The main hall blazed with lantern light by the time the last guests arrived, tables laid with linens that had clearly been kept in storage for exactly an occasion like this one, the air thick with the noise of a household finally allowed to celebrate something.Merchants who wouldn’t have crossed the street for a Vex family dinner a month earlier now moved through the hall with gifts and warm greetings, the particular enthusiasm of people eager to be remembered as having always believed in the family’s recovery. Servants circled with trays of food that would have seemed extravagant to this household even a season ago, and somewhere near the musicians a small crowd had already begun clapping along to a tune Aethros didn’t recognize.Cassian moved through the crowd like a man who’d forgotten what it felt like to walk without weight on his shoulders, laughing freely at every congratulation, clasping hands with merchants he hadn’t spoken to warmly in years. Aethros hadn’t seen his father

Helena came to his room that evening, a cup of tea balanced carefully in both hands, her expression composed in a way that didn’t quite match the brisk knock she’d given a moment before.“Peace offering,” she said, setting it down on his desk. “For the banquet. And for this morning, if I’m honest. I’ve been difficult, and I know it.”Aethros studied the cup, then studied her. Her smile was almost right, warmer than her usual guarded expression, but her eyes flicked toward the cup and back to his face a half second too quickly, the tell of someone watching for a reaction rather than offering a gift freely.“That’s kind of you,” he said, and didn’t touch it.“You’re not drinking it.”“I will. In a moment.”Helena lingered a moment longer than the gesture required, then excused herself with a small nod, closing the door behind her with more care than the situation seemed to warrant.Aethros waited until her footsteps faded down the corridor before leaning over the cup and inhaling slowly

Aethros pressed his palm flat against the shell.The reaction came immediate and total. Warmth flooded up through his hand, then his wrist, then his chest, a sensation achingly familiar despite three thousand years of separation from anything quite like it. The gold veins brightened all at once, the black shell beneath them shifting from stone-cold to something closer to living skin, and somewhere deep inside, past flesh and bone and the borrowed body he wore, something in Aethros’s own bloodline answered back.Elder Mira took a slow step closer, lantern raised, her earlier composure giving way to something sharper, more attentive.“There,” she murmured. “There it is.”The shell cracked.It happened slowly at first, hairline fractures spreading outward from beneath his palm, gold light leaking through each new fissure like sunrise breaking through storm clouds. Elder Mira didn’t flinch, watching with the same unwavering focus she’d carried since they’d enter

Theron stood waiting in the front hall when they arrived, without Rurik trailing behind him this time, his expression holding none of its former smoothness. Cassian had already been summoned from his study, Helena and Miranda a step behind him, and the room carried a tension entirely different from the confident dismissal Theron had worn weeks earlier at this same threshold.Aethros entered with Lyanna a half step behind him, Nyx settled watchfully on his shoulder, and Cassian’s eyes flicked briefly, curiously, toward the unfamiliar Frostwind robes before returning to Theron.“Lord Blacksteel.” Cassian’s voice carried none of its old exhaustion. “I confess I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”“I imagine you didn’t.” Theron’s gaze swept the room, lingering a moment on Lyanna before dismissing her as irrelevant to whatever he’d come to say. “I’ve come to discuss a matter of honor, Lord Vex. Not coin. Coin, apparently, is no longer a lever I can use against your

Training began the next morning before sunrise, Elder Mira drilling him through formation theory that would let him manipulate the arena’s boundary wards to his advantage, subtle adjustments that wouldn’t violate the duel’s rules but would shape the battlefield in his favor regardless.“Your footwork still favors your old habits,” she said on the third day, watching him circle Roran with controlled, measured steps. “You move like someone who once commanded overwhelming strength and never needed to worry about closing distance efficiently. That instinct will get you killed against a stronger opponent. You need to move like someone who has to earn every opening, because right now, you do.”“Old habits are difficult to unlearn.”“Then unlearn them faster. You have six days left.”By the fifth day, Nyx had taken to perching on the courtyard wall during training, watching every session with the same intense, unblinking focus Elder Mira brought to her corrections, occ