Chapter 96: Rejection.

The response arrived in the middle of the morning. Anias brought it on a tray, alongside the usual stack of correspondence she did every morning. She set it down on the corner of my desk without comment and left. She always knew which letters I would care for most, and so those were always the ones at the top of the small stack. I glanced at the top-most letter.

The envelope was from House Greenward. If the green tinged paper was not enough, then the green seal left no doubt. Except…there was something different about this seal. It wasn’t the one Julian had sent to me before. I frowned. No doubt this was a reply to a letter I had sent last night. I opened it expecting a veiled agreement to meet again. Perhaps a question about acceptable attire. The letter was polite.

Lady Veyne, I am deeply grateful for your continued generosity and your kind invitations. It is with sincere regret that I must inform you that my present commitments do not permit me to attend at this time. I do hope that future opportunities for continued cooperation between our Houses will present themselves. With warmest regards, Lady Cordelia Greenward.

I read it twice. Every word was perfectly selected and reasonable. It was the first one that had been sent directly in Cordelia’s hand. This must have been Cordelia’s personal seal then. She had elegant writing, far better than my own.

I set the letter down, picked it up, read it a third and then a fourth time, searching for something between the lines. A hidden word or a strange emphasis. There was nothing. It was exactly what it read like: a rejection. I could not tell if Julian had made her write this, or if Cordelia had written it of her own volition. I wanted to lean towards the former. Wanted to.

I put the letter in a drawer. I closed it and sat at at my desk and stared at the stack of remaining letters.

Mask . Vaelin murmured in the back of my mind. I did not know which of us it was talking about. “Shut up,” I whispered, and reached for the next letter.

Damian arrived just after noon. He looked well. Better than well, actually. There was color in his face that hadn’t been there on the mountain, and he carried himself with a steadiness I hadn’t seen since before the expedition.

His visit with his father had done him good, it seemed. That, or the time away from me had. I chose not to dwell on the second possibility. He found me in the study. I was at my desk, working through a stack of reports that Calloway had left for me that morning. These were mostly trade figures or proposals. They were all important things, ones that required focus. I was not focused.

“Esra.” Damian bowed. It was a small bow. “I’m back. I wanted to report in first thing.”

“How was your father?”

Damian paused. Something complicated moved behind his expression, there and gone. “He’s proud,” he said. “Of the expedition...and of me, I think. He said he’d heard about the dragon. He couldn’t stop talking about it. For once he didn’t mention my brother at all.”

“That’s good.”

“But…he asked me to come home.” I looked up from the reports. Damian met my gaze steadily. “I told him no, obviously,” he said. “But he said he wanted to train me in our family’s martial style. He always said I needed a few more years, I guess he decided now was time.”

I thought I understood. He had chosen to stay, and that choice had cost him something. “Thank you, Damian.”

He nodded once and shifted his weight. There was still a formality there now, one that hadn’t been before. At least it was better now. He sat in the chair across from my desk without being asked, which I took as a good sign.

For a few minutes we talked about practical things. Estovan’s recovery, the state of the walls, what Count Sterling had been doing in our absence.

Then, almost idly, he said, “My father mentioned you’d been meeting with the Greenward girl.” My pen stopped moving. “Half the city’s talking about the orphanage,” he continued, oblivious. “And the other half’s talking about the rumors that she came to visit you here. I knew you’d planned to meet with her, but I didn’t think you’d meet the daughter of a snake more than once.”

It was an offhanded comment. I had told him much less than I had told Violet or Sere. It wasn’t like he knew. It didn’t matter. “Don’t call her that.” My voice was sharp. Sharp enough that Damian stared, his expression shifting from casual to cautious in the space of a heartbeat. The silence that followed was awful.

I set down my pen and took a breath. This wasn’t like me. The anger had come from nowhere and it had nothing to do with Damian. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was uncalled for.”

Damian studied me for a moment. He looked like he was deciding whether to ask or let it pass. He let it pass. He might not have, once. “It’s fine,” he said.

He stayed for a few more minutes. The conversation was careful and nothing like the easy rapport we’d had before. When he left, he bowed again, and this time the bow was formal and proper, not the small one. The door closed behind him. I stared at it.

I had the sudden, violent urge to open the drawer and read the letter again. I didn’t. Instead, I pulled Calloway’s proposals toward me and tried to work. Count Calloway had prepared three main proposals for my review.

The first concerned the expansion of the market district. He had examined one potential site and laid out costs and a timeline. His handwriting was meticulous and his reasoning was sound. It was…actually something I’d asked him to look into. Something Cordelia had mentioned. I stared at the page.

The second proposal was a public works initiative. Most of it was about repairs to the District’s water infrastructure, which had apparently been failing in ways I hadn’t noticed. I looked at it for long enough that the words blurred.

The third proposal was the one he clearly cared about most. It was a program to employ local residents in the infrastructure work itself, rather than hiring outside labor. He had written three pages on it. It was a simple and well reasoned plan to pay the people who live here to fix where they live. We did not have the specializations other Districts had, but if we did not build it, we never would.

I read the first paragraph four times and could not have told anyone what it said. A servant came in with tea. I thanked him. The tea sat untouched until it went cold.

Another servant came in to deliver a message from Count Sterling about a scheduling matter. I gave an answer. I did not remember what the answer was five minutes later, and had to send a note correcting myself.

A third manservant knocked to inform me that one of the Magical Implements in the front hall had begun flickering. I told him to fix it. He said he wasn’t sure how. I told him to find someone who was. My voice was sharp enough that he flinched. I caught myself before he left, “I’m sorry. Please just have someone look at it when they can.”

The servant bowed and practically fled. I sat alone in my study and wanted very badly to scream at something. Truth.

“Not now, Vaelin.” The blade pulsed once in my mind and went quiet.

I pulled Calloway’s third proposal back toward me. I was distracted, and Count Calloway deserved better than distracted. These people he wanted to help deserved far better than a distracted Lady who couldn’t keep her mind from running in circles. I wrote my approvals on all three proposals, added comments where I could manage them, and set the stack aside for Anias to return to the Count.

Sere’s notepad appeared at the edge of my desk. I hadn’t noticed her come in. She was getting better at this, or I was getting worse at paying attention. Both, probably. Why she was invisible here was…probably because of me.

Okay?

I looked at the word and then looked at the empty space where she was surely standing. “I’m fine,” I said, and smiled. The notepad didn’t move. “I’m fine, Sere. Really.”

After a moment, the notepad slid away and vanished. The door opened a fraction, and then closed. She was gone.

I was not fine. I was angry, and I didn’t know who I was angry at. Julian, for being the bastard that he was. Cordelia, for writing and signing the letter. Myself, for caring this much about a letter at all. The drawer sat closed. I didn’t open it.

Violet found me two hours later, still at my desk, still pretending to work. Everyone else had knocked. Violet flung the door open and appeared in the doorway, arms folded, and stared at me with a very annoyed expression. “What the hell is wrong with you today?”

It was direct and graceless. It was Violet. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.” She stepped inside, dropped into the chair Damian had vacated hours ago. “Rockboy’s walking around like he sat on a sword. Two of the servants look like they’ve seen a ghost. Sere drew a picture of you with a damn cloud over your head. A cloud, Esra.”

I almost laughed. “It’s nothing,” I said. “I just had a long day. I’m tired.”

Violet looked at me. Her hand drifted to her braid and tugged once. “Bullshit. You’re lying to me,” she said.

“I’m tired,” I repeated.

We stared at each other. Violet’s jaw worked. She was never good with words. I wondered if she planned to let this go, or if she intended to beat the truth out of me. She let it go. She chewed her lip, tugged the braid again, and unfolded her arms only to fold them back.“Fine,” she said. “But you’re eating dinner with me tonight. You better not try to argue with me.”

“When have I not?”

She stood and paused at the door. “You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong,” she said. Her voice was quieter now. “But you do have to stop scaring the damn servants. Even I know that much.”

That did make me laugh. “I will. I’m sorry.”

Violet nodded and left. The room was quiet again. I sat there for a moment. Then I opened the drawer. The letter stared back at me. Perfect and empty and signed in Cordelia’s hand. I closed the drawer again. An hour later, I went to have dinner with Violet.

The evening papers arrived while we were eating. Anias brought them in and set them on the side table without interrupting. She was good at that. Of not talking when she knew I wasn’t in the mood.

Violet was halfway through her second plate when I reached for the stack. It was habit. I read the papers every evening. Dorothy’s publication was on top but there were three others beneath it. Opinion sheets, political commentary, merchant circulars. Half of these weren’t even about Aelheim, and were damned expensive to procure. It might be worth it, someday. I unfolded the one of the papers and scanned the front page. It was nothing remarkable. I turned to the inner pages. I stopped.

The article itself was just two columns, tucked between a piece about the tariff on northern grain and an editorial about the Alestian Civil War. It was positioned precisely where it did not draw the attention of the front page, but still drew enough. The headline was only somewhat restrained.

CONCERNS RAISED OVER VEYNE HEIR’S CONDUCT TOWARD GREENWARD STAFF

I read it. The article described an incident at Veyne Manor in which the young Lady Veyne had, quote, ‘directed significant magical pressure toward Greenward guards who were fulfilling their sworn duty to protect Lady Cordelia Greenward’.

It noted that the guards had been following standing orders from Duke Greenward himself. It described Lady Veyne’s behavior as aggressive and ‘un-Ladylike'. I was almost surprised it didn't use the words 'feral' or 'unstable'. An editor must have cut those. It quoted an unnamed source close to the Greenward household expressing concern for Lady Cordelia’s wellbeing during future visits to the Veyne District. It wondered, in passing, whether a young Lady who had recently endured such harrowing experiences in the Ashen Wastes might benefit from a period of rest and reflection…in seclusion.

Julian Greenward might as well have written this himself. Honestly, he might very well have. I set the paper down.

Violet was watching me. She’d stopped eating, her fork suspended halfway to her mouth. She could read my face well enough to know that whatever I’d found was not good.“What is it?”

I was thinking. The rejection signed in Cordelia’s hand, sealed with Cordelia’s seal. And now this on the same day? Julian had punished Cordelia then. Perhaps she had signed the letter because the alternative was worse. I did not dare imagine what the worse was. I feared I might storm his Manor with Vaelin, and color his fine green coats red.

This was my fault. Because I’d lost control, because the sight of that guard’s dismissal had made me angry, because I hadn’t thought, hadn’t done any of the things I thought I was supposed to be good at.

Cordelia had told me it would happen. She’d told me and all I’d done was tell her that I cared. Vaelin hummed in my mind. I knew if I pulled him out right now, he’d be the brightest crimson.

Violet set her fork down. “Esra. What is it?”

I handed her the paper. My fingers were white. I watched her read, watched her face darken. “That son of a-”

“Don’t.” My voice was quiet. “It’s my fault.”

Violet looked up. “What?”

I stared at the table. “I was angry and didn’t think. Of course this was going to happen.” Violet was quiet, but her face was dark. She was more furious than I had expected. That made me feel a little better.

I did not open the drawer again that night. I did not sleep much either.

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