Chapter 2
I sent the guests inside.
Not home.
Not yet.
The terrace emptied until only my security team, Corisande, Tessara, Mother, and I remained.
First problem:
Merewyn could barely hear.
Tessara dried the hearing aids carefully while a staff member brought the backup pair from Mother’s suite.
Corisande watched.
Something about that irritated me.
“You tried to make her deaf for the evening.”
Her jaw tightened.
“I was angry.”
“No.”
I looked at the champagne glass.
“You selected the one thing that prevented her from hearing conversations around her.”
That was not random anger.
It was containment.
Mother fitted the spare hearing aids and blinked as sound returned.
Then she looked directly at Corisande.
“Tell him what Ambrose promised them.”
Corisande stared.
“What men?”
I asked.
Mother answered.
“The Briar men.”
I had never heard the phrase.
She had.
Twenty-seven years ago, after Lucius Veynham was branded a traitor, twelve captains were expelled with him.
Not executed.
Not attacked.
Erased socially.
Routes removed.
Invitations stopped.
Their families became names nobody said at Veynham dinners.
I had been twenty.
My father told me they had chosen betrayal.
I believed him.
Mother had apparently believed something else.
“Why would Ambrose meet them?”
Corisande answered quietly.
“Because some of their sons work for him now.”
Of course.
Old exile becomes someone else’s workforce.
“What did he promise?”
She looked at my mother.
Then me.
“A hearing.”
I almost laughed.
“You arranged to kidnap me to a hearing?”
“No one was going to hurt you.”
There it was.
The favorite sentence of people who know they have already crossed a line.
“You were going to put me into a car without my men, change the destination, and bring me to a house I deliberately keep closed.”
Silence.
“What do you call that?”
Corisande’s eyes filled.
“Something you would never agree to voluntarily.”
May you like
Exactly.
Her justification was the admission.
