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“That’s the point.”
“It’s a strange point to spend centuries making, but I respect the commitment.” She studied a topiary shaped into a heraldic, vaguely aggressive creature as they passed it. “Does it have a name. It’s giving off main-character energy.”
“It’s a griffin. It’s older than the house.”
“Of course it is.”
Her phone buzzed once against her thigh, and she used it as an excuse to look at anything besides the approaching house.
JESSA: how are the bushes. update us on the bushes
MARCO: forget the bushes. is there a moat. I need the moat information immediately
JESSA: he’s not going to have a moat
MARCO: you don’t know his life
She typed back with her thumb, quick, before she lost her nerve about the whole enterprise. No moat. Several aggressive shrubs. Meeting his father in four minutes, send help or at minimum a good luck emoji.
JESSA: you’ve got this. also we are DEMANDING a full debrief tonight, this is not optional
MARCO: bring backup snacks. always bring backup snacks to a dragon’s father’s house. it’s just etiquette
She put the phone away smiling despite herself, the knot in her stomach loosened by exactly enough to be useful.
Romily’s running commentary dried up somewhere around the front gate, replaced by the same structural read she gave everything; he noticed she didn’t reach for a single joke once the house itself came into view. The house had that effect on people. It had that effect on him, still, after all these centuries of being one of the people it belonged to.
“It’s not warm like your mother’s house.” He pulled up the long drive, gravel crunching under the tires. “It was never built to be.”
“What was it built for?”
“Being correct.”
She glanced at him, tucking the observation away the way she tucked everything away, and didn’t argue the point, because she’d have plenty of chances to see exactly what he meant before the evening finished.
He parked in front of the main steps instead of the side entrance staff used, a small, deliberate choice, and came around to open her door before she’d finished unbuckling.
“You don’t have to do that here.”
“I’m doing it everywhere, from now on. You’ll get used to it.” He offered his hand. She took it, a small surrender against a house that had spent centuries convincing people they needed no help at all navigating it. “Whatever happens in the next few hours, that part isn’t changing.”
Darius came down the front steps as they climbed them, car keys spinning around one finger, dressed for nothing more strenuous than lunch with his mother, who lived close enough to make dropping by a habit rather than an occasion.
“You’re actually doing this.” He looked between them, delighted in a way that did nothing to steady Romily’s nerves. “In person. In the good hall. I had money on you rescheduling twice more first.”
“I don’t reschedule.”
“You do, constantly, when it’s inconvenient enough.” Darius turned to Romily, dropping his voice to something almost gentle, the performance falling away for as long as it took him to say it. “He’s worse than the house. Bark and stonework, mostly. You’ll be fine in there — better than fine, knowing you — and if it goes sideways, I’m three minutes away and I’ve been waiting a very long time for a reason to enjoy myself at my own godfather’s expense.”
“That’s oddly reassuring.”
“I do what I can.” He squeezed her shoulder once, brief and warm, and jogged the rest of the way down the steps toward his car, calling back over his shoulder without turning around. “Text me the second it’s over. I want the whole thing, no editing for my comfort.”
He was gone before Norden could tell him to behave himself, tires already crunching gravel toward the gate.
Magnus met them in the entrance hall himself, which Norden understood immediately as a decision rather than a courtesy — his father didn’t personally greet guests he considered beneath the effort, and greeting Romily this directly was its own kind of message, delivered before a single word had been exchanged.
He stood beneath the portrait gallery that ran the length of the hall, centuries of Sharpe ancestors watching from their frames with the same fixed, judgmental composure their descendant currently wore in the flesh.
