"Whoareyou?" he said quietly.
"I'm the man running this court while everyone else mourns."
"You're the man who once told me that anyone who puts governance above the people they love deserves to lose both." He studied my face, searching for something. I watched him search. I watched him fail. "What happened to you?"
"I grew up."
"You grew cold. There's a difference." He held my gaze for a long moment, then shook his head. "Eat breakfast with her. That's not a suggestion."
He walked away. His footsteps echoed down the corridor like a rebuke.
I went to the study instead.
* * *
The day passed in reports and orders and the smooth machinery of governance.
I met with Serkan about the secondary interviews. Reviewed border patrol deployments with Lord Volkan. Approved three new appointments to the palace guard—all vetted, all clean-blooded, all loyal to the council structure rather than to any memory of what Gün Ata's reign had become in its final centuries — the softer edicts, the reforms, the deliberate dismantling of the very programs now being quietly reassembled. Efficient. Necessary. Good.
The fifth bell rang. I picked up the next report. The rune behind my collar pulsed once — warm, approving — and there was work to do, and I did it.
The words sat in my mind like stones someone else had placed there.
I took dinner alone. Reviewed testing results by lamplight. The names blurred after the first hundred—just names, just people, just administrative units to be processed and categorized and filed. Twelve flagged for additional review. Three recommended for relocation pending investigation.Relocation.Another smooth word, meaning something uglier underneath that I couldn't quite reach through the fog.
It was near midnight when I returned to our chambers. Ada was awake—sitting on the edge of the bed in her white mourning robes, her dark hair loose and unwashed, a cup of untouched çay cooling on the nightstand beside her. She looked up when I entered, and the hope in her face was so naked, so desperate, that something far beneath the fog flinched from it.
"You missed dinner," she said. Not an accusation. An observation, delivered with the careful neutrality of someone who has learned that accusations make things worse.
"I ate in the study."
"You always eat in the study now."
I unbuttoned my collar as I crossed to the wardrobe. Pulled the tunic over my head without thinking—the runes were on the back of my neck and down behind my ear, and I'd grown careless about hiding them in the routine of undressing, forgetting that she was watching, that she was always watching, because even now, even diminished by grief, Ada was the sharpest person in any room she entered.
"Hakan."
The alarm in her voice made me turn.
She was on her feet, crossing the space between us, her eyes fixed on my neck. Before I could step back, her fingers were on my skin—tracing the angular script with a touch so light it barely registered, except where it burned.
"What are these?" she whispered. "These marks—Hakan, these weren't here last week. I would have noticed."
I caught her wrist. Removed her hand. "It's nothing."
"It's notnothing, they're—" She pulled free of my grip, stubborn, reaching again. "They'removing. The lines are moving under your skin. What is this? Is this shadow magic? Is something happening to you?"
"I said it's nothing." The words came out harder than I intended—harder than the old Hakan would have allowed, sharp and dismissive and cold enough to make her hand freeze mid-reach. "Shadow magic manifests on the skin sometimes. It's common for half-bloods. Drop it."
"Common for—Hakan, I've never seen anything like this. The script looks old, really old, and it'spulsing. Can't you feel that? It's hot to the touch." She tried to meet my eyes. I looked past her, at the wall, at anything that wasn't the concern in her face. "Let me look at them properly. Maybe if I use my light I can?—"
"Don't touch me with your light."
The sharpness of it stopped her cold. She stood there with her hand suspended between us, fingers still reaching, and I watched the hurt bloom across her face like ink in water—slow, spreading, impossible to take back.
"I'm trying to help you," she said, very quietly.
"I don't need your help. What I need is for you to stop fussing over things you don't understand and let me handle my own affairs." I pulled a sleeping tunic from the wardrobe and dragged it on, covering the runes. "I've told you—everything with my mother is fine. She's recovering. The testing is under control. The council is functioning. You don't need to worry about any of it."
