Cold evening air twisted sharply in Lucian's lungs as he reached the Valemont gates. The chill felt heavier than it should, like the house itself exhaled frost. Quenya floated behind his collar, invisible, her presence tightening when she sensed the edge in him. He tried to set his shoulders straight, but the dread clung under his ribs.

The iron gates opened without a word.

The butler waited inside the archway. A tall man, pale, with a face carved into courtesy. He did not bow. He only turned and walked. Lucian followed through the long front hall. The servants along the walls held still as statues. No one met his eyes. That part landed harder than he expected.

The butler stopped at a lacquered door, gave a single nod, and stepped aside.

Seris was already seated. Back straight. A book resting on her lap like it belonged there more than he did. Her posture looked carved from a single thought. Her expression told him nothing at all.

The room itself pressed into silence. Shelves climbed the walls from floor to ceiling, packed so tightly they blurred into one dark, heavy grid. It looked more like a forgotten library than a private study. A wooden book stand waited on the floor in front of a low cushion where he was expected to sit. She faced the opposite direction, giving him her back.

Between their seats ran a narrow channel of water carved into the floor, a strip of moving silver bordered by stone. Three feet across. A design choice he didn't understand. A warning he probably should have.

Three servants waited inside when he arrived. They drifted out one after another, each avoiding his gaze. The final one hesitated, eyes tight with something close to pity, before disappearing into the hall.

Seris spoke without lifting her head.

"Sit. And do not waste more of my time again."

Her voice was low, controlled, and cold in a way shouting could never reach. Lucian swallowed and lowered himself onto the cushion. The room's quiet made his heartbeat sound far too loud.

He glanced at the shelves again. How many books does one person need? Or is this her way of keeping distance without saying anything?

What was her relationship with the real Vencian?

He kept circling the question. From scattered words and half-memories from others, it had looked affectionate. Or at least Vencian had loved her. But with how she treated him now, he struggled to imagine her capable of warmth. Maybe Vencian had only imagined it. Or maybe they had both been good at pretending. He needed answers. They hung right in front of him and still felt out of reach.

Seris's fingers flicked. A small movement. She turned a page as he settled.

A quiet declaration: he was late, replaceable, and unimportant.

He opened the book she had chosen for him. Archaic prose. Dense lines. Themes soaked in tragedy. He started to read aloud. The story had nothing familiar to him, which made every sentence a negotiation between pronunciation and meaning.

Seris kept her back to him. Her gaze caught the window's pale evening light. She listened without looking, as though this were beneath actual attention.

Lucian forced himself to split his focus. The book's lines. Her stillness. Those small shifts she tried to hide.

A blink that took a fraction too long. A jaw muscle drawing tight. Her fingers curling once around the armrest before settling again.

Something unsettled her. Not him. Something else.

Gundal brought something here.

The memory slotted into place. That box for the Day of Ancestors. Pentarch business. Hidden danger.

He tried to keep reading, but his mind ran ahead, mapping doorways, corners, alcoves, the hallway paths the butler had taken. He traced servant entrances in his head and counted where shadows fell.

He nearly missed when Seris spoke.

"Again."

He blinked, unsure he heard right.

Then he realized she had said it once already. He had missed it. His chest tightened.

"You are not concentrating properly," Seris said.

Nothing sharp in her tone. That made it cut deeper.

Lucian forced a breath, careful and quiet. He found the sentence she meant and started over. It was a grim passage about a commander ordering half his men left at dawn to buy time—names listed, rations counted, the slow arithmetic of who would live and who would freeze.

His voice faltered for half a second. Her posture tightened at a particular line describing a commander forced to choose which half of his surviving soldiers to abandon to the winter.

"Skip that part. It's tedious."

He stopped mid-line, throat tightening as he turned the page she already knew by heart.

A servant slipped in to pour tea. The cup rattled once against its saucer, a tremor the servant tried to smother. Her gaze flicked toward the west hallway before she retreated.

Third door on the left, Lucian noted. Unmarred lock. Handle polished recently.

He returned to reading. Seris lifted a finger now and then, halting him without comment.

Every time she did, the line in front of him dealt with sorrow or some turn toward inevitable ruin.

He couldn't tell if she liked the cruelty of it all or wanted him to sit with the weight of those words. She was too controlled and still.

He moved on to the next page.

Her eyes glistened once. Just faintly. At the line: Some endings are inevitable, even when hope learns too late that no one is coming.

He watched it from the corner of his vision. It wasn't enough to call emotion. It was enough to question everything he thought he knew about her.

Then Seris said quietly, "Your voice carries well. It suits bleak material.

Lucian froze.

Compliments didn't happen to him. Not from anyone. And this voice wasn't even his real one. He couldn't tell if she meant it. Or if she found the idea amusing.

He reached the end of the chapter's selection and closed the book slightly, waiting for whatever came next. Disapproval. A command. A dismissal.

Nothing.

"Your Grace?" he said carefully.

She didn't answer.

He stood. Crossed the narrow water channel. His steps felt too loud in that still room. When he reached her chair, he saw her head tilted slightly to the side. Her breathing soft and even.

She was asleep.

He stared at her for a heartbeat. Then another. It felt unreal. But her book rested loosely in her hands, and her shoulders had relaxed beneath the fall of her hair.

This is the first quiet moment I'm going to get.

He needed to start his search. While she slept, he finally had a chance.

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