Reborn as the Psycho Villainess Who Ate Her Slave Beasts' Contracts

"Brennan," Ken said, picking up the thread without pause — they had talked about this, clearly, had organized it, had been waiting for this exact question. "Male, bear form. His case is different — the partial control is stable, which means it’s also static. He may not progress further. He’s functional, consistent, and limited. He knows it and he’s made a kind of peace with it, which is its own complicated thing."

"Sela," Mahir continued. "Young. Youngest of us by considerable margin. Her recovery is the most active — she’s moving, which means she’s also unpredictable. Some days she’s nearly complete. Other days she shouldn’t be making decisions about what to eat for breakfast, let alone anything consequential."

They went through nine more. She listened to all of them, asking specific questions when something needed clarification, storing the information with the same systematic attention she gave to grain reports and tax reforms. When they finished, she was quiet for a moment.

"Why are you telling me this accurately?" she said. "You could have shaded it. Given me a more favorable picture."

"We could have," Mahir agreed.

"Why didn’t you?"

He looked at her with the full attention again — the real kind, the kind he wasn’t performing. "Because you would have found out eventually. You find out everything eventually, which is something we established fairly early in our assessment of you. And because we are trying —" he paused on the word, acknowledging its weight "— to establish something."

"What something?"

"That we are worth something other than a dungeon," Ken said, from the counter. Direct, unornamented. Exactly Ken.

"We’re not asking to be released," Mahir said, quickly — not covering for Ken but adding precision. "We’re not negotiating our freedom. We’re aware that’s not what this conversation is about yet. We’re establishing that we are honest when honesty is inconvenient, that our information is reliable, and that we are —" another considered pause "— open to a different kind of arrangement than what existed before."