Chương 300: 65. Uninherited Legacy, Noose on Neck, and Blood of Brothers 1

At first light, the wind in Thornhold was already awake. It was a thoroughly unpleasant kind of wind. Not strong, but the sort that found every gap at your collar and cuffs and worked its way in—like a reminder: hey, there's still a pile of ugly work waiting, don't think locking people up last night counts as finished. And honestly, I had genuinely intended to do things in the proper order. Sort the personnel first, then the accounts, then the people who needed to die. Reasonable. Efficient.

The kind of thinking that would look good on a man who was actually prepared to take over running a fortress. Unfortunately, as long as a person is still alive, there will always be a handful of things capable of kicking the word rational into a corner to sulk. My siblings, for instance. I stood outside the small east-wing room, rubbing my forehead, not quite finished mentally rehearsing what I was going to say, when the door opened from the inside. Charlotte came out first.

She'd probably slept badly, if at all—faint shadows beneath her eyes—but her clothes and hair were impeccably arranged, as though the simple act of holding herself together was what kept this fortress from losing the last of its resemblance to a home. When she saw me, her expression softened for a moment, then immediately shifted into that familiar, razor-edged protectiveness she'd always had.

"Stop standing in the doorway catching a draft," she said, frowning.

"You don't exactly look like the picture of health yourself."

"Aunt Charlotte, the first half of that sounded like concern, and the second half sounded like criticism."

"As long as you understand, that's enough." Fair enough. Being criticized by someone who actually knows you is always preferable to being fawned over by someone who doesn't. At least it doesn't make your skin crawl. I was about to fire back when the soft rustle of fabric came from behind the door. Then Fina was slowly wheeled out. Lorelei was pushing the chair. In that first instant, what I noticed wasn't Fina.

It was Lorelei's hands—slender, steady, the thin white scar on her palm barely visible in the morning light, pale to the point of translucence, and yet somehow it still managed to drag my gaze over without asking permission. Only after that did I actually look at Fina. She was wearing a new outfit today. New, though not extravagant—a pale gray-blue long dress with a more formal shawl draped over it, simple in cut, mercifully free of the kind of noble ornamentation that always gave me a headache. Clean. Neat.

And most importantly: finally, genuinely, looking like someone who was meant to be seen in proper daylight. Her hair had been carefully arranged, a small silver pin tucked behind one ear—nothing lavish. Her complexion was still somewhat pale, and her fingers were tense around the fabric of her skirt. Not because she was timid. But because for years, she had simply never been given a seat at the front.

From being hidden away, stored out of sight, treated as someone inconvenient to produce before other people—to being wheeled back into the center of everything today. That wasn't one step. It was a threshold. The kind you know you have to cross, and your legs still shake anyway.

"B-brother…" She saw me, her voice small. I walked over and crouched in front of her.

"Scared?" She pressed her lips together and nodded, honestly.

"... A little."

"Good." She blinked. Even Charlotte frowned at me, wearing an expression that said, very clearly: you impossible child, is this really the moment for that mouth of yours? This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I ignored it, and reached up to straighten Fina's shawl.

"Being scared is normal," I said.

"The only people who feel nothing are idiots and lunatics. You're not the first, and I'm not about to let you become the second." She stared at me. I held her gaze, keeping my voice level.

"You don't need to be like me today. You don't need to be like anyone. You only need to sit there, lift your head, and let every person in that room see—that you're alive, and that starting today, you are no longer the Fina who was left to gather dust at the top of a tower." I paused, then smiled.

"The rest of the frightening work, I'll handle." Lorelei stood behind the wheelchair without a word. But I could feel the weight of her gaze resting on me for a beat longer than usual. That gaze was trouble. Not puzzlement, not admiration, not the kind of sentiment that belonged in a cheap romance—something more dangerous than all of those.

It felt like she was verifying: is the man standing in front of me still the same idiot who always managed to get himself covered in injuries, and still turned around to pull someone else up? I didn't look back at her. Because sometimes, being too self-aware of a thing is exactly how accidents happen.

"Let's go," I said, standing.

"Don't keep the dead weight waiting too long. People who know they're about to die tend to get louder than usual."

"That sentence was not remotely comforting," Charlotte muttered.

"But it is accurate," Lorelei added quietly, from behind. My step faltered. I turned my head to look at her. Her expression was perfectly composed, as though what she'd just said wasn't a knife, but a weather report.... Right. Very good. At this rate, the first casualty in this fortress might not be my siblings after all. It might be the last thin strip of self-control I had left.

The space connecting the main reception hall to the antechamber was large enough to hold the fortress's senior household managers, the head of servants, the storeroom wardens, the dispatch clerks, several duty officers, and a scattering of inner-residence elders who had just enough standing to be in the room, but not enough nerve to breathe too loudly. Everyone had come.

The arrests last night and the summons this morning had made enough noise that, unless you genuinely wanted to share a cell with the other three, playing deaf wasn't an option. I stood to the side of the head position, leaving the center deliberately clear. Lorelei wheeled Fina forward. In that instant, every gaze in the hall converged on her like a tide pressing in. I understood what that felt like. For someone who had spent her whole life tucked in shadows, that wasn't the sensation of being seen.

It was closer to being thrown into direct sunlight without warning. Fina's shoulders visibly locked. I rested a hand lightly on the back of her chair—not touching her, just letting her know I was there.

"Head up," I said, low. She drew a slow breath. Then she lifted her head. Good. Her eyes were still tight with nerves, and her fingers were still white at the knuckles, but they didn't flinch away. As long as they didn't flinch, there was something to work with. I looked across the room and spoke.

"From this day forward, Fina Rosa—as the surviving legitimate bloodline of House Rosa and the lawful head of Thornhold—formally assumes authority over the fortress's internal affairs and the household's official standing." The moment the words landed, the hall reacted as though someone had poured ice water onto a fire. No one dared speak. But the tremor that went through the room was impossible to miss. Some heads dropped. Some pupils contracted.

Some faces wore the expression of people who'd suspected this but hadn't let themselves believe it. A few looked exactly like men who'd discovered, in their morning soup, the one thing they least wanted to find there. Fina's problem had never been that she lacked the standing. It was that she'd been hidden for so long that many people had nearly forgotten—she was a Rosa too. And today, I was going to nail that fact back into every skull in the room.

"Albert is in a cell. Marcus is in a cell. Jurgen is in a cell," I said, with the same calm I'd use to discuss the weather.

"The accounts they owe, the confessions they still have to give—none of that is going away. If anyone in this room is still under the impression that as long as the old masters held on, they could keep coasting—now would be the time to wake up from that particular dream." I glanced sideways at Fina.

"Head of household." She visibly startled. The title was clearly still too unfamiliar—it sounded like I was calling someone else entirely. I didn't rush her. I just waited. After a few breaths, she drew a small, quiet lungful of air, and when she spoke, her voice was still slightly unsteady.

"I—I… from today, firewood, medicine, braziers, and hot water within the fortress are to be distributed in full, as they should be… especially for the sick, the wounded, the elderly, and children… no more shortfalls." The hall went still for a moment. Then, without anyone seeming to decide it, heads began to bow—one, then two, then three, until the entire room had dropped its gaze. The order was small. It didn't sound like the first command of a new head of household.

It sounded more like someone who had spent years going without these things finally finding the courage to ask for them on behalf of others. Which was, of course, exactly what made it the truest thing anyone had said in that room in a very long time. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Charlotte press the back of her hand to her eye. Lorelei stood behind the chair, lips pressed tightly together. And I found, unexpectedly, that I almost wanted to laugh. Not because anything was funny.

But because those people who had sat in high places, convinced they understood what governance looked like, had spent all this time producing exactly nothing—while the sister they'd left on a shelf for years had just given the most honest first order I'd ever heard from a head of household. The irony was almost elegant.

"Understood?" I looked out over the assembled crowd.

"Then see it done. Anyone caught pocketing allocations again gets strung up from the gatehouse and left to spit them back out slowly." A chorus of assent rose from the room. Not loud—but far more solid than any pretty promise made last night. Good. Then it was time for today's real show. I raised a hand.

"Bring them in."