The Rehearsal Betrayal

The trap was Lysander's idea.

Which meant it was elegant and slightly devious and had at least two components that Lira had initially objected to before conceding that they were necessary, which was the hallmark of Lysander's better plans.

"The rehearsal dinner," he said, spreading a map of the great hall across the table in the small study. "Three days before the wedding. We announce it publicly—every council member required to attend, key nobles from both realms, and limited but visible security. We make it look like exactly what it appears to be."

"A vulnerable moment," Lira said.

"A vulnerable moment," he confirmed. "In reality, every exit warranted. Surveillance on every council member. Kael's people positioned outside in a containment formation. And you and I know exactly what we're looking for."

"Ravencroft making a move," Kael said.

"Ravencroft, or whoever is directing Ravencroft." Lysander tapped the map. "They've been building toward something. The intercepted message said the timetable has accelerated. If they're going to act before the wedding, this is their best opportunity." He paused. "We give them the opportunity. Under controlled conditions."

"Controlled," Lira said. "Define controlled."

"We can't prevent an attack entirely without revealing that we know one is coming," Lysander said, with the specific patience of someone who had been having this version of a conversation with queens for two centuries. "But we can ensure that the attack is survivable and that we can identify and contain the people responsible in the process."

"The people at the dinner are not combatants," Lira said.

"No. Which is why the exit wards include evacuation triggers. If an attack begins, the civilians clear through pre-established routes before the containment closes." He met her eyes. "Lira. We can spend the next three days hoping they don't move, or we can spend them setting terms on which they move. One of those gives us more control."

She looked at the map.

She looked at Kael.

He said nothing, which was his version of agreement—he had opinions, and he would voice them if asked, and he did not voice them unsolicited, which was one of the things she valued about him that she had from both halves.

"Alright," she said. "But I want every exit ward personally checked by Morgana. And I want Mira out of the hall before it starts."

"Mira is not going to agree to be out of the hall," Lysander said.

"I know. Find a position for her that is simultaneously inside the hall and not in the direct line of whatever happens."

"The east alcove has good sightlines and a load-bearing pillar between it and the main floor," Lysander said, which meant he had already thought about this.

"The east alcove," Lira said. "And Lysander—"

"Yes."

"If this goes wrong—if people get hurt who shouldn't—"

"Then we learn from it and do better," he said, directly. "We cannot guarantee no one gets hurt. We can guarantee that we have done everything in our power to minimize it." He held her gaze. "That is the best any ruler can promise."

She knew he was right.

She hated that he was right.

"The announcement goes out this afternoon," she said.

The three days before the dinner were the most intensely administrative of her existence, which was saying something given that she now had three centuries of administrative existence to compare against.

Border ward reinforcement. Archive research. The morning of the wedding, the audience with Ravencroft was scheduled, and the message was sent in Kael's precise language. Coordination with General Ashvane about force positioning. A conversation with Seraphine that went unexpectedly and then expectedly and then in a direction none of them had anticipated.

The conversation with Seraphine happened on the second day.

Lira went alone, which Kael objected to quietly, and she overruled with the specific logic that Seraphine was mortal and powerless, and what Lira needed to tell her required privacy, and his presence would complicate the dynamic in ways that were not useful.

He accepted this. He waited outside with the door in his sightline, which was his compromise.

Seraphine was in the guest suite that had been her quarters since the night of Mira's bakery and the tea and the conversation that had begun something tentative and complicated. She was reading when Lira came in—a genuine surprise, three weeks ago, but she had learned that Seraphine read voraciously and eclectically, which was one of the things about her that made more sense in the context of someone who had spent three centuries in the Void with nothing.

"You have that expression," Seraphine said, without looking up.

"What expression."

"The one that means you're about to tell me something I won't enjoy." She set down her book. "Sit down. It will take longer if we do it with you standing in the doorway looking like an announcement."

Lira sat.

She told her.

All of it—the original bargain, the records from the deep archive, the fact that the curse had been requested rather than entirely imposed. Seraphine's role as mechanism rather than a cause. The three-hundred-year weight of a guilt that was real and also not entirely hers.

She watched Seraphine's face as she talked.

Seraphine was someone who had learned, in three centuries of being what she had been, to keep her face doing something controlled. But Lira had three centuries of Nyx's experience with that face and twenty-three years of Elara's ability to read people in a small room, and the integrated version of both was considerable.

She watched the control hold and then slip and then hold again and then, finally, slip in a way that was not performed.

"She came to me," Seraphine said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"She initiated."

"The records are clear."