I feel... lighter.
Lovely.
Footsteps in the corridor.
"She's asking for you."
Caius.
"Is she eating?"
"Some. Not enough. I made a note." He adjusts his stance—I can hear it, the shift of weight, the settling into what he probably considers optimal standing posture. "I've been keeping notes. Duration of sleep, food intake, number of times she startled at sounds. It helps to have data."
"That's... thorough."
"Organization prevents chaos." He says it like it's obvious. Like everyone tracks trauma recovery on a spreadsheet. "She slept a few hours. Woke twice. Nightmares both times, but the second was shorter. That's improvement. Statistically."
I finally look up at him. He's standing exactly the way I expected—shoulders back, chin lifted, one hand resting near his gladius. Ready for a portrait or a battle, whichever comes first.
"Thank you. For watching her."
"It wasn't difficult. She's quiet. Good posture, considering." He pauses. "Better than yours. You're hunching."
The door opens without resistance. Seris is sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in borrowed clothes that don't quite fit—Discord's fashion sense running toward practical blacks and grays that wash out her coloring. She looks small in them. Younger than twenty. Younger than she has any right to look after everything that's happened.
"Io." Her voice cracks on the second syllable. She clears her throat and tries again. "I need to talk to you."
"I figured." I close the door behind me, cross to the chair across from her, and sit even though my body wants to fold onto the floor instead. "You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The one that means you've decided something and you're bracing for me to fight you on it."
Her jaw tightens. There—that set to her mouth I've seen maybe three times in twenty years. Seris has always been better at hiding her spine than I am. Probably smarter, honestly. Visible spine just makes you a target.
"I'm going back," she says.
My stomach drops. I knew before she said it—knew from the way she was sitting, knew from the set of her shoulders—but hearing the words still hits wrong.
"Back where."
"Home." She doesn't flinch from the word. "House Solyne."
"The house where our father—" I stop myself. Breathe. Try again. "The house that's currently a crime scene. That house."
"The house that's still standing. The house that still has staff, obligations, alliances that need managing. The house that will collapse completely if no one takes responsibility for it." She meets my eyes, and there's no waver in her gaze. "Someone has to, Io."
"No. Actually, no one has to. That's the entire point of what we did. You don't have to do anything now except stay alive and—"
"And what?" Her voice rises before she flattens it back down. "Hide in Discord forever? Live as a guest in your god's compound while the family name rots? You got out, Io. I understand that. But getting out meant leaving everything behind, and now there's nothing left to go back to. Except there is. The House is still there. The name is still there. And I can either let it die or I can—"
"Walk back into the murder house and pretend everything's fine? Sure. Great plan. Very sane."
"Take what he built and make it mine."
I'm staring at her.
My little sister, who learned to survive by bending, who perfected her smile and her posture and her careful, careful words—and she's sitting in front of me saying she wants to go back to the place where our father hurt her and claim it as her own.
