Silven Marrow did not trust men without histories.
A man's past was a ledger, one that explained his habits, his scars, the way he held his tongue or snapped it loose. But Elias Veyne… the stranger thrown into Hadrien's keep weeks ago… he had no ledger. No records. No whispers from the villages. Not even rumors from passing caravans.
And that made Silven restless.
The chamber was dim, lit by guttering candles stuck into wrought-iron sconces. Hadrien's solar smelled faintly of parchment, dust, and the iron tang of the wine cooling in a pitcher on the desk. Scrolls and reports lay scattered before the lord, the detritus of rule—supply ledgers, patrol accounts, lists of repairs. But Hadrien was not reading them. He sat in silence, staring at the folded parchment Kael had sent earlier that day.
Silven broke the stillness. His voice was gravelly, touched with the hoarseness of a man who had shouted orders on battlefields for half his life.
"You believe him, then?"
Hadrien's dark eyes flicked upward. His posture was deceptively relaxed—fingers steepled, chin resting lightly on them—but Silven had known him too long to be fooled. The man was weighing, calculating, as he always did.
"I believe," Hadrien said slowly, "that he believes what he claims. That is not the same as truth."
Silven's lips curved, humorless. He moved to the map stretched across the table, its edges pinned with stones. Lines marked troop movements, borders, contested keeps. He tapped a finger against the parchment.
"His clothes were odd when your knights dragged him in. Not Orravian stitchwork. No wool from the Northlands, no silk from Sarradon. Too fine for a commoner, too strange for a noble. I've bartered with merchants from the isles, and even they did not wear such cloth."
Hadrien gave a slight nod, silent.
"And his tongue," Silven continued, voice sharpening. "Too clean. No accent of our neighbors. No guttural drawl of the Skarn, no rolling vowels of the desert men. And yet—he learns our speech with unnatural speed. Too quick for a man pulled from the mud of some forgotten village."
Hadrien finally leaned back, the faintest smile ghosting his lips. "You noticed it too."
"Of course," Silven said, folding his arms. "My lord, strangers with no pasts rarely come with harmless intent. Men like him are either gifts… or curses."
A silence stretched, broken only by the faint crackle of candlewick. Silven studied Hadrien's profile in the dim light, the lines carved into his face by years of rule and war. Many men mistook Hadrien's composure for disinterest, but Silven had seen what lay beneath. He had followed this man from his first skirmish as a lordling barely grown to his present rule of one of Orravia's most fragile keeps. Hadrien did not waste curiosity. If he let something live, it was because he intended to use it.
"You are troubled," Hadrien said at last.
"I am cautious."
"Caution has served you well, old friend."
It was true enough. Silven Marrow had survived where brighter, braver men had perished. Once, he had been a soldier with nothing but a spear and stubborn will. He rose by watching, listening, and surviving. It had been Silven who spotted a traitor in Hadrien's court years ago, who exposed the plot before it could take the young lord's life. Since then, his place at Hadrien's side was unquestioned.
And now that same instinct whispered that Elias Veyne was no mere castaway.
"What do you intend to do with him?" Silven asked, voice low.
Hadrien's gaze slid toward the darkened window. "Perhaps fate sent him. Perhaps something else. In either case, he is here."
Silven's fingers drummed against the edge of the map. "My lord, men like that cannot be left unchecked. He is clever, too clever. He makes others uneasy. That sort of man either builds thrones… or breaks them."
Hadrien's smile deepened, though his eyes remained sharp. "Then let us see which he does. Watch him. Let him taste a leash that slackens, and see if he runs or bows. If he squanders the chance, we tighten it again. If he thrives…"
Silven narrowed his eyes. "Then he may be more dangerous than the leash itself."
The two men locked gazes across the desk. For all his suspicion, Silven knew the conversation was finished. Hadrien's curiosity had been stirred, and once that happened, no counsel would dissuade him.
Still, Silven inclined his head, masking his unease with obedience. "As you command, my lord. I will keep my eyes sharp. If there is rot beneath his story, I will find it."
Hadrien reached for the parchment Kael had written, brushing his fingers along the lines that praised Elias' uncanny learning. "Do so, Silven. But remember—sometimes a stranger's truth is more useful than their lie."
The candles guttered in the draft as the night deepened, shadows stretching long across the chamber. Two old comrades sat in silence, one sharpening suspicion, the other nurturing curiosity—both knowing that the fate of the foreign prisoner might shape more than the walls of their keep