"Io. What the fuck."
"I know."
"What the fuck!"
"I know." I smile. "So when I say it's been a weird week—"
"No, you're right. You win. That's—" She shakes her head, laughing again, the sound still edged with something that could tip into crying. "That's insane. That's completely insane. And you're just sitting here telling me like it's—"
"I haven't really had time to process it."
"Clearly." She takes a breath. Steadies herself. The laughter fades, but some of the tension goes with it. "Okay. Okay. We're tabling that. We're coming back to that later because I have questions, but—okay."
She does smile at that—small, broken at the edges, but real.
"If you go back," I say, and the decision settles into place as I speak, "Discord goes with you."
Seris blinks. "What?"
I find Koshin in the room where Renan spreads papers everywhere and Koshin paces around making everyone nervous. He's mid-circuit when I walk in, barefoot on stone, and he doesn't stop moving when he sees me—just adjusts his path so the next loop brings him closer.
"She wants to go back."
"Your sister." He says it without breaking stride. His eyes track my face, my hands, the set of my shoulders. "You've been crying."
"I haven't."
"You've been doing that thing where you refuse to cry so hard your whole face locks up. Same result, more effort." Hepasses close enough that I can smell sandalwood and something sharper underneath. "Continue."
"House Solyne. She wants to claim it, take over, be the new head of house." The words still taste strange in my mouth, unreal. "And before you say anything—she's serious. She's thought it through. I spent half an hour trying to talk her out of it and got nowhere."
"Of course you didn't. She's your sister." He stops mid-pace, turns to face me fully, head tilting. "No father now. That's your fault. You handed her a corpse and a power vacuum, and she's choosing to fill it instead of running." His mouth curves. "I'd be disappointed if she did anything else."
"She's twenty years old. No training. No alliances. No—"
"No fear of the house she grew up in. That's interesting." He moves again, circling now, and I have to turn to keep him in view. "Most people hesitate with their first kill. You didn't. Most people run from the places that hurt them. She's not. I'm starting to think your whole bloodline is bent wrong." A flash of teeth. "I like it."
"She's going to get herself killed."
"Possibly." He shrugs, and the gesture is wrong somehow—too casual for the words, the timing slightly off. "Probably not. She survived your father for twenty years. That's not nothing. That's endurance. That's watching and learning and staying alive when someone wanted her dead." He stops in front of me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. "She learned that from you, didn't she? The staying alive part."
My throat tightens. I don't answer.
"What do you want, Iowyn?"
Right. The point.
"I want Discord to back her. Public declaration. Explicit protection. Anyone touches Solyne, they're touching Discord." I keep my voice steady, even though my jaw is tight, my shouldersare tight, everything is wound up and braced for a fight. "You make that known. You make sure everyone who matters hears it."
Silence. Even Renan's pen has stopped moving.
"Oh, this is going to be fun." Renan sets down his pen, leaning back in his chair with something that's almost a smile. "You're asking us to publicly claim a mortal house that's currently a crime scene. Coin is going to lose their minds. War—" He glances at Koshin. "War is going to want to know if this means he gets to hit someone."
"Probably," Koshin says.
"Good. He's been bored." Renan's gaze slides back to me, assessing. "You understand this makes you a target. Not just her—you. The marks, the bond, the public declaration. You're basically hanging a sign around your neck that says 'come fuck with Discord's new favorite.'"
"Ah." I glance at Koshin. "So you told him about the whole cosmic bond situation."
