Chapter 29: The Journey Home
They rode through the night, and by the second hour past midnight the volcanic ridges had given way again to the softer, fog-draped hills that meant they were close to the Grey March.
Nobody suggested stopping to rest.
"Three days," Selene said, for what felt like the tenth time since the letter arrived. "She timed it deliberately. Enough notice to look proper. Not enough for us to properly prepare."
"That’s the point," Ryuji said. "Ashcroft doesn’t make mistakes with timing. He makes decisions that look like courtesy and function like traps."
Alexei rode a length behind them, armor rattling with the pace, eye twitching every time his horse hit uneven ground hard enough to jar him.
"We could refuse her entry," he said. "Cite the ongoing danger at the estate as reason enough."
"And confirm to Ashcroft that we know something’s wrong," Ryuji said. "That tells him we’re onto him without giving us anything useful in return. Bad trade."
Selene’s jaw tightened, the particular expression she wore when strategy and instinct pulled in opposite directions. "Then we let her in. Knowing full well she is his eyes inside our walls."
"We let her in," Ryuji agreed. "And we make sure what she sees is exactly what we want Ashcroft to believe."
"A performance," Selene said.
"A good one. We’ve had practice."
She almost smiled at that, tired but genuine, remembering Corrin and Vashae’s visit weeks ago, the awkward political theater neither of them had known yet how to properly perform.
"We’ve gotten better at pretending since then," she said.
"We’ve gotten better at a lot of things since then."
The comment landed softer than he intended, and she glanced at him sideways, something warm moving behind her exhaustion.
"Ryuji."
"What."
"Thank you for not treating this like a smaller problem than it is. My mother’s murderer still walks free. The Wardens still watch you. And now a stranger arrives specifically to study our household for her father’s benefit." She exhaled slowly. "You have not once told me to simply trust that it will work out."
"I don’t lie to you," he said. "Not about things that matter."
"I know." Her hand found his across the space between their horses. "That is precisely why I trust you with all of it."
[System Log: Day 40]
[THE TRAVELING PARTY HAS BEGUN CONSTRUCTING A COORDINATED STRATEGY FOR THE UPCOMING DIPLOMATIC VISIT]
[THIS INVOLVES DELIBERATE PERFORMANCE OF A DOMESTIC NARRATIVE DESIGNED TO MISLEAD A HOSTILE PARTY’S OBSERVER]
[THE ENTITY’S FORMER PROFESSION CONTINUES TO PROVE SURPRISINGLY TRANSFERABLE]
[...]
[I HAVE BEGUN TO WONDER WHETHER "CLASSLESS" WAS EVER AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTION]
[PERHAPS THE ACCORD SIMPLY LACKED A CATEGORY FOR "DANGEROUSLY COMPETENT AT EVERYTHING EXCEPT SAYING WHAT HE FEELS"]
They reached the estate an hour before dawn, exhausted, saddle sore, and found Renka already waiting at the gate, amber eyes sharp despite the early hour.
"You made good time," she said.
"We didn’t stop," Ryuji said, dismounting. "What do you know about her."
"Ceris Ashford. Twenty-five, formally trained in the diplomatic corps, fluent in three languages, reportedly her father’s favorite despite being a daughter in a court that values sons." Renka handed over a folded parchment covered in her own tight handwriting. "My contact in Aldenmarch says she’s smart. Smarter than most envoys her age. If she’s here to observe, she’ll observe well."
Seris emerged from the kitchen doorway, wrapped in the same blanket Selene had once used to cover Ryuji, and studied the returning group with the particular flat assessment she brought to everything.
"You look like people who learned something they wish they hadn’t," she said.
"We did," Selene admitted.
"Want to share, or is it above my pay grade."
"You don’t have a pay grade," Ryuji said. "You live here now, apparently."
Seris’s mouth twitched, almost amused. "Nobody formally offered. I simply haven’t left."
"Consider it offered. Formally. Now."
Something flickered behind Seris’s gray eyes, surprise carefully guarded but not quite hidden fast enough, and she looked away first, toward the fog rather than at either of them.
"I’ll think about it," she said, though her voice had lost some of its usual edge.
They gathered in the kitchen as gray dawn light filtered through the shutters, the same table that had held pancakes and feathers and letters from three separate kingdoms now bearing the weight of a strategy session nobody had energy left to properly enjoy.
"Ceris arrives in two days now," Selene said, adjusting for the time already spent traveling. "We need a plan for what she sees, and what she does not."
"She can’t see the cellar," Ryuji said immediately. "Not the door, not the feathers, not anything that connects to the Wardens. If Ashcroft learns about that before we understand it ourselves, he’ll find a way to use it."
"Agreed," Marro said, hovering near the stove with tea he hadn’t yet offered anyone. "I will ensure the cellar remains sealed and unremarkable in her presence."
"She also can’t see the assassin activity as anything more than rumor," Selene added. "If she confirms to her father that his contracted men have failed repeatedly, he adjusts his strategy. We want him to keep underestimating this household, not correct his approach."
"So we perform exactly what Corrin and Vashae saw the first time," Ryuji said. "Functional marriage. Quiet estate. Nothing worth escalating over."
"Except this time," Selene said, something dry entering her voice, "the performance requires considerably less pretending."
She looked at him as she said it, and Ryuji felt the weight of that admission land somewhere warm in his chest, the particular honesty that had become easier between them with every week that passed.
Renka cleared her throat, redirecting the conversation before it could soften too far into something that wasn’t strategy anymore. "What about Seris. If Ceris notices an unfamiliar woman living openly at the estate, questions will follow."
"I can disappear when needed," Seris said, from her spot by the fire. "I’ve spent my whole career being unseen. One diplomatic visit isn’t a challenge."
"You shouldn’t have to hide in your own home," Ryuji said, before he’d fully thought through the sentence.
The word home landed in the kitchen with unexpected weight, and Seris’s gray eyes flicked up sharply, something complicated crossing her face before she smoothed it carefully away.
"It’s not my home," she said. "I’m a guest who overstayed a recovery period."
"You’ve stayed three weeks," Selene said. "That is not a recovery period. That is residence."
Seris didn’t answer that. She looked at the fire instead, jaw tight, and Ryuji recognized the particular discomfort of someone unused to being wanted rather than merely tolerated.
They spent the rest of the morning refining details, who would greet Ceris at the gate, what rooms she’d be shown, which conversations needed to happen where Renka’s network could overhear anything useful she let slip.
By midday, exhaustion finally caught up with the household entirely, and Ryuji found Selene asleep in the chair by the fire before he’d even finished his own tea, her head tilted at an angle that would ache badly when she woke.
He adjusted her position carefully, easing her head against his shoulder instead, and she stirred slightly without fully waking, murmuring something too quiet to catch clearly.
He thought he heard his name in it.
He didn’t wake her to ask.
Marro found them there an hour later, and said nothing, simply setting a blanket over both of them with the same quiet care he’d shown for weeks now, before withdrawing to give the moment the privacy it deserved.
Outside, the fog held steady over the Grey March, patient as ever, and somewhere along the eastern road, a carriage bearing the sun-and-sword crest of Theron had already begun its journey toward the estate, carrying a woman trained from birth to notice everything her father needed noticed.
Two days.
The household had two days left to become exactly what they needed Ceris Ashford to see, and not one moment more to figure out how.