News travels by tongue and by knife in Drakoria. Both are blunt instruments. After the Patriarch named the leak aloud, the house rearranged itself like an animal answering a wound. Eyes sharpened. Conversations folded shorter. Courtesy hardened into armor and then into barbs.
Seren woke with the echo of the blackwood chair still under his skin. The scar on his palm had scabbed but the spark that had flickered in his blood the day before felt like a coal caught between ribs. He dressed in the clothes Elara had made him wear: plain linen, dark enough to hide dust, light enough not to beg attention.
Elara watched him pack a small bundle. Her face was a map of angles now. "They will press harder," she said, voice folded. "You learned the mirror's patience. The house learns cruelty faster."
"I will not make noise," Seren said.
"You make noise by living," she answered. "Keep your steps tidy."
Their route through the keep took them past the yard where the heirs practiced swordplay as if metal could teach them mercy. Aurelius led the drills—ordered movements, taught for formations. His eyes flicked at Seren as if the sight of him cost honor. Cassius lounged at the postern, pretending indifference and enjoying the exercise of being quiet enough to be dangerous. Lyra's water ribbon trailed across the yard like a lazy snake, glancing at faces and pulling information with it.
It was in the washroom corridor that the first ember lit.
A scream—a small, sharp sound cut like glass and made everyone turn. A page had stumbled near the larder. A tray had tipped. The scullion who had replaced the dismissed boy lay curled at the base of the stairs, face blue around the lips. A rush gathered; hands fumbled for pulse, for air, for excuses.
Seren felt the thread of the moment before it tightened. He moved without thinking—old habit, new urgency—pushing through the small crowd to the body. The scullion's eyes were fixed and glossy. He had not cried. A smear of oil near the tray had a grayish crust over it, like ash that had not wanted to be ash.
"Elara!" someone shouted. A healer arrived with practiced hands. They turned the boy, checked throat, tried to draw cause out into daylight. The healer's face was a ledger of calm until he saw the lip's stain and the line of black that ran along the tongue. Poison leaves its handwriting.
A noble laughed too loudly. "Clumsy," he said. "Perhaps the yard is flawed."
Elara's jaw moved but no sound came. She looked at Seren, eyes hard as flint. "Get him to the library," she ordered. "If there's truth, learn it. If not, bury it properly."
Seren did as told. His steps were a map of care. He carried the boy's shoulders, feeling the odd coolness beneath skin that should have burned, and set him on a table under a lamp. Eldrin arrived with oilcloth and a hand that trembled just enough to be human.
"Filterweed," Seren said before he realized he had spoken. The packet in his sleeve warmed his fingers. The old man's eyes widened with a flicker that was not surprise so much as respect for an answer.
Eldrin rubbed the boy's gums and forced a bit of the leaf pulp down a slit between teeth. It tasted bitter and clotting, and the boy gagged and coughed and came half to himself. He did not speak; he watched Seren as if the child carried more than hands.
"Someone pushed ashroot into his tray," Eldrin said. "They hide it in broth, in tea, in wine. They test and they mark. We are being taught how to die politely."
"Who?" Seren asked.
Eldrin's face narrowed. "Someone inside who has access to kitchens, cellars. Someone with patience and no conscience."
Seren's mind ran through motion like a watch. Hands that carry water, but bite when asked to. A steward who moves rings for work. A boy who laughed and scoured his wrists raw with scrubbing. Cassius's grin. The steward's finger with its dragon ring shifted on the bread—memory pinned to a mark. Connections braided quickly as vines if you give them a moment.
"Careful who you name," Eldrin cautioned. "Houses eat accusation."
Seren nodded. He would not accuse. He would collect patterns.
The scullion recovered enough to sit up, eyes frantic but alive. He whispered a name that might have been a dream. A cook nearby fainted. A steward paled. Guards moved to corrals. Scribes scratched notes in ink that smelled of cedar and secrecy.
Night fell on the castle with the weight of a verdict. Seren walked the corridors like someone testing for places where shadows learned to sleep. He recorded small things: which larders closed after midnight; who touched the casks at dusk; which door biographies matched which footfalls.
That night, a scrap of paper slid beneath Elara's door. The handwriting was a small, sharp hand that loved discretion. Meet the stair. Seventh landing. Come alone. No rosette. No signature. The lack of flourish spoke like a knife.
Elara folded it and burned the ash in the brazier until only dust marred her spoon. "They play," she said. "They test. They expect answers. Don't give them trophies."
Seren slept with his hand on the packet of filterweed and the cord in his sleeve. He dreamed of tables where cups moved of their own will and candles bent to point knives.
Dawn smelled of boiled broth and new calculation. At the breakfast table the heirs ate with the competence of those who practice consuming shocks. Cassius sat near a window, smile thin as a snapped twig. Aurelius chewed thoughtfully. Lyra's water braided around a bowl and retreated.
The steward who had handled the larder walked past Seren with a face like a man who had been lightly scalded. He dropped a tray and did not curse. Someone else picked it up and smiled the way a person smiles after a surprise lesson. Small kindness is often an apprenticeship for cruelty.
That afternoon, Seren found a trace: a smear of gray on a cork in a barrel he had used to carry water to the west baths. The barrel had been moved that dawn by a hand with rings. The dragon sign on the ring's mount was worn to a smooth arc, but the index finger's crease held an imprint. He pressed fingers to it and memorized the pattern like a cipher.
He did not speak. He collected.
At twilight the family convened in a closed room. The Patriarch's voice didn't need the wood it rode on to cut the air. "We will not be surprised by death," he said. "We will make it an instrument of lesson and of discipline. Hunt the levers. Name the pockets where waste becomes plague." His words were commands; answers would follow or bodies would.
Zephyros watched Seren with a gaze that measured and did not yet reach to mercy. "Let the boy learn," he said to the circle. "And let the circle decide what of it will be given back to him."
Aurelius's chin twitched as if the word decide were already a blade to be sharpened. Cassius's smile puckered into something like interest. Selene's eyes glinted. The house had found a new sport.
Seren stepped out of the hall with Elara at his side. The corridors felt like a map whose ink had been spritzed with acid. In the rear, a younger servant—a stablehand who had always looked as if some part of him was absent—caught Seren's sleeve.
"You look for things," the boy whispered. "I saw a man slip a pouch near the casks last night. He wore a ring with a dragon head. He goes to the cellars at dusk."
Seren's heart did not leap. It matched beats with breath. "Who?" he asked.
The stablehand swallowed. "Steward Merek. He comes when the larders lock. He has a daughter in the kitchens."
Merek. The ring. The steward whose crease matched the imprint Seren had found.
Not accusation. Pattern.
Seren nodded once. "Thank you." He folded the information into the pocket in his sleeve where he kept leaves and cord and small truths.
That night Seren walked alone to the south stair. He counted seven landings. He tapped the wall twice without sound. The seam opened and a dark swallowed him. The chamber's mirror waited. The glass was calm, reflecting him into quiet fractures.
A note lay on the small table beside it. Tight ink, fewer words.
We test to know who will bend. I test you to see if you will break. Watch the steward. He brings gifts for daughters and grief for houses.
No signature. No flourish. Just the sentence. A hand had watched the steward too. Allies might be a thing found in the margins.
Seren pressed his palm to the glass. The mirror didn't speak. It only held the coal under his ribs like a lantern.
He left the stair with the slack of a man who has one more piece to place. In the dark, he met Merek once at the pantry door. The steward's face was strained into usefulness. He looked at Seren and gave the smallest bow a man can give a child—one made of duty, not warmth.
Seren simply nodded back. Courtesy is camouflage. Knowledge is camouflage for movement.
When he returned to Elara's room, she had not slept. Her eyes were ringed with tiredness, but there was a small hardening to her hands.
"You'll be watched," she said.
"So will he," Seren answered.
She paused and then reached into her apron and offered him a small strip of leather. "Tie this to your sleeve. It will catch the slip of a cord. Don't let them steal your throat."
He tied the leather with hands that had learned knots that do not slip. Outside, the castle breathed and turned. Inside, a dozen eyes sharpened, a dozen plans braced.
Ember of retribution was only the first. The house would test again. Seren would learn again. He had little more than breath and measurement and a small bag of leaves and a cord.
He had, now, a name in someone else's ledger: Merek, steward of the cellars. He had a pattern to follow. And he had a mirror that did not lie and did not forgive.
The night closed. The coal under his ribs glowed steady, and for the first time since the cave, he did not feel wholly alone.