Jin had always believed that most betrayals began as kindness.
He had grown up in the Ashbluff court, where everyone smiled and half of them were lying, and he had learned very early that the dangerous people were not the ones who hated you. They were the ones who loved someone else more. A maid who passed a message for her brother. A tutor who repeated a secret to his wife. A guard who looked the other way because his captain had once saved his life. In nineteen years of palace intrigue, Jin had met perhaps three true traitors. He had met hundreds of people who had simply trusted the wrong friend.
So when Arthur asked him to talk to the forty-one, Jin did not interrogate them. He bought them lunch, because people said more across a table than they ever said across a desk.
