If words were blades, her grandfather had said, you’d have no need for bodyguards.

What he apparently didn’t see was that without a blade, words were the only thing she had to defend herself. Unfortunately, at times like this, she couldn’t prove her sincerity by tossing aside her weapons.

As the three of them gathered in a tiny triangle on the plush carpet in the center of the room, her father frowned and asked with all the command of a patience-exhausted parent, “What is it you want to speak about?”

Farilane waited until Nordstrom, the day steward, closed the door, then she gathered herself. Everyone had a weakness. Farilane’s was her family, and no one made her more uncomfortable than her father.

Her brother, Nordyan, was the brat she used to wrestle—and usually beat. Not that she’d done that recently, but it left a mark in the form of a respectful relationship where serious conversations were only awkward. Her grandfather was a far greater problem. No one in the entire world enjoyed speaking to Estermon, but there were basic systems in place for meeting the emperor. Her father had no such protocols or guidelines, and after two hundred years, he remained part parent, part stranger. Nyrian existed in a netherworld of what ought to be, and what was, and she was never certain which rules to follow. Do I hug him, shake his hand, or introduce myself? Good evening, sir, you might be surprised to discover I’m your daughter. Yes, I said daughter—that unhappy little side effect of a little too much effort on your part to sire an heir.

Farilane made a mental note: Put the blades away.

They waited. She hesitated.

In the end, she looked away and focused on the spot where she had once solved the riddle of a child’s wooden puzzle. “I made a mistake. I unknowingly led Mawyndulë to Sephryn and the Horn of Gylindora. Now she’s dead, he has the horn, and Grandfather’s life is in imminent danger.”

Her brother was the first to react, yet his comment was hardly helpful. “Mawyndulë? Who’s that?”

Her father was either equally puzzled or he simply pretended to be. “Wasn’t that the name of the fellow Nyphron was supposed to have killed at the end of the Great War?”

“Nyphron never killed him,” she clarified. Not knowing if they were feigning ignorance, she questioned whether she was being helpful or simply pedantic. Farilane felt it best to err on the safe side, since she often assumed too much of people, and that bit of charity was rarely rewarded. “Mawyndulë was allowed to live. Then, in the year eight hundred and fifty, he returned and exacted his revenge by murdering the first emperor during a ghazel invasion, which I now suspect, was also instigated by Mawyndulë for that purpose. He also tried to steal the Horn of Gylindora but failed.”