[ Julius — POV ]
I mustn't lose myself at such a critical time.
He stood in front of the mirror. The man looking back at him was fine. Composed. Presentable.
Julius, however, was not fine.
He exhaled slowly through his nose and tried to organize the last two hours into something that made sense.
It started normally. The dining hall, the delegation seated, Lady Josephine giving her opening remarks with the expression of someone who found the whole ritual mildly offensive. He had stood and given his speech — he could give that speech unconscious at this point — raised his glass, heard the room respond.
And then everything stopped.
Literally stopped.
The candles. The steam. The guest mid-reach for his wine glass, arm suspended in the air, going nowhere. Julius had blinked — and realized he could blink, could think, could feel his own heartbeat hammering in his ears — but nothing else in the room was moving. At all.
What—
He couldn't move his body. Couldn't turn his head. But his eyes worked and what they found, tracking the edges of his vision—
Her.
Josephine von Konrow, moving through the frozen room like this was simply something she did. No hurry. No dramatics. She went dish by dish down the table, tasted everything, and her expression through all of it was the same flat professional look she'd worn when she was explaining fenroot to him earlier.
Then she started swapping the plates.
Every single one.
She's — that's — all of it?
She was gone through a side passage before he could process that. Back minutes later with clean dishes. Then she was moving toward the walls, toward the exterior — and Julius's instincts, which had kept him alive through several years of a court that wanted him dead, told him very clearly what she was dealing with outside.
Not one. Not two.
Multiple.
She came back. Still the same expression. She straightened a fork on one of the plates — actually straightened a fork, like that was a thing worth caring about — and then time started again like nothing had happened.
Julius had exhaled. Very. Carefully.
He was fairly certain he'd sweated through the back of his shirt by the time she crossed the room toward him and asked how the food was.
How is the food. He'd smiled. He'd discussed the carp. He'd listened to her explain the fenroot. And then he had excused himself because he was a prince and a prince does not sit at a dinner table visibly unraveling in front of a foreign delegation.
He pressed his hand against the mirror.
Josephine von Konrow.
The rumors had called her vicious. Political. Dangerous in the small, cutting ways of noble women who knew where the soft parts were. That he had understood. He had prepared for that.
He had not prepared for — that. For whatever category of person moves through stopped time swapping poisoned dishes and eliminating assassins with the energy of someone running a mildly irritating errand.
She had protected them.
Without being asked. Without being thanked. Without so much as a glance in his direction that wanted anything in return.
Why.
His instincts had been saying the same thing since the barrier in the woods, since the arrow that shattered mid-air. They were saying it again now, louder.
She is not your enemy.
And something else — something less useful, something that had been getting louder since she explained the three-hundred-year-old carp recipe while looking completely elsewhere—
His heart was doing something. He noticed it. He catalogued it. He filed it directly into the drawer labeled absolutely notand shut the drawer firmly.
Be wary, he told himself. She is unknown. She is dangerous. You are here for one reason.
He straightened. Smoothed his collar. Met his own eyes until the composure held.
He turned away from the mirror.
[ Tezca Estate — East Wing ]
Reiner von Tezca was not having a good night.
"The banquet is progressing smoothly, my lord."
Smoothly.
SMOOTHLY?!
He grabbed his own hair with both hands. Let go. Grabbed it again.
What did smoothly MEAN?! Smoothly meant the delegation was fine! Smoothly meant the food had been eaten without incident! Smoothly meant that six — no, seven — of the best assassins his money could buy had simply vanished into thin air like they'd never existed at all and nobody had noticed anything!
"How?!" he hissed at the wall. The wall did not answer.
The plan had been perfect. He'd gone over it so many times. Multiple poisons — layered, smart, targeted — and men positioned outside for cleanup. Clean. Untraceable. By morning the Solidana crown prince would be a diplomatic incident and the Tezca head, his insufferable aunt, would be buried under the scandal of it.
And then he, Reiner, fourth-ranked sub-head, would step gracefully into the vacuum.
It was perfect!
The Solidana princes had said so themselves! They'd come to him with clean hands and a very generous number and an air of men who were accustomed to getting what they wanted, and they had said: we want Julius dead, you want the head position, surely we can help each other. And Reiner had thought — rationally! Carefully! — that yes, the goals aligned, and yes, he was a careful man who could handle something like this.
He paced to the window. Back to the desk. Back to the window.
But then she showed up.
Josephine von Konrow.
When he'd first heard the name, he'd nearly bitten his tongue. Of all people — of ALL people — why did it have to be HER?! The notorious first daughter! The one whose name made servants flinch! The schemer, the manipulator, the woman with allegedly more underworld connections than half the criminal guilds combined!
He'd been terrified. Genuinely, properly terrified.
What if she'd already figured it out?! What if this was a trap?! What if she was here specifically because she KNEW—
But then the reports came in.
She'd... mellowed out?
Apparently she spent her days gardening or something. Eating breakfast. Being nice to a maid. The rumors were practically cozy. Someone had described her as "approachable" and Reiner had read that three times because surely that was a mistake.
He'd relaxed. Obviously, he'd relaxed! Anyone would relax! A threat that turned out to not be a threat was just — good news! He was a rational man! Rational men updated their assessments!
"I'm an idiot," he said, to no one.
The wall agreed, silently.
The silver lining presented itself to him slowly, the way silver linings do when you're desperate enough to look for them. He seized it.
She was there. She was the representative. She was the one responsible for the delegation's safety tonight. If something had gone wrong — if anything came to light — whose hands would it land in?
Not his.
Hers.
Josephine von Konrow. Notorious. Disgraced. Exiled to a spare mansion for bad behavior. Who was going to believe a word she said? Who was going to take her side over the perfectly reasonable, perfectly legitimate fourth-ranked sub-head of the Tezca family?
He could work with this.
He was almost — almost — calm again when a thought intruded.
What if she's not done?
He gripped the windowsill.
No. No, he had to move. He couldn't sit here and wait to see which way this fell. He needed the job finished before anyone started asking questions.
"Hector."
The shadow in the corner — and there was always a shadow in the corner, Reiner had made sure of that — peeled itself off the wall.
"My lord."
Reiner yanked open the desk drawer. The scroll inside bore a seal that wasn't his — that belonged to people with cleaner hands and deeper pockets and a very specific interest in a dead prince. He shoved it across the desk without looking at the figure directly.
"Proceed," he said. "By any means necessary. Don't fail me this time!"
The shadow took the scroll.
Gone.
Reiner sat back down and looked at his fingernails. Most of them were ruined at this point. He started on what remained.
It'll be fine, he told himself. It'll all be fine.
It would absolutely not be fine.