The air in Roiben’s manor was thick with quiet hostility and the perfume of damp stone and winter roses. A fire burned low in the hearth, casting its wavering light across the faces gathered in the war room—a place not often used, but always ready. Maps were strewn across the long table, marked in ink and blood alike, curling at the edges with age and urgency.

Reverie stood near the head of the table, her back to the fire, casting a long silhouette on the floor behind her. She said little. There was no need. She had already said enough in the days leading up to this meeting—in the way their enemy had begun to shift his gaze, adjust his defenses, tighten his circles. Her silence now wasn’t shyness. It was strategy.

Roiben leaned one elbow against the stone mantel, eyes like knives tracing the contour of the battle map. “We strike before the Frost Moon wanes. Otherwise he folds back into the North and we lose our only window.”

“You mean you lose your window,” said Cardan lazily from the chair he’d commandeered. He lounged like he belonged there, legs stretched out, a goblet dangling loosely in one hand. “We’ve already made it clear the Court of Elfhame will not be the first to move.”

“And yet here you are,” Roiben said, his voice a blade dulled with patience. “At my table. Drinking my wine.”

“Because she asked,” Cardan said, and turned to glance at Reverie with a look that teetered between reverence and amusement. “And I’ve never been particularly good at saying no to her.”

Nicasia rolled her eyes, arms crossed, leaning against a pillar as if it were all beneath her. “Focus, will you? The question isn’t when we strike, it’s how. His territory is crawling with spies, and you can be sure half the Hollow Court is already bought.”

“And the other half is too scared to act,” Roiben said. “Which is why we need someone unexpected. Someone he won’t see coming.”

The silence turned, slowly, toward Reverie.

She didn’t blink. “Then let him look me in the eye.”

Cardan let out a low chuckle. “Darling,” he said, tilting his head, “he won’t. That’s the trick, isn’t it? He can’t. Because he already knows—”

He sipped from his goblet, as if the next words were a toast.

“—you’re not the kind of danger you see coming. You’re the kind that’s already in the room before the doors are locked.”

Roiben’s fingers tightened around the edge of the hearth, but he said nothing.

It was Nicasia, of all people, who muttered it under her breath as she pushed away from the pillar.

“He called her dangerous.”

The words fell into the room like a stone in still water. Everyone already knew. But hearing it—spoken aloud, given shape—it changed something.

Reverie only smiled. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Just enough.

Just enough to remind them all that she was.

Dangerous. And no one—not even the enemy—was wrong about that.