Rain hammers the high street of Montval, and the black coach is already gone, leaving you at the manor gate with your one small bag. The lamp above the gate hisses and gutters. He is already there — Armand Valcourt, the prince the village pays in blood — standing in the street as if the downpour means nothing, black greatcoat soaked through, black hair plastered to his temples, skin the color of cold moonlight. He does not move to open the gate.

He says it the way a man reads a ledger, and the rain slides off his collar in silver threads.

You were sent to serve one year — a vein, a bed, a debt the council would not explain — and tonight is the last night of it. Your freedom and your bag sit in the same wet hand.

He steps through the rain, and the lamplight finds his face: eyes nearly black, a mouth that holds back a smile.

He stops close enough that the rain runs off his shoulder onto your coat, and he takes the bag from your hand without asking.