Chapter 104: AFTER SELENA

DIANA’S POV

Diana checked the guards before breakfast.

The same two Household Guards stood outside her apartments when Alma opened the door the following morning. One bowed while the other stepped aside to let a kitchen servant enter with tea.

Neither looked at Diana differently, probably because Raigoro had not told them anything.

Diana stood beside the writing table while the servant arranged breakfast. Her slate from last night lay where she had left it after returning from Raigoro’s study, clean now because Alma had wiped away the name before bed.

Diana could still see it.

SELENA.

She had written five letters while Raigoro sat across from her with enough evidence to know all five were false.

He had not argued. He had looked at the slate and said quietly, "That is the answer you are giving me."

Then he had allowed her to leave.

Diana had spent half the night waiting for the rest. A summons, Daric, a legal officer, someone coming for Alma.

Instead, morning arrived with tea.

Alma watched her from the dressing room doorway.

"You should eat."

Diana looked at the tray.

Frostberry preserve sat beside the bread.

Seeing it made the room worse.

Raigoro had noticed she preferred it. The kitchen might know by now too. There was no reason to assume he had sent it.

Diana sat and ate anyway.

Afterward, she dressed for her office and reached for her daily household key ring.

It was still there.

Diana turned it once in her hand.

Alma saw.

"No one took anything."

So far.

Diana gave her a look.

Alma corrected herself. "No one has tried."

Better.

They left the apartments.

The route to Household Relief remained exactly as it had yesterday. Servants moved linen through one corridor, a clerk hurried down another carrying infirmary forms, and a repair worker argued quietly with someone about a leaking pipe near the western stair.

Blackharrow had failed to reorganize itself around Diana’s lie.

The normalcy offended her a little.

Master Marlon was waiting in her office with six files.

"Good morning, Your Grace."

Diana stopped.

Her desk remained hers. The ridiculous carved chair still stood empty against the wall because Household Works had apparently decided surrender was preferable to attempting to make her use it.

Master Marlon put the first file in front of her.

"Two casualty-payment discrepancies, one missing dependent record, and three housing cases."

Diana looked at him.

Master Marlon showed no hesitation, no careful announcement that her authority had been suspended pending review.

She wrote:

ANYTHING ELSE?

"Treasury returned the Rellan dependent-support adjustments you requested."

He handed her another folder.

Diana opened it.

Her office mark appeared on the previous page.

Approved, recognized, still valid.

Relief did not come. She kept waiting for someone to explain what had been taken.

By midday, nothing had.

She corrected a duplicate family address, returned one benefits calculation for verification, and sent a housing petition to Mistress Hale because the problem belonged to household accommodation rather than relief law.

Nobody asked whether Selena Valence was authorized to do any of it.

Nobody called her Diana either.

The question remained where Raigoro had left it.

After lunch, a Dragonkeeper arrived.

"Your Grace. Master Clair requests you at Vharos’s cavern for the scheduled observation."

Diana looked at the man long enough that he repeated himself.

"Master Clair requests you below."

The same professional restrictions and the same work.

Vharos had already been returned from the junction field site after Healer Lou judged him stable enough for transport. He was back in his protected cavern now, though his movement remained restricted and the injured wing was still under treatment.

Diana gathered her observation board, and Alma came with her.

Vharos was awake when Diana entered the lower cavern.

He lay on his usual stone shelf with his injured wing folded loosely along his body. Healer Lou stood near the treatment station reviewing his morning chart, while Master Clair waited beside the marked observation area.

Raigoro was there too.

Diana’s steps changed slightly before she could stop them.

Raigoro looked toward her.

His expression gave her nothing beyond acknowledgment.

"Your Grace."

He had called her that hundreds of times.

Today she heard the distance inside it.

Diana took her usual position, and Master Clair handed her the observation board.

"Baseline first."

Good. Work had rules, and rules were easier.

Diana recorded Vharos’s breathing, posture, food intake, wing position, and the dragonstone’s initial temperature.

Raigoro reported the bond condition when Clair asked.

"Pain is present. Lower than yesterday evening."

"Agitation?"

"None beyond irritation when Lou examined the left wing."

Healer Lou looked up.

"He tried to bite the blanket."

Diana looked at Vharos.

The blanket remained unharmed.

Vharos opened one eye.

Diana wrote: POOR BLANKET.

Master Clair read the note when she held up the board.

"That does not belong in the formal observation."

Diana knew.

She waited for Raigoro.

Usually he would have said something. Perhaps the blanket had accepted the risk when it entered dragon service. Perhaps Diana was becoming a corrupting influence.

Something unnecessary.

Raigoro looked from the slate to Vharos.

"The foreclaw shifted after Her Grace entered."

Nothing unnecessary followed, only the useful, relevant observation.

Diana erased POOR BLANKET.

The observation continued.

Vharos’s breathing changed twice. The dragonstone warmed once. Diana recorded the timing carefully while Master Clair moved her between distance markers and the old dragon followed her with his eyes without attempting to rise.

Nothing dramatic happened.

When the formal session ended, Clair collected the sheets.

"You may remain another ten minutes if you wish. He is stable."

Diana sat in the second chair.

Raigoro had a command report beside him. For months, this had become one of the places where they occasionally stayed after usefulness ended.

He opened the report while Diana opened her anatomy booklet.

They sat in silence with Vharos breathing between them.

Diana turned one page, then another. By the time Raigoro finished the report and stood, she had absorbed neither.

"I have Command Council."

She nodded.

He looked toward Vharos, then toward Master Clair.

"Send me the evening medical update."

Clair nodded.

Raigoro looked at Diana once more.

"Your Grace."

Then he left.

He left without asking what she was reading, without observing that she had marked the same page three times, without finding a reason to remain merely because she did.

Diana stared at the empty chair.

Master Clair passed behind her carrying the observation sheets.

"If you are finished with the anatomy book, I need the reference copy returned."

Diana looked down.

She had not read a single sentence.

She closed it.

Later that evening, Diana attended a small administrative dinner with Raigoro, Daric, Mistress Hale, two treasury officers, and the senior Citadel steward.

Her place was beside Raigoro, where protocol placed the Duchess at a working table like this.

The discussion concerned Broken Ward repair expenditures and delayed family compensation.

Raigoro asked Diana for her office’s current count.

She gave it.

He read her slate.

"Thank you."

Nothing more followed.

A treasury officer objected to one category of emergency housing payment. Diana explained why the family had been displaced by military repair work rather than ordinary household choice.

Raigoro listened before saying, "Her office is correct. Keep the category."

His professional trust remained entirely intact.

Diana found herself wondering whether he would ask why she had refused the wine.

He did not.

Diana refused it anyway. Nobody noticed except Alma across the room.

Dinner ended.

The treasury officers left first, followed by Mistress Hale. Daric remained with two command files.

Diana gathered her slate and waited for the habit she had not realized was a habit.

More than once, when their work ended at the same time, Raigoro had walked with her as far as the household crossing. Sometimes the walk lasted longer than necessary because he asked a question that had nothing to do with the meeting they had just left.

Apparently, she had begun expecting it.

Tonight, Raigoro opened Daric’s first file.

Diana stood.

"Good night, Your Grace."

She hesitated, then wrote:

GOOD NIGHT.

He looked at the slate, inclined his head, and returned to the report.

Diana left.

The corridor outside felt colder than it had before dinner.

Alma joined her without speaking.

They reached the stairs before Diana stopped and touched chalk to the slate.

YOU DO NOT BELIEVE ME.

Diana stared at the sentence, then erased it before Alma could read.

Of course he did not believe her.

The sentence was true, but it still was not the question she had meant to write.

She did not know what the right question was yet.

Diana began walking again.

A messenger found them before they reached her apartments.

"Your Grace."

Diana turned.

The man carried a diplomatic packet bearing Southern red and gold.

Valence.

"Command Terrace requests your presence."

The packet was opened ten minutes later in Raigoro’s council room.

Diana stood beside the table while Daric read the formal notice.

King Odran had authorized a restitution delegation to Blackharrow.

The delegation was already traveling north.

Grain, medicine, wardstone, engineering supplies, financial settlement, transport commitments, treaty negotiators.

Diana looked at the Valence seal.

She had spent the entire day discovering that Blackharrow had changed nothing around her.

Now, Valence was coming to see exactly what she had become.