House Thornécroft sent Elara an invoice.
Not a letter.
An invoice.
That was the part everyone kept staring at.
The parchment lay on the recovery room table between Valeria's red-ink contract notes, Ren's rewritten restriction list, Niko's mechanical timer, and Seraphina's healer slate. Pale green wax sealed the top fold. Pressed into it was the Thornécroft crest: a white tree with roots curling around a closed eye.
I had seen many noble threats recently.
Black wax. Pain seals. Carriages without drivers. Verdicts wrapped in polite language.
This one was different.
It was elegant enough to make cruelty look like accounting.
Elara sat across from the parchment with both hands folded in her lap. Her hair had been tied back with a green ribbon, but loose strands had escaped around her face. The roots in the potted vine near the door had curled inward since the invoice arrived.
Plants, apparently, also disliked family paperwork.
