"You are not the king of Dillaclor."
The words did not echo.
They settled.
The seated man did not immediately move.
"That is a dangerous assertion."
"It is an accurate one."
"And what grants you that certainty?"
"The king I pledged myself to did not reinforce foundations for display."
A pause.
"He did not allow iron clamps to show."
Silence.
"You speak as though you knew him."
"I did."
"Many claim that."
"I stood in his foundry," I say evenly. "I watched him reject flawed steel rather than disguise it."
A flicker in his eyes.
"And this crown? It is disguised steel."
His jaw tightens.
"You overestimate your insight."
"No."
My metal fingers flex once at my side.
"I overestimate nothing."
A breath.
"The king is dead."
"Yes."
"He did not fall in battle."
The fire cracks softly.
"He was found in the lake."
Stillness.
"A lake that should never have held him."
His gaze sharpens — careful now.
"You tread close to treason."
"I tread close to truth."
Silence stretches.
"I saw the body. Weighted poorly. Bound in haste. Meant to disappear."
I do not say her name.
I do not say who was ordered to carry out what she did not choose.
"I know who was told to erase what remained. And I know who gave that order."
The air changes.
"That is conjecture."
"Nux declared it an accident before the water stilled."
The room tightens.
"You accuse the Hand of regicide."
"I accuse him of orchestration."
"And me?"
A pause.
"You benefited."
He rises slowly from the bed. Blankets fall away.
"You believe I am complicit."
"I believe you were selected."
"For what?"
"To bear weight."
A step closer.
"When a beam is removed, something must replace it."
"And you think I am that beam."
"I think you were chosen. Not because you were worthy."
That strikes.
"But because you were manageable."
The silence that follows is no longer political.
It is personal.
"You presume much."
"I observe structure."
"You break into my chamber and dismantle a crown you cannot prove false."
"I do not need proof. I knew the king. And you are not him."
The words land heavier than any accusation of murder.
Something in his composure fractures — not visibly, but internally. A shift too precise to name.
"And if I am not?" he asks softly.
"Then you are either a fool… or something worse."
The firelight catches his face fully now.
No flinch.
No outrage.
Only calculation.
"You mistake loss for chaos," he says evenly. "You think what happened at the lake was disorder. Something that should not have occurred."
He steps closer.
Close enough that the crown is no longer what I see first.
"Loss is merely design imposed upon us."
My breath catches.
"We improve it."
—
The chamber disappears.
I am no longer here.
I am beneath shattered timber.
Resin in my lungs. Blood in my mouth.
Men shouting.
My arm crushed beneath a beam that should have held.
And above me — not kneeling, not panicking —
Standing.
"Loss is merely design imposed upon us."
Not cruel.
Not kind.
Certain.
"We improve it."
The cadence is identical.
The calm is identical.
The refusal to grieve is identical.
No court tutor speaks like that.
No puppet thinks like that.
Only one man ever looked at ruin as though it were a draft.
The scar at his temple.
The stillness in his stare.
The way he studies reaction before offering comfort.
Not resemblance.
Not suspicion.
Exact.
It is him.
The lake surges back into me.
The reeds.
The floating body.
The orders whispered in torchlight.
And beyond all of it—
Calculation.
Correction.
Improvement.
My master stands before me beneath a stolen crown.
Alive.
The man who created the false arm I still wear
is now being used as a false replacement by another.
The symmetry is merciless.
He taught me that loss could be reforged.
That damage could be redesigned.
That what is broken is not the end.
And now—
He stands where a dead king should be.
Refined.
Replaced.
Improved.
My breath unravels.
Not chosen by Nux because he was weak.
Chosen because he would understand the design.
Because he would not weep over it.
Because he would build with it.
My voice leaves me without permission.
"…Mallious."
Not accusation.
Not question.
Recognition.
And in his eyes—
There is no denial.