All Chapters of Reborn Before the Mark: I Married His Wolfless Uncle: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

The first key changed before Lorelai finished counting the doors.She heard the metal turn from the writing room.Her Veyr clerk stopped beside the inventory table. The two witnesses searching the adjoining chamber looked back at the same time.A Noctis servant knelt beside the lock with a ring of keys spread across the floor. One key remained inside the mechanism. Another lay beside his knee, its teeth nearly identical except for one shortened cut.“What are you doing?” Lorelai asked.The servant rose too quickly. “The lock was defective.”“Who ordered it changed?”“The household office.”“Which officer?”Lorelai stepped into the passage. Pain tightened across her side, but she didn’t stop until she stood between the servant and the scattered keys.“Bring both witnesses,” she told her clerk.The servant reached for the key ring.

The master of court held the unsigned order as though the paper itself could remove Lorelai’s people.Behind him, armed servants blocked the entrance to the Veyr apartments. Her clerk stood inside the doorway with the household ledger open. The two witnesses remained beside him, close enough that no one could later claim the corridor had been empty.Lorelai looked from the order to the chain of keys at the master’s belt.“This is the authority,” he repeated.“No,” she said. “That is paper carrying your name.”His grip tightened around the page. “The apartments belong to the Crimson Court.”“They were assigned to me under a custody order that preserved my retinue.”“Household arrangements remain under Noctis administration.”“Then show me where Whitecliff surrendered my household to you.”Pain pulled beneath the fitted Noctis dress. The wound had begun throbbing during the presentation, but Lorelai kept her hand away from

The table had been set for two people who had already agreed to marry.Lorelai stopped inside the private dining room.Two chairs stood side by side at the head of the table rather than opposite each other. One place bore the Noctis crown worked into the plate. The other had been laid with a smaller crown surrounded by the Veyr crest, the two symbols joined beneath the same red glass lamp.Valerian waited beside the second chair.“The invitation named children who do not exist,” Lorelai said.“Not yet.”The torn archive page rested beneath her Veyr mantle, flattened against her uninjured side. Valerian’s private-office cipher pressed against her skin every time she breathed.He pulled out the chair.Servants filled two glasses with dark wine. Covered dishes waited between them, arranged as though this were an intimate household meal instead of a political interrogation conducted behind closed doors

The guards had dragged Lorelai’s clerk three doors down before she reached them.One held his arm twisted behind his back. The other had torn open his coat and found the folded medical requisition hidden inside.The double-sealed page lay on the floor between them.“Release him.”The nearest guard looked at the blood spreading beneath the side of her dress. “Return to your rooms.”“He belongs to my Veyr retinue.”“He was carrying an unauthorized message.”“He was carrying a medical request bearing both seals required for my household.”The master of court emerged from the apartment doorway behind her, the replacement servant at his side.“The Noctis seal authorizes the supplies,” he said. “It does not authorize this man to leave the protected wing.”“Then your office should have stated that before sealing it.”

The archive doors opened because Lorelai had made refusing her more expensive than admitting her.Valerian walked beside her as far as the inner threshold, exactly as he had promised. His guards remained behind him. Two magistrates waited at the consultation table with three custodians and a court clerk, all of them positioned where the corridor witnesses could see who entered and who didn’t.Lorelai stopped before crossing.“My request was for a public hearing.”Valerian’s mouth curved without warmth. “You are in public.”“I am in an archive with your soldiers at my back.”One magistrate looked toward the open doors.Lorelai pressed a hand beneath her ribs. The wound had begun to burn again during the walk. She refused to hide the movement. If Vespera wanted to call confinement protection, it could do so while everyone watched what that protection cost.“The doors remain op