father, who hasn't looked at me once.
Emric's mother, who hasn't stopped. Leopold in the aisle with his hand open at his side and his smile pitched to exactly the frequency of mercy.
And I understand there is no real choice here.
There's the shape of one, laid out for the record so everyone can tell themselves I was asked.
But I know a rigged door when I'm standing in front of it.
Behind the word no is a blood claim—indenture, suppression, a needle and a white ceiling and twelve more years of the slow erasure I clawed out of two weeks ago. Behind the word yes is Leopold.
They built me a hallway with one door and called it consent.
And then, low in the place nothing in this room can reach, the warmth I haven't felt since the cellar: Don't agree to anything yet. Make them read you the terms.
I suck in a sharp breath.
It's the first thing the voice has said in days, and it's not comfort—it's strategy, cool and exact, and I hold onto it because it's the only thing in this room that's on my side and asking nothing back.
I clear my throat and do as it says.
"What are the terms," I say.
The center adjudicator's coal eyes flick up. It isn't the answer she asked for.
"You'll accept or decline the terms as offered, Miss Dellaby."
"Then read them to me. All of them. If I'm signing my life over I'd like to know the small print."
A muscle moves near Leyonna's mouth that might, in a better room, have been a smile. Marcellus the advocate glances at Leopold. Leopold inclines his head—by all means—like he's granting me something.
"Sponsorship transfers responsibility for the subject's containment, training, and conduct from the council to House Vassard," the adjudicator reads.
"The subject boards under Vassard supervision.
Vassard assumes all associated liability.
The council retains the regulatory device and its designated operator until such time as a separate proceeding reassigns them. "
The device and its operator. The fail-safe. Aamon. They stay council property. I feel that land somewhere under my ribs and I don't let it show on my face.
"The subject remains enrolled at Devenir," she continues. "Sponsorship is indefinite, subject to review. Do you—"
"A clarification, if the tribunal permits." Balcour, without standing, pen still in hand. "For the record, so there's no confusion later. The council isn't washing its hands of Miss Dellaby completely. We're distributing the burden, not discarding it."
The adjudicator's coal eyes slide to him. "Go on."
"House Vassard assumes custody, boarding, and liability.
That much is settled. But the original enrollment agreement stands underneath it.
" He turns a page like he's reading me my own contract, which I suppose he is.
"The council continues to provide her trainer.
She remains enrolled in the academy proper—she attends, she progresses, she is assessed on the same schedule as any other student.
And the council maintains its quarterly review of her regulatory progress, exactly as offered when she first arrived.
" A thin pause. "We've simply arranged it so that if there's another incident, the liability sits with the house that insisted on taking her, and not with us. "
Not with us. I almost scoff. Even now. Even handing me over, they're already covering their asses for my next expected murder.
Leopold inclines his head, gracious. "House Vassard welcomes the council's continued oversight. We've nothing to hide."
"Then it's entered as such," the adjudicator says.
"House Vassard holds custody. The council retains training, enrollment, the regulatory device, and quarterly review.
Miss Dellaby remains, in all monitored respects, a joint concern.
" She looks back at me. "Sponsorship is indefinite, subject to review. Do you accept?"
Joint concern. Two owners now instead of one, and a tighter leash on my progress than I had underground, and not a single hand in this room that's mine.
Leopold is watching me. Not gloating. That's the part that turns my stomach—there's no triumph in his face, just patience, the patience of someone who knows exactly how this is going to go. All he has to do is wait.
All there is left to do is accept my new future.
Do I become a slave? Or stay a prisoner?
"Yes,” I breathe. “I… accept.”
The pen scratches. Balcour, writing, like the outcome was printed before I opened my mouth.
Marcellus dips his head to the Vanes. The center adjudicator says something formal about terms being entered and the matter being closed, and the words go past me in a smear, because the thing I agreed to is already moving, already becoming real in the mechanics of the room.
Leopold turns to the platform. "House Vassard is grateful for the tribunal's wisdom.
" Then, smooth, unhurried, folding it in like an afterthought: "For continuity of care, I'll have Miss Dellaby's quarters prepared at the Vassard residence today.
My household physician will look her over this evening—she's been kept underground two weeks, I'd like to be sure she's well.
Her training schedule continues without interruption, of course.
" A small warm pause. "I want it on the record that her comfort is my first concern. "
I almost laugh out loud.
Aamon stands. "A point of procedure," he says.
The adjudicator's eyes narrow. "Professor."
"The regulatory device remains council property.
So does its operator." His voice is level, but I can read him better now.
I swear I can see his entire body locked up in tension.
"Containment doesn't transfer to House Vassard.
It's shared. Which means the fail-safe device has to remain within functional range of the subject at all times, per the council's own containment protocol. Section nine."
I don't know what section nine is. Neither, I'd bet, does anyone else in this room other than Balcour.
"Your point," the adjudicator says.
"If the subject boards at the Vassard residence, the device—and therefore its operator—boards there also. Anything else violates the protocol House Vassard just agreed to be bound by."
I suck in a breath, realizing what he’s doing.
I watch it happen on Leopold's face. Not a crack—he's too good for a crack—but a hairline pause, a half-second where the machinery behind the warmth keeps running while the smile holds its position.
He wanted me alone. He built a hallway with one door and I walked through it exactly as designed, and now the man who's chained to my kill-switch has just informed the tribunal that he comes with me.
Aamon is falling onto the sword to make sure I don’t go into Leopold’s house of horrors alone.
"That's—" Marcellus starts.
"Correct," Leyonna says, from her chair.
First word she's spoken since her statement.
"Section nine is real. I could recite it.
The device cannot be separated from the subject beyond functional range without a reassignment proceeding, which"—she looks at the adjudicators, mild as milk—"nobody has filed. "
The center adjudicator considers this. "The Professor boards at the Vassard residence for the duration, then.
As a function of the device." She says it like it's tedious, which is the only reason it works—she wants this closed, and Aamon has handed her a way to close it that's technically airtight. "So entered. Is there anything else?”
"No, ma'am," Aamon says.
"No," says Leopold, warm as ever. But there's a new edge under the word. He’s pissed.
I bite my cheek to hide a smile.
Two men just made their first move against each other over who gets to own me. Neither asked what I wanted.
Maybe running away with Kage would have been a better idea.
The adjudicator waives the forty-eight hours.
Something about transfer periods, old law—Marcellus starts to raise it and she waves it off.
The claim wasn't upheld, she says. It was satisfied.
Council to House Vassard, and I was already the council's, so there's no handoff.
I'm not being surrendered to anyone. I'm being moved from one shelf to another in the same store.
"Effective immediately." She closes the folder.
Two words, and my whole life gets picked up and set down somewhere else. Nobody asks if I'm ready. Nobody was ever going to.
The posse of enforcers stand me up. Zeva comes at me with the witch irons again and my whole body braces—
"Leave them."
Leopold. Crossing the floor with that unhurried glide, sliding neatly between me and the iron like he's stepping in to help.
He looks at the cuffs in Zeva's hands with something like distaste, and then he looks at my wrists, at the dozen small punctures still weeping into the cuffs of Nellie's black shirt, and his face does something soft and terrible.
"She's not a criminal," he says. "She's my ward now. We don't chain guests." A pause, warm, pitched for the room. "Those are for transporting the condemned. Miss Dellaby has been spared that. Haven't you, Calypso?”
He says my name like he's tasting it.
"Of course," he adds, quieter, only for me, as Zeva steps back, "the irons stay in the house. Should you ever give me reason." The smile never moves. "I do hope you won't."
"Reason like what," I say. "Existing? Because I've got a real talent for it lately, and it seems to bother a lot of people."
His smile doesn't move, but something behind his eyes warms up, pleased, like I've just done a trick he was hoping for.
"There she is," he murmurs. "I was worried the cellar had dulled you."