The morning after the mirrors, Everfell felt like a thing that had tasted memory and could not stop wanting more. Hallways that had seemed ordinary the day before held a new quality. Light moved differently. Sounds carried farther. Even the kitchen staff muttered of restless footsteps and of pans that cooled too fast.
Kael met Seraphina in the breakfast gallery. The table was long and narrow, and the windows overlooked the cliff. Dawn painted the sea a washed silver. He had not slept properly. His mind had replayed the mirror images until the edges blurred. The storm. The girl kneeling. Faces in robes. The sound of wood meeting water.
Seraphina sat where the morning light warmed her shoulder. Her hair was pinned back this time, but a few loose strands trembled at her temples. She ate like someone who measured appetite. She drank like someone who measured patience.
"You look like a man who has used up his options," she said.
"I have used up one," Kael answered. "The option of quiet."
She watched him over the rim of her cup. "You chose truth. That is not the same as choosing the right moment."
He had no answer for that. He only knew that avoiding the truth had become unbearable.
"We need allies," he said instead. "We need people who will stand with us and value what we find more than the comfort of a tidy record."
Seraphina set her cup down slowly. "Name one."
He thought of the ledger names. Lysa Venor came to mind as if she had stepped from the margins into the center. She had been on the list near Elira. A trader's daughter who had married into a quiet family and then been widowed early. Her name had appeared in small calligraphy, beside a note that hinted at a gift and at a favor owed.
"Lysa Venor," Kael said. "She owes no loyalty to Maeron. She is not a courtesan of influence. She is a woman who moves through merchant networks with her eyes open."
Seraphina looked at him and something like a smile hovered. "You pick interesting allies."
Kael allowed a small grin. "Do you have a better candidate?"
"No," she admitted. "But caution where you can. The council is already uneasy. Maeron will build a narrative if he can. He will make your curiosity look like weakness."
Kael had expected that. He had expected worse. The question was how to move without giving Maeron the excuse he wanted. Public accusation would bring panic. Quiet inquiries would take time. Time was a thing Maeron might not allow.
They agreed on a plan that bore the mark of necessity. Kael would send a discreet message to Lysa, requesting a private meeting under neutral ground. Seraphina would prepare Everfell in case the house needed to show them more. Foret would catalogue what remained in the sealed room and begin the slow work of tracing the ledger notes to names and places.
"Do it carefully," Seraphina said. "And bring someone you can trust when you meet Lysa."
"I will not go alone," Kael promised. "Not now."
They left the gallery with the quiet sense of people who had decided on a route and could only hope the path would hold.
Lysa Venor's house sat near the market, a place where the smell of spices mixed with salt. Her curtains were the sort that kept out gossip but not light. She received them in a small parlor, the kind of room that had once been used for counting coins and now softened with the weight of memory.
Lysa wore simple cloth, embroidered in muted tones. Her hair was bound in a way that said the seasons had shaped it. There was a patience about her that was not resignation. It was sharpened by loss.
"Prince Rhyven," she said when Kael bowed. "You bring weather with you. The palace has been unsettled."
"It is Everfell," Kael answered, "not I. It wakes and asks questions."
She touched the edge of a bowl on the table as if testing whether it felt steady. "And which questions does a house ask a prince?"
He told her, quietly and without flourish, about the ledger and the sealed room and the mirrors. He spoke of the vessels and of the waking memory. He did not speak of Maeron at first. He watched her face as the story unfolded.
Lysa listened. Her eyes narrowed not with disbelief but with calculation.
"When the sea is in a hurry, merchants watch their ledgers twice," she said at last. "But there are things even ledgers cannot record."
Kael met her gaze. "Have you ever known of something to be kept in boxes and labeled as a trinket, only for it to be more?"
Her hands folded in her lap. "Once I carried a crate of glass to a buyer in the south. The crate was marked as beads. The buyer paid well and did not ask questions. Later he told me the beads sang when he cleaned them. He said they were part of a child's memory. I sold the rest for coin and told myself not to think about the sound. That was the first time I learned men would buy silence if it came with gold."
Kael felt his stomach tighten. "You know people who hide things."
"I know men who think relics are currency," Lysa said. "I know how to move information without making it sharp."
"Will you help us?" Kael asked.
She studied him. "Why should I help a prince whose house kept these things hidden?"
"Because the house is waking," Kael said. "Because the truth will not honor the boundaries the ledger tried to impose. Because if memory wakes without anyone to hold it kindly, it will choose its own way. That could destroy many more than just reputations."
Lysa's mouth tightened. "And the man in blue. Maeron."
Kael told her about the late night at the gate. About Maeron's calm threat in the council room. About the mirrors.
Lysa listened, then reached for a small pouch and opened it. Inside were a few coins and a strip of paper folded several times. She pushed them across the table.
"Money," she said. "To be used for favors. To pay for movement. To secure men who keep silence for a night and speak the next."
Kael looked at the coins. "You are offering a ledger of your own."
She laughed softly. "Merchants always keep ledgers. We call them by different names. I will help you build one that Maeron cannot burn."
He accepted the pouch. "Then meet me at night in the west garden. Bring no attendants. Bring only the truth you can carry."
She stood. "Very well. But be cautious. Men in blue have patience and appetite."
Kael left with a plan and a pocket that carried more than coin. He felt the map of alliances expand a little. It would not be enough, but it was a beginning.
Back at Everfell, the house shifted as if pleased by small acts of movement. Seraphina watched Kael return with something like relief in her posture. They did not speak of the mirrors that afternoon. They did not need to. The house would remind them later in its own way.
That evening the west garden smelled of jasmine and wet stone. Kael moved through the paths like someone walking into a decision. Lysa was already there, standing beneath an arched trellis. Her silhouette cut like a practiced blade.
They spoke in turns. Lysa promised men who could move crates, who could break seals without thinking of kings. She promised a network that would listen for ships arriving with parcels that were not on manifest. She promised discretion.
Kael offered gratitude and a kind of confession. He told her he would hold a small gathering. Not a council. Not a proclamation. A private assembly of people who could be trusted to listen and to act with care. He asked Lysa to bring those she knew who owed her favors.
She agreed.
As they parted, Kael felt the house breathe deeper, as if taking their plan into its bones. He walked back toward the palace with the small, steady hope of someone who has begun to sew.
But under the hedges, a shape moved with slow, sure steps. A watcher wearing blue paused to listen. He no longer needed to lean his ear against the stone.
Maeron did not trust doors that closed. He trusted men who opened them for him.