The corridor outside the tribunal was narrower than it should've been for a palace that loved ceremony.
That was the point. Tight halls made crowds move in one direction. Tight halls made guards feel necessary.
Now it smelled like failure.
Ash, sharp and dry. Antiseptic, too clean to be convincing. Someone had tried to scrub the tribunal off the stone and only managed to smear it into a wider stain. Every few steps there was a darker patch where blood had soaked into the grout and decided it lived there now.
The wardstones along the ceiling hummed, low and offended, as if they were the injured party.
Jina walked between two guards who couldn't decide whether to treat her like a victim or a weapon. Their hands hovered too near their hilts. Their eyes kept flicking to her mouth.
Of course they did.
Her forearm throbbed under a rushed bandage. The ache in her gut—poison strain—burned in slow waves that threatened to blur her vision if she breathed too shallow. She kept her steps even anyway, because uneven steps became rumors.
Behind them, the tribunal hall churned with people leaving in pieces: gossip, outrage, prayer, blame. Ahead, the palace's inner passageways swallowed the noise into something worse—whispers that had time to sharpen.
A stretcher bumped past. Two healers moved fast, faces set. Another followed with a guard whose eyes were already too far away. Then a third with a noblewoman who kept trying to sit up and being forced gently back down.
No one looked at Jina with neutrality.
They looked at her like she was either salvation or an excuse.
Both were heavy.
A shadow detached itself from the wall at her left.
Theron matched her pace without asking permission from the escort, because Theron rarely asked when the question was pointless. He looked composed, but his eyes were alert in the way of a man reading a map while walking through a minefield.
"Your instinct was correct," he said quietly. "The violence was engineered."
Jina didn't slow. "It wasn't subtle."
"You did not broadcast," Theron continued, as if marking a variable. "That alters their primary track."
The guard nearest her stiffened at the word broadcast. His gaze darted to her mouth again, like the syllables alone might trigger something.
Jina kept her face blank.
She could still feel the moment her Domain had tried to bloom—how the hall had leaned toward it like a starving thing. Warmth. Quiet. Safety. A blanket that could become a net if she let it.
She hadn't.
She'd bled instead. She was still bleeding, in places no one could see.
"They wanted the simple solution," Jina said, and tasted iron that hadn't come from the air. "One word. One leash."
Theron's mouth tightened a fraction. "Yes."
His gaze flicked down the corridor where the prosecution bench had been escorted—where her sibling had been taken, swaddled in urgent attention and ready narrative.
Then he looked back at her.
"This is not finished," he said. "Severin does not discard a strategy because it fails once. He redirects."
The name touched the back of Jina's neck like ice.
She didn't look around. The corridor had too many corners, too many alcoves, too many decorative columns designed to hide ears.
"Redirect to what," she asked.
Theron's voice remained clinical. "Succession."
Jina's stomach tightened.
"Stability," Theron said, and the word itself carried poison. "He will push an alternative heir. Someone palatable. Someone the court can call safe."
Her mouth went dry.
"Likely a sibling," Theron added. "Your family becomes part of the noose."
The corridor smelled like ash and antiseptic. Someone had tried to scrub the tribunal off the stone and failed.
"Alternative heir," Theron said. "A sibling. 'Stability.' They will sell it like mercy."
Jina swallowed—and her lip split.
She didn't notice until warmth slid down her chin and copper hit her tongue.
Theron's gaze dropped. "You're bleeding."
"I'm fine," Jina lied automatically, the way bodies lied when they were too tired to negotiate the truth.
"No," Theron said, and the word wasn't loud.
It was final.
He reached into his coat and produced a folded cloth—clean, white, too prepared. Then he stopped an inch from her face, not touching, not assuming.
"Permission," he said.
The question landed like a pinprick in the middle of chaos. Her breath caught anyway.
"Yes," Jina said.
Theron dabbed her lip with careful precision. His bare knuckle brushed the corner of her mouth—accidental, maybe—but the contact lit her nerves like it belonged somewhere private, somewhere the palace couldn't record.
"You bleed like a human," he murmured, so low it felt like it belonged in a different room.
Jina's throat tightened. "I am."
Theron's eyes lifted to hers. "Not to them."
He pulled the cloth away. The space he left behind felt colder than it should have.
"Do not give Severin a clean story," Theron said, voice back to steel. "And do not mistake restraint for safety."
Jina stared at the cloth in his hand like it was evidence of something she couldn't afford to name.
The guards pretended not to notice. Palace-trained blindness: ignore what doesn't fit the script until the moment it can be weaponized.
Theron folded the cloth and tucked it away like he hadn't just stepped into her space and left an aftertaste.
Jina forced herself to breathe again. Even breaths. No wobble. No weakness for the corridor to chew.
"Why would the court accept a sibling," she asked, keeping her voice low. "The Emperor sealed succession."
Theron's eyes narrowed. "Seals can be reinterpreted. A 'compromised' heir creates a loophole. A 'merciful transfer' becomes protection. They will argue guardianship first. Then replacement."
He said it like gears engaging. Like he'd watched this machine before.
Jina could see it too—how easily protection became a cage, how quickly the word stability could be used to hang someone.
"And my sibling being injured—" she started.
Theron's gaze cut briefly ahead where attendants hovered in a loose cluster, pretending to manage traffic flow while actually waiting to see where the Crown Heir would be taken. "Useful. It casts you as danger to your own bloodline. It paints the hall as unsafe under your presence. It gives them an emotional story to sell."
Jina's jaw tightened until it ached.
She hadn't fired the bolt. She hadn't ordered the chaos. She hadn't even used the power they'd been begging her to misuse.
None of that mattered if the story was hung correctly.
"Severin wants a clean narrative," Theron continued. "Either you are a tyrant, or you are an imposter, or you are unstable. If you resist one, he will move to another."
Copper lingered on Jina's tongue. The poison strain rolled again, slow fire licking up from inside.
She hadn't broadcast.
That should have been a win.
It felt like a delay before impact.
"You're saying he'll escalate," Jina said.
Theron's expression stayed controlled, but something in his eyes sharpened. "Yes."
Then, softer—almost unwillingly—"That will anger him."
The idea of Severin angry should have felt satisfying.
It didn't.
Anger meant escalation, and escalation meant bodies on marble.
"What do you want me to do," Jina asked, "when they put my sibling on a pedestal and call it stability?"
Theron didn't answer immediately. He watched the corridor ahead, tracking exits, tracking the way guards shifted when officials approached, tracking the palace like it was a living predator.
When he spoke, it was with the tone he used for surgery: precise, no wasted motion.
"Separate categories," he said. "Your sibling is family. Your sibling is also a political instrument. Treat the injury. Do not chase reconciliation. Do not allow private pleas to become public leverage."
"So Jina stays cold," the thought tried to form.
Theron corrected it without hearing it. "You stay clear."
Clear. Clean lines. No openings. No affection they could twist into weakness. No anger they could twist into instability.
She hated how much sense it made.
Ahead, the corridor widened into a junction where four paths branched. Palace officials stood there, solemn faces arranged into duty, eyes not quite hiding their hunger.
They watched her hands.
They watched her mouth.
Theron stepped half a pace closer—not shielding, not possessive. Strategic. He blocked the cleanest line of sight to her lip, to the small betrayals of her body.
"Your restraint is not protection," he said quietly, repeating himself as if he needed it hammered into bone. "It buys you time. It does not make you safe."
At the edge of an archway, darkness shifted the way it did when it decided to become a wall.
Lysander, somewhere nearby. Not crowding. Not touching. Just present in the geometry—an exit route made human.
Warmth rose in Jina's chest and settled before it could become something dangerous.
Then a new pain tugged under her ribs—faint, distant, wrong.
A pressure like someone far away had yanked on a scar.
The bond-web inside her tightened. Not Kaelen's rage-thread, not Theron's cold line, not Sivaris's silk-blade.
Rhydian.
Not a name she could say out loud here. Not a thought she could afford to follow. But the flare was unmistakable—an echo, a disturbance, a connection straining against suppression.
Jina kept her face still.
Theron noticed anyway. Of course he did.
"Something?" he asked.
"Later," Jina said.
He didn't press. He filed it away with everything else that could become relevant at the worst possible moment.
One of the officials stepped forward, face arranged into solemn duty. "Your Highness—"
The words snagged as Lysander appeared behind him without sound.
Not threatening. Not smiling.
Just present enough that the official remembered he had a body and could be harmed.
"We are escorting the Crown Heir to the inner infirmary," the official continued, voice thinner. "For… assessment."
Assessment. Like she was a cracked relic.
Jina didn't argue. Refusal here would be framed as defiance again. She wouldn't hand them that cleanly.
She nodded once.
Theron moved with her as the escort changed direction. The official kept talking, trying to reclaim authority with syllables.
"There will be a statement," he said. "To calm the court. To reassure the public."
Theron's gaze went cold. "A statement will be written to suit whoever holds the quill."
The official bristled. "We cannot leave rumors unaddressed."
Fatigue sharpened into irritation. Rumors had been their favorite weapon since the first day she woke up in this body.
Jina looked at the official and let her voice carry just enough to be heard by people who mattered, without becoming performance.
"Reassure them with facts," she said. "The tribunal was attacked. People were injured. The hall stabilized. The wounded were evacuated."
No mention of Command. No mention of Severin. No mention of the private box.
Facts could be a blade too, if held correctly.
The official's mouth tightened. He nodded as if he'd chosen this approach himself.
Theron glanced at Jina—approval, not warmth. Warmth was vulnerability.
The infirmary doors came into view—heavier than the ones used for ordinary patients, guarded by men trained to watch nobles and criminals with equal suspicion.
A healer stepped out with hands stained red up to the wrists. Her gaze met Jina's and dipped—respectful and frightened at the same time.
"Your Highness," the healer said. "Your… relative is stable."
Relative. Not sibling. Not rival. Even healers were careful with language.
Good.
Let everyone be careful. Let the palace strain under its own caution until something snapped.
Theron's voice went low beside her, one last knife slid between ribs. "They will try to put you against your sibling. Or bind you to them. Either serves Severin."
Jina swallowed. Her split lip stung.
"I won't let them," she said.
Theron held her gaze for a beat, then stepped back, giving the escort space, giving the corridor no more intimacy to record.
"Then don't," he said simply. "And remember—winning today did not end the trap. It only changed its shape."
The infirmary doors opened and antiseptic air rushed out, too clean, too sharp.
Jina caught one last glimpse down the corridor.
A curtain of darkness at the far archway. A shape that didn't belong to any guard rotation. A presence that made the back of her neck go cold without her even looking directly at it.
Severin's shadow—or someone trained in his methods.
Watching. Counting. Waiting for the next story to write itself.
Jina stepped into the infirmary anyway, because hesitation would be eaten and spit back out as proof.
And because whatever Severin planned next, it would include blood.
It always did.
[Reveal]