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Not because they feared the morality of what Vaerith intended, naturally. Morality rarely survives first contact with profit. They feared structural unpredictability. Ardyn subjects, the letters say, show “excessive retention of mortal attachment,” “high protective fixation,” and “resistance to predator hierarchy when emotionally bonded.” One broker advises isolating the adaptive vessel from compatible anchors until dependence can be weaponized.

I laugh once, and the sound comes out thin enough to belong to someone else.

“Bad news, Harrow,” I mutter, copying the passage. “Your vessel developed opinions.”

The next pulse from below nearly knocks the inkpot over.

I catch it before it spills and shove the copied pages into a false-bottom folio I pulled from the finance shelf. The original letters go back into the box, though I disturb their order slightly on purpose. Let Vaerith wonder whether he misremembers his own sins. Paranoia is a tax men like him deserve to pay.

The archive door rattles.

Voices pass outside.

I freeze with one hand on the folio.

“Restricted seal is still engaged,” a guard says beyond the door.

“Lord Vaerith ordered all archives checked.”

“Then you open it.”

“You open it.”

Cowards. Blessed, useful cowards.

The summoning pulse rolls through the corridor again, and one of them curses.

“We report intact seal and move to the ledger chamber,” the first guard says quickly. “I am not dying because old paper decided to bite.”

Their footsteps retreat.

I exhale slowly and resume copying.

The final document waits at the bottom of the box, wrapped in black silk and sealed with both Vaerith’s crest and an infernal broker mark. My fingers hesitate before breaking it. Some part of me understands that after this page, there will be no private corner left where I can pretend any of my life happened by accident.

I open it anyway.

It is a compatibility projection.

Dareth-Ardyn convergence possible under mortality rewrite conditions. Mate-bond response likely if adaptive vessel encounters preserved harmonic anchor during post-rewrite instability. Recommended use: stabilization, compliance leverage, energy regulation, controlled public proof of hybrid threat if vessel proves resistant.

My eyes burn.

Not with tears, though those may come later if I decide to become inefficient. They burn with anger so deep it loses heat and becomes clarity.

Vaerith looked at Corin and saw a weapon.

He looked at me and saw a leash.

He looked at the bond between us and saw equipment.

I copy the projection exactly.

When I reach the recommended use line, my hand shakes once. I stop, flatten my palm on the table, and breathe through it until my fingers obey again. Corin’s hunger spikes.

The sensation runs through me like heat through wire, fierce and anticipatory. He has found something in Vaerith’s ward lines, something large enough to draw the predator in him to full attention. The hunger does not scatter through the bond in panic. It gathers, coils, and waits. That control frightens me less than it should and more than I want to admit, because the thing beneath the estate is older than anything we have faced so far.

I press the copied projection into the folio and seal it under a page of estate candle inventories.