[Cassandra’s POV]

I can feel it through the walls how the compound is changing around me.

Patrols are now changing more often behind my doors. I can hear the sounds of construction and wagons somewhere behind my window: I can’t see them, but I suppose it may be related to upcoming events, inevitable anymore.

War preparations! The house is bracing for what’s coming. Good.

Kael enters the bedchamber with the evening meal and closes the door. His face is carefully blank, but there’s something behind his eyes — a hesitation I’ve learned to read like weather.

“What happened?” I ask.

“There was an assembly this afternoon, full household.”

“About the war?”

“No,” he sets the tray on the desk. “Draven proposed the consort bond to Evelyn, and she accepted.”

The words arrive like a blade between my ribs. I absorb the impact without moving — years of training, years of Father’s lessons on never letting an enemy see where the cut lands.

“The consort bond,” I repeat. “Binding.”

“Irrevocable under house law. She has standing equal to the lord in matters of governance. The declaration was public — the entire household witnessed it.”

“How did they react?”

“Mixed. But nobody walked out or challenged it.”

I turn to the window. The courtyard below is busy — warriors carrying timber, a blacksmith hauling an anvil toward the western gate.

The organized urgency of people who’ve been told an enemy is coming.

Evelyn is consort. The word rolls through my mind like acid, dissolving the careful architecture of assumption I’ve built around my sister’s position here.

She isn’t a protected refugee anymore. She isn’t a political inconvenience or a temporary complication.

She is Lady of the House of Black Dragon, with the legal authority and household standing that title carries.

My weak, pathetic sister — the girl who cried in corners, who Father called cursed — has been elevated to a position I spent my entire life training to occupy.

The fury rises, but I convert it, press it down, reshape it into fuel. Fury is energy, and energy is only useful when directed.

“Anything else?”

Kael hesitates. “There’s a message at the secondary drop.”

“Get it.”

He leaves. I stand at the window and breathe through the burning in my chest until my hands stop trembling.

By the time he returns with the folded parchment, my composure is restored — sealed, locked, and operational.

I decode the message by candlelight.

The fleet launches in four weeks. Twenty-eight warships plus twelve allied vessels. The Shattered Coast pilot is secured — the tidal window aligns five weeks from today.

Two hundred elite warriors will approach the eastern shore in longboats while the main fleet engages the harbor.

I’m about to destroy the message when the final line stops me. One additional sentence, encoded in the priority cipher Father reserves for matters of house command.

‘Lord Aldric will command from the flagship. He will be present for all operations.’

I read it twice. My pulse accelerates, and this time I let it — this isn’t fury, this is recognition. Father is coming personally!

“Cassandra?” Kael watches me from across the room. “What does it say?”

“The fleet launches in four weeks, and the Shattered Coast approach is confirmed. And the King is coming personally, he’ll command from the flagship.”

Kael absorbs this. “That’s unprecedented. He hasn’t taken the field since the Border Campaigns.”

“Father does the killing.” I hold the parchment over the candle and watch it burn.

“I’m not wrong.”

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