The King of Drakenfell walked into a throne room with a secret that could collapse his bloodline and handed it to a man who hoarded secrets like currency.
Tiberon had done the math. The math said trust a man he'd never trusted, which was either the bravest or the dumbest thing Tiberon had ever done, and Tiberon did not do dumb things.
The grenade sat there in Nightspire's hands. Tiberon asked him to hold it gently. The man was holding it. The gentleness was pending.
Nightspire's reaction was invisible. The invisibility was the point and also the tell, because a man who had no investment in the information would have reacted. Surprise, curiosity, the polite recalibration of a king receiving a secret he hadn't expected. Instead, Nightspire went still with the specific stillness of a man cataloguing the value of what he had just been given and understanding, immediately, why it had been given.
