I stop walking.
Iowyn stops a beat after. She's looking at us—at me—and I can't read her face. Curious. Maybe something else.
"Renan." My voice is very quiet. "What exactly do you think will happen if someone tries to hurt her while she's standing next to me?"
He doesn't answer. Doesn't need to.
The answer is: I will unmake them. I will tear them apart with my bare hands and I will enjoy it. I will make it last. I will make sure they understand exactly why they're dying before I let them finish.
The answer is: I'm bringing her because I can't function if she's somewhere I can't see.
The answer is: this is not about her safety. This is about mine.
Renan's quiet for a moment. Then the smile comes back—slow, wide, all teeth.
"So when it goes sideways," he says, "do I get to break things?"
"When?"
"Don't bullshit me, brother. You're walking into a Concord with her on your arm. Coin's going to lose his shit. Faith will clutch his pearls. War—" He laughs, short and sharp. "War's going to love it."
"Probably."
"So." He rolls his shoulders. Cracks his neck. "When it falls apart. When someone says the wrong thing about her. When you stop pretending to be civilized." His eyes are bright. Hungry. "Do I get to help?"
I look at him. My best friend. My feral, broken, loyal-to-the-bone best friend who would follow me into any hell I chose and ask only if he could set it on fire first.
"Stay close," I say. "Watch her back."
"And if someone touches her?"
"Then don't leave anything for me to clean up."
His grin splits wide. "Now you're speaking my language."
He scrubs a hand over his face. When he looks at me again, the manic edge softens into something else. Recognition. One predator to another.
"You're fucked," he says. Almost fond.
I look at Iowyn. She's close enough to touch.
"I know."
Last time I was property. Dragged through those doors with handlers on my arms and blood in my mouth, presented to a room full of gods who couldn't be bothered to look at me.
The Concord chamber smells like incense and old money. The marble is the same, too-high ceilings. The way sound echoes wrong, amplifying whispers while swallowing screams.
Now I'm seated in Discord's section, pressed against Koshin's side because he refuses to let me sit anywhere else, and everyone's pretending this is normal. Including me. The debt payment got promoted. Someone alert the scribes.
Koshin is to my left. Renan to my right. I'm boxed in—protected on all sides, if you're being generous. Trapped,if you're being honest. Neither of them has relaxed since we entered—their shoulders carry the same tension, the same watchfulness. Expecting violence.
The other Houses are already seated. Faith in their ivory and gold, arranged by rank, faces carefully blank. War sprawling across their section, Caius at the center with his arms crossed and his jaw set. And Coin—
Coin gleams. Gold thread in their robes, gold in their hair, gold worked into every visible surface. Merit Daiven is at the front, spine straight, hands folded. The bruise on his face has faded since the last time I saw him.
Since Koshin put it there.
"The emergency session of the Concord is convened." Faith's high procurist—Ildarin Seth—rises from his seat. His voice carries that grating certainty that makes my teeth itch. "We gather under the sacred bonds to address matters of—"
