They did not let Soren attend the interrogation.
Officially, it was because Arven insisted that "a queen has better things to do than sit in a room that smells of ink and panic." Unofficially, it was because Kael had taken one look at Soren's face that morning and said, in a tone that did not invite argument, that he was not going anywhere near a long table or a confrontation until he could walk across a room without losing colour.
So Soren sat in the small study with a blanket over his knees and three stacked ledgers on the table.
Merrow's ledgers.
The first bell had rung, and Merrow had come, as ordered, with his book‑carrying servants and his polished apologies, straight into Arven's office. The ledgers themselves had gone elsewhere, to be checked by quieter eyes.
"Sitting out the first act?" Larem asked from the doorway.
He carried his usual satchel and the usual disapproval.
"I am reading," Soren said. "That counts as work."
"Your definition of work concerns me," Larem said, crossing to the table. "Pulse."
Soren offered his wrist without comment. Larem's fingers settled over his skin, counting. His gaze drifted to the open ledger.
"You started without me," he said.
"You were late," Soren replied.
"I was saving someone else from their own bad decisions," Larem said. "Apparently mine are scheduled for later."
He finished counting, then picked up the top ledger, flipping a few pages with the practiced speed of someone used to scanning dense text.
"Do you understand any of this?" he asked.
"Yes," Soren said.
Larem glanced at him, then looked back down.
"Of course you do," he muttered.
Numbers, routes, dates, names. Soren followed the columns, tracing the neat lines of Merrow's clerk's handwriting, looking for the places where logic slipped. Coin that should have been there, missing. Barrels that changed owners one time too many. Marks that matched the ones from the poisoned shipments.
He had learned long ago how to find the seams in other people's stories. Brothels taught you more about accounts than anyone admitted. Here, the vocabulary had changed; the pattern had not.
"How much are you going to let them see?" Larem asked quietly.
Soren did not answer at once.
"Enough," he said at last. "Enough that they understand this was not an accident."
Larem shut the ledger with more force than necessary.
"Do not stay in that chair all day," he said. "If I return and find you in the same position, I will assume you have died and start making arrangements."
"Who would you complain to then?" Soren asked.
"There is always someone," Larem said, and left.
Alone with the ink and his own thoughts, Soren read until the columns blurred. He only stopped when the door opened again and Ecclésias stepped in with the kind of controlled tiredness that told Soren the morning had not gone smoothly.
He closed the ledger.
"How did it go?" he asked.
"Messily," Ecclesias said.
He dropped into the armchair opposite, loosening his collar as if the questions had been hands at his throat.
"Merrow confessed immediately?" Soren guessed.
"Of course not," Ecclesias said. "He offered concern. Shock. Ignorance. All the favourite words of a man who has never had to own the consequences of his choices."
Soren's mouth thinned.
"But?" he prompted.
"But," Ecclesias said, "he was more afraid of something than of me."
Soren sat up a little.
"Vharian?" he asked.
"Possibly," Ecclesias said. "Possibly our own nobles. Possibly whoever paid him. He danced very carefully around names but not around patterns."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"He admitted," Ecclesias went on, "that his factors were instructed to route certain shipments through specific hands. That those hands insisted on certain marks on the barrels. That when some of those shipments went missing, he was told he would be compensated 'in other ways' if he did not ask questions."
"That is not ignorance," Soren said. "That is choosing not to look."
"Yes," Ecclesias said. "He hid behind distance. Behind layers."
Soren's fingers curled around the edge of the ledger.
"Will you arrest him?" he asked.
Ecclesias watched his face.
"What would you do?" he countered.
Soren looked down at the pages. At the careful ink, the neat sums, the little notes in the margin that tried to make theft look like business.
"I would keep him where I could see him," he said. "If we cut him loose now, he will run to whoever gave the orders and warn them. Or they will cut him off and disappear further."
Ecclesias' mouth curved, faint and humourless.
"You are becoming very inconvenient," he said.
Soren looked up.
"For them?" he asked.
"For anyone who hopes this will be simple," Ecclesias said.
He reached for the opened ledger, flipped to the page Soren had been reading, and scanned it.
"You found the same routes Arven did," he said. "And one he missed."
Soren blinked.
"Which?" he asked.
Ecclesias tapped a line with his finger.
"Here," he said. "This transfer. One extra step. Too clean."
Soren exhaled.
"Yes," he said. "Whoever organised this is not trying to hide every trace. They are trying to make us run in circles."
"Then we shorten the circle," Ecclesias said.
There was a knock.
"Enter," he called.
Kael opened the door without waiting further.
"Majesty," he said. "We've placed Merrow under house watch. Discreetly. His staff is being… filtered."
"Anyone try to remove anything?" Soren asked.
"Three footmen," Kael said. "Two trunks. One secretary with a very bad sense of timing. We stopped them all."
Soren nodded once.
"Good," he said. "Let them sit with the knowledge that we are looking at their papers."
Kael's eyes flicked to him, then to the ring, then back.
"There is something else," Kael said. "Arven wants you both to see."
***
Arven's office had acquired more piles.
Letters, reports, little stone weights holding things in place. The air smelled of old paper and new dust.
Arven stood by the window, one hand braced on the sill, staring at a map of the border districts that someone had pinned directly to the wall.
"Merrow sings, then?" he asked without turning.
"He hums," Ecclesias said. "Off‑key."
"And you," Arven said, finally facing them, "have spent the morning doing what I asked you to avoid: exhausting yourself."
"I was sitting," Soren said. "And reading."
"That is worse," Arven said. "You move less and worry more."
He pointed to the map.
"There are three houses," he said, "whose names appear around Merrow often enough to be suspicious. Two are expected. One is not."
He tapped first.
"This one profits every time a shipment disappears," he said. "This one profits when cheap, bad medicine floods the markets and drives out local healers."
He tapped the third.
"And this one," he said, "loses money on paper every time, yet keeps approving the routes."
Soren stepped closer, ignoring the small protest from his ribs.
"Who owns the third?" he asked.
"A cousin of the southern ambassador," Arven said. "On paper, they have not spoken in years."
"On paper," Soren repeated.
His mind began to slot pieces together: the travelling healer who asked about "old stories," the poisoned wells, the missing physician with his neat, empty address, Merrow's careful ignorance.
"They're testing how far they can push without open war," Soren said. "How much damage they can do through other hands."
"Yes," Arven said. "And seeing how long it takes us to use the ring."
He nodded toward Soren's hand.
"They expected you to be ornamental," Arven went on. "Something they could push aside. Instead, you are now one more place where decisions are made. That changes calculations."
Soren looked at his fingers.
The ring did not feel heavy. But he could feel the way others moved around it.
"What do you want to do with Merrow?" Arven asked Ecclesias. "We can break him publicly now. Or leave him hanging and see who tugs on the rope."
Ecclesias looked at Soren.
"This is your trap as much as mine," he said. "You set the hook."
Soren thought of Merrow at the table, of the way his smile had cracked when he saw the ring. Of the letter inviting people to "discuss concerns." Of Larem's anger. Of Kael's quiet promise to follow orders spoken under the seal.
"If we make Merrow fall now," he said slowly, "everyone who thought like him will hide. They will erase letters, burn ledgers, cut off loose ends. We will save face and lose the trail."
"And if we wait?" Arven asked.
"Then they will feel safer," Soren said. "They will make mistakes. They will contact each other. They will try to use him again, to shut him up or to see how much he told us."
Kael grunted.
"Leaving a man like that standing feels wrong," he said.
"Yes," Soren said. "But grabbing him too fast feels satisfying, not smart."
He looked at Ecclesias.
"You asked me to be more than decoration," he said. "This is what that looks like. Less instant justice. More waiting."
Ecclesias held his gaze.
"I did not marry you for patience," he said. "But I will accept it."
Arven exhaled.
"Then we let Merrow dangle," he said. "Under watch. With controlled leaks."
"Leaks?" Soren asked.
Arven's eyes sharpened.
"We make sure certain people hear that you were the one who called him out," he said. "That you gave the order. That you had access to his ledgers before the interrogation. That you saw something they hoped you would miss."
Soren's stomach tightened.
"You want them to see me as the danger," he said.
"They already do," Arven said. "Better they stare at you where we can see them than whisper in the dark at a ghost."
Kael studied Soren.
"Can you live with that?" he asked. "With them turning more of their attention on you?"
Soren thought of the banquet, of the moment halfway up the stairs when the world had tilted and a hand had grabbed his elbow. Of Ecclesias' mouth at his wrist. Of Larem's exhausted irritation. Of the way the ring had felt when he raised his hand and spoke.
"They were aiming at me long before the ring," he said. "Now, at least, I am not standing there empty."
***
He lasted through most of the strategy without Larem.
By early afternoon, fatigue dragged at him like extra weight. The numbers on Arven's maps swam. The pins blurred. His ribs ached in a slow, constant way that said his body was done being reasonable.
Ecclesias saw it first.
"That is enough for now," he said.
"There is still—" Soren began.
"There is still tomorrow," Ecclesias cut in. "And the next day. And the day after that."
He turned to Arven.
"Send summaries," he said. "Short ones. If you send him a stack, I will burn it myself."
Arven looked like he might argue, then didn't.
"Fine," he said. "Short. For both of you."
Kael opened the door.
"I will walk him," Ecclesias said before anyone else could move.
Soren did not protest. He was too tired to.
The corridors were quieter now that the excitement of the banquet had drained away into gossip. Servants moved with their usual speed, only glancing up to nod. A few guards straightened when they saw the ring.
"Do you regret it?" Ecclesias asked after a while.
"The banquet?" Soren said.
"The ring," Ecclesias said.
Soren looked down at his hand.
"No," he said. "Do you?"
Ecclesias' answer came without pause.
"No."
They walked in silence for a few steps.
"I had imagined giving it to someone else, once," Ecclesias said. "In a different future. It never looked right in my head."
Soren's mouth curved despite his exhaustion.
"I am flattered to be your second choice," he said.
"You are not the second," Ecclesias said. "You are the only one who made sense when it finally happened."
They reached the study. Ecclesias pushed the door open and waited for Soren to step through first, as if they were back at the hall and everyone was watching.
No one was.
Soren went to the couch and lowered himself onto it. His body sighed in relief before his mouth could.
Ecclesias did not sit at the table this time. He sat at the end of the couch, near Soren's feet, close enough to touch if Soren shifted.
"You should lie down," he said.
"If I lie down, I will sleep," Soren said.
"Yes," Ecclesias said. "That is the idea."
Soren gave up.
He eased onto his side, careful of his ribs, and pulled the blanket over himself. The ring pressed against the fabric for a moment before he drew his hand out on top where he could see it.
Ecclesias watched his eyes.
"You can remove it," he said. "If it feels like too much."
Soren looked at the band.
"I thought about it," he said. "Last night. For a moment."
"And?" Ecclesias asked.
"And I did not," Soren said simply. "You put it there. I will take it off when this is over. Not because they frighten me."
"If this ever is over," Ecclesias said.
"Then we will argue about it when we are old and boring," Soren said. "In matching chairs."
Ecclesias huffed a soft, surprised sound that might almost have been a laugh.
"Old, perhaps," he said. "Never boring."
Soren's eyes were already closing. The sound of his own heart was loud against his ribs. He listened for a moment, counting beats, then let the numbers go.
He felt the cushion shift near his feet.
Something warm closed gently around his ankle through the blanket Ecclesias' hand, anchoring him in the simplest way possible.
"If you dream," Ecclesias said quietly, "remember where you are when you wake."
Soren did not answer. Sleep pulled at him too strongly.
But his hand curled around the ring as he drifted, fingers closing over the metal like he was holding onto a promise he had not yet had time to understand.
Outside the study, the palace worked: letters carried, orders given, Merrow watched, names circled in ink. Somewhere, someone was already writing the next careful note about "concerns."
Inside, on a couch near a low fire, Soren slept with a king at his feet and a circle of metal in his hand, while the fault lines they had both chosen shifted quietly into new shapes.