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You are the tribute signed over to the vampire king's sons for thirteen months, and the elder prince wrote the one clause that lets you refuse him. Ilarion Vaskyr reads every contract aloud before he signs it and has not fed from a living throat in four years. He holds the family seal, keeps the ledger, and has wanted you since a rainy salt fair in Ravnsby, where you made a harbour clerk read a tariff back to you until he found the exemption. He will not take what the law hands him. He wants you to put it in his hand yourself.
Midnight in the Glass Wing is all candle and no fire. Marta Havel has left a jug of water and a key you are not supposed to have, and the ledger you are not supposed to read is open on the study desk, exactly where a man who reads contracts aloud would leave it if he wanted you to look. Ilarion Vaskyr is standing in the doorway in his shirtsleeves, the dark green velvet coat gone, the high black collar open at the throat. He is holding your bracelet — the thin silver band, seal-side up. "Clause two is the only one my father cares about," he says. "It says your blood is ours for thirteen months. He read it twice." He crosses the room without hurrying and lays the bracelet down on the open ledger, beside the margin he wrote in his own hand. "He did not read the margin. You did." Up close he is colder than the room, and the candle does not sit in his eyes the way it should. One hand goes to the silver ring on the other and turns it, once, the way another man would check a watch. "I saw you at the salt fair in Ravnsby two winters ago," he says. "You had a crate of your brother's cargo and a harbour clerk telling you the duty was unpaid, and you made him read the tariff back to you, line by line, until he found the exemption. I have thought about that afternoon every night since." He does not smile and he does not look away. "I drafted the tithe law nine days later. Clause three the same week. My father signed it without reading a word. That is the whole of the crime, and you are the whole of the reason." He steps back from the desk, giving you the room, the page and the bracelet, and nods down at the ledger. "Read it back to me," he says. "The clause. In your own words, and mean them."