Chapter 24

Damian POV

Corwin called it a "clarification session," which was a generous way of describing a room full of elders watching me publicly admit my own council had nearly punished an innocent woman over a tin box and two crooked ledgers.

"The evidence against Wren Voss has been found insufficient," I said, standing at the head of the table, keeping my voice steady through sheer will. "The matter is closed. No further action will be taken."

A few nods. A few murmurs. Corwin looked like he wanted to say something and thought better of it.

"For the record," I added, because it needed saying, "I should have questioned this before it ever reached a formal hearing. That's on me."

Nobody argued with that part.

Afterward, walking back through the halls alone, I kept replaying the two minutes it took Emeric to dismantle a case I let sit on my own council's table without asking a single hard question first. Not one. I looked at a prison relic and two shifted ledgers and let my gut fill in the rest, the same gut that spent two years convinced my sister had simply gone cold on us out of spite.

I found Garrett near the stables, saddling a horse he didn't seem to actually need saddled, hands moving slower than his usual efficient pace.

"You alright?" I asked.

"Fine." He didn't look up. "Did the session go how you wanted?"

"It went how it needed to go."

He nodded, still not looking at me, buckling a strap that was already buckled.

"I brought that tin straight to the council," he said finally. "Didn't ask her a single thing first."

"I know."

"You know because I told you, or you know because you did the exact same thing two years ago?"

That landed somewhere it wasn't meant to land quite that hard. I didn't have a clean answer for it.

"Both, I guess," I said.

He finally looked at me then, something tired behind his eyes that hadn't been there a month ago. "Yeah. Both."

I left him on his horse and went looking for Wren, figuring I owed her the apology in person instead of secondhand through a council ruling she probably already heard about from three different servants by now.

I found her hallway outside her room, though I stopped short of the open door when I heard her voice, calm and businesslike, talking to one of the younger maids.

"The blue trunk first," Wren was saying. "That's the herbs and the healing supplies, those travel worst if they sit packed too long. Then the smaller bag with my clothes. I don't need much beyond that."

"And the books, miss?"

"Leave those. They're not mine to take with me."

I stood there in the hallway, hand halfway raised to knock, and didn't move it any further.

"What about the trunk by the window?" the maid asked. "The one with the old blankets?"

"That can wait until closer to the date. No rush on that one."

She said it so plainly, just the same tone she probably used sorting herbs by which ones killed you and which ones didn't. Blue trunk first. Books stay. No rush on the blankets.

She already mapped the whole thing out. Every detail, every priority, laid out clean in her head like she'd been building this list for weeks, refining it a little more each day while the rest of us were busy arguing over tins and ledgers and whether she deserved to sit in a council chamber at all.

"I think that's everything for now," Wren said. "Thank you, Beatrice."

I stepped back from the doorway before the maid could come out and catch me standing there, retreating a few steps down the hall like a man who wandered by accident instead of someone who'd been about to knock two minutes ago.

I made it halfway back to my study before I stopped walking entirely, standing alone in the corridor with my hand braced against the wall.

I spent the last few weeks assuming her leaving was still a threat, still something with room to change if I just found the right words, gave her the right amount of time, proved myself in some small enough way that she reconsider. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I'd been treating the mate request like a phase. Something painful but temporary, the kind of thing a person says in anger and quietly walks back once the anger settles.

She wasn't walking anything back. She was packing.

Blue trunk first. Herbs and healing supplies. No rush on the blankets.

That wasn't the plan of someone still deciding. That was the plan of someone who already decided weeks ago and was simply working through the logistics now, because there was no emotional urgency left in it for her anymore. Just a checklist.

I thought about every apology I offered her since she came home. Every time I said I was sorry and meant it, genuinely meant it, and watched it land somewhere that didn't seem to change anything. I used to think that meant she wasn't listening. Standing in that hallway, I finally understood it meant something worse.

She heard every one of them. She just didn't believe an apology was worth reorganizing a life around anymore.

I turned around and walked back toward my study instead of her door, because I didn't have anything left to offer that hadn't already been offered and quietly filed away as insufficient.

Somewhere behind me, faint through the closed door, I heard her voice again, still calm, moving on to whatever came next on her list.