POV: Verity
Dorian had not answered her question.
She had stood at his study door with her scarred palm facing him and said we need to talk and watched his expression do something complicated and controlled behind the mask — and then Corvin had appeared at the end of the corridor with urgent news and Dorian had looked at her and said, very quietly: Tonight. Not now.
Then he had closed the door.
She had stood there for a moment. Then she had done the only thing that ever actually helped her when she had too many questions and not enough answers.
She went to find books.
The castle library was bigger than any room she had ever been alone in. Shelves from floor to ceiling, a rolling ladder on a brass rail, and the particular smell of old paper that Verity had loved since the first time she sneaked into a lending library at age seven and read an entire book standing up because she did not have money to borrow it properly.
She found the law section on the third shelf from the back. Land inheritance. Title succession. Estate law. Court proceedings. She pulled four books and carried them to the table by the window and opened the first one.
She did not understand most of it immediately.
That was fine. She had never been afraid of things she did not know yet. Not knowing something just meant she had not learned it yet. She read slowly, with her finger under the words, the way she had taught herself to read as a child. When she hit a word she did not know she worked it out from the words around it. When she hit a concept she did not understand she went back three pages and found where it started.
By the second hour she had filled both margins of a piece of scrap paper with notes.
*Harwick title — passes through bloodline, cannot be sold or transferred. Heir must be living and of sound mind to claim. Claim must be filed within — *
She looked up the timeline. Her stomach dropped.
Within one year of the previous heir's death — or within thirty days of the heir reaching legal age, whichever came first. And if the heir was declared mentally unfit before the claim was filed, the title passed to the nearest male relative of the deceased instead.
The nearest male relative of her grandmother the Marchioness.
She did not know who that was. But she knew someone who would.
She kept reading. The candle burned down. She lit another from the first one. That one burned down too. She did not notice until the third candle was halfway gone and she looked up and realized the window was completely black and the castle was silent around her.
"You are going to ruin your eyes."
She did not jump. She had heard the footsteps two minutes ago and decided to wait.
Petra set a candle holder on the table — three fresh candles, already lit — and sat down across from her without being invited. She looked at the books. At the notes. At the letter Verity had left open on the table because she needed to keep cross-referencing the name.
Petra picked up the solicitor's letter.
She read it.
Her face went very still. Not the careful stillness of someone hiding a reaction. The deeper stillness of someone who has just been hit by something they were not ready for, even though some part of them always knew it was coming.
She set the letter down.
She looked at Verity for a long moment.
"Your mother's name was Rosalind," she said. Her voice was quiet. Completely steady. "She was the best woman I ever met. And the things that were done to her were the worst I ever saw."
Verity stopped breathing.
"You knew her," she said.
"I worked for her. Before Aldous. Before any of it." Petra folded her hands on the table. "I was her lady's maid for four years. I was there the day she met him. I was there the day she married him, in secret, with two witnesses I had never seen before. I was there when the physician came." She stopped. "I was not there when they took her away. He made sure of that. But I heard about it. I heard everything."
Verity had not moved. She could not move.
"Why are you here?" she asked. "At this castle. Why are you working for Dorian?"
Petra looked at her steadily. "Because Dorian Vael spent three years quietly building a case against the people who destroyed your mother. And when he needed someone who knew the inside of that story, he found me." She paused. "He has been looking for you, Verity. Not the way your father looked for you. The other way."
The candles flickered.
Verity looked down at her scarred palm.
"The scar," she said slowly. "You know what it is."
Petra nodded.
"Tell me."
Petra opened her mouth.
And then every candle in the library went out at once.