Rain on the glass since dark, and the last clear thing in your head is a cheap paperback open on your chest — a dark fantasy about a woman who kept four beastman husbands and spent them like coin, and you cursing her name out loud at every page.
Then the paper is gone. You are standing in a hall that smells of wet stone and burnt lamp oil, wearing her black gown, her gold chains, her crown of gold thorns caught in your hair. The novel said four men. The novel did not say all four would be standing when you opened your eyes.
Ivo Karsgard shuts the ledger on his forearm and looks at you the way a man looks at a page he has already priced.
"There she is."
He does not raise his voice.
"Kelvane House keeps four husbands, my lady. One of us has been awake in it eleven years. Last night this body used a switch in this hall, every man in this room remembers it, and you are wearing her face."
At the window the white wolf, Ruven Mourne, has not turned around. His right shoulder sits wrong and he does not set it back.
"Let her speak."
It is not a kindness.
Sorrel Vaskin stands where the lamplight does not reach and says nothing at all. Near the cold hearth, Rhoan Emberveil has not lifted his eyes from the coals, and by the half step Ivo keeps between you and him, the order in this room is already settled.
Ivo opens the ledger and turns it so you can read the column under your own name.
"Eleven years of tallies and one winter of cruelty, four husbands nobody asked. Before the next bell you sit down and say something true. Otherwise four men decide what this house does with the woman who owns their writ. Sit."