The morning after the demonstration, Oryn felt less like a trade partner and more like a pressure cooker reaching its critical limit. While Brandt was busy in the lower courtyards, haggling over the specific carbon content of the iron ore Oakhaven was to receive—arguing with trade factors over the impurities of the southern mines—Deacon retreated to the fortified guest wing. He needed answers that couldn't be found on a ledger, and he needed to confront the physical manifestation of his own displacement in this world.
The guest suite was a masterpiece of Southern luxury—high vaulted ceilings, tapestries of woven silk, and windows of stained glass that cast colorful, distorted patterns across the floor. But the smell was all wrong. It was a sharp, clinical cocktail of vinegar, bitter herbs, and the underlying copper tang of healing wounds. Julian Cassian was no longer thrashing; the fever had broken during the night, leaving him skin-and-bone, his face a pale mask of exhausted malice. He was propped up in a chair by the window, his chest wrapped in tight linen bandages that Kiley had applied with a surgeon's cold efficiency. He watched Deacon enter with the unblinking intensity of a trapped hawk.
"You look tired, 'Brother'," Julian spat, the word dripping with a lethal irony. "The weight of a stolen title starting to chafe? Or is it just the effort of pretending you aren't terrified of what I know?"
Deacon pulled a heavy wooden stool across the stone floor, the sound a harsh, grating noise that seemed to set Julian's teeth on edge. He sat down, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees—the posture of a Sergeant conducting a field interrogation. He didn't look like a Lord. He looked like a man who had seen a hundred "Julians" in a dozen different war zones.
"I'm not the one in bandages, Julian. And I'm not the one who led a tribe of Goblins to a massacre," Deacon said, his voice a low, level hum. "You want to talk about stolen titles? You were wearing the Imperial Crimson. You sold Oakhaven out to the Governor before I even woke up in that tower. Tell me, what was the price for your soul? A Regency? A seat at the Governor's right hand?"
Julian's eyes flared with a sudden, desperate fire. "I secured our family's survival! Our father died in the dirt because he thought he could be a 'man of the people.' He let the foundries rust and the walls crumble while he played philosopher for the peasants. I went to the Capital to save what was left. The Governor offered me the Regency. All I had to do was provide a reason for the Inquisitors to 'stabilize' the North. You were supposed to be the sacrificial lamb, Cassian. You were supposed to die in that bed so I could come home as the savior."
"And instead, I got up," Deacon said quietly.
"Instead, you became a freak," Julian hissed, his sapphire eyes burning with a mix of envy and horror. "You started building things that shouldn't exist. You started talking like a common soldier and acting like a king. You aren't the man who left Oakhaven. You're a hollow shell filled with clockwork and cold iron. I don't know what possessed you in that tower, but I know the Empire won't stop until they've dissected you to find out what's driving the machine."
Deacon felt the "David" side of him flinch at the venom. In his old life, his younger brother Leo had yelled at him like this—screaming about David's "overbearing protection" and how he "didn't ask to be saved." The emotional mapping was perfect, a cruel trick of fate. The more Julian hated him, the more Deacon felt the illogical, bone-deep need to drag him back from the edge.
"I'm going to give you a choice, Julian," Deacon said, ignoring the insults. "The trade deal is signed. We leave for Oakhaven at dusk. You can come back with us as a guest of the House, or I can leave you here. But if I leave you here, Count Valerius will have your head on a spike the moment he realizes you're the claimant the Governor was going to use to invalidate his grain contracts. You're a loose thread, kid. And men like Valerius hate loose threads."
Julian's lip curled. "You'd take me back? After I tried to bury you in the Throat? You really are a fool. I'll spend every waking moment undermining you. I'll tell the priests what you're doing in that basement. I'll be the rot in your foundation."
"Maybe," Deacon said, standing up. He reached out, his hand hovering over Julian's shoulder before he caught himself and pulled back. "But you'll be alive to do it. And in this world, that's the best deal you're going to get. Now, get ready. We move at dawn."
As Deacon walked out, he felt the weight of Julian's stare on his back like a physical blade. He was harboring a traitor, a brother, and a rival all in one skin. Logistically, it was a disaster. Emotionally, it was the only thing that made him feel like David Hayes again.