Chapter 7: What He Wanted

The King's floor at night is stone and firelight and no one around. Cassian Vale had his coat off, sleeves rolled, a wall of scrolls pinned behind him — my own kill counts, my own method, every winter-fire story of the Blade of the North, laid out like an indictment. "Sit," he said. "You keep telling me to sit." "You keep standing against walls like furniture." I sat. He turned a fresh vein map toward me. Theo's. Post-seizure. "The Sisters say nine weeks," he said. "The scholar says...