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The sun came up gently over Aurevale, spilling gold across dew-heavy grass that hadn't yet decided whether to hold the night's cold a little longer or surrender to the morning properly. Birds moved through it in loose, unhurried arcs, and somewhere beyond the eastern hedge a gardener's boy had already started humming some tune he hadn't quite learned all the words to, off-key and entirely unbothered by his own imperfection.
Inside, the dining hall carried that same soft, undisturbed peace. Sunlight came through the tall eastern windows in long warm bars, catching the steam rising off fresh bread and settling in bright coins across the white tablecloth. The whole family had gathered for once, all six chairs at that end of the table filled at the same time, a rare enough occurrence that even the staff seemed to move through the room a shade more carefully than usual, as though afraid a clumsy step might somehow break the arrangement.
Marielle was in the middle of some story about a horse she'd ridden that morning, dark hair falling loose over one shoulder as she gestured with her fork for emphasis, and Edmund kept interrupting to correct details he clearly hadn't witnessed and had no business correcting, his spectacles sliding down his nose every time he laughed at his own jokes. Freya ate in her usual calm quiet, watching the exchange with the faint, amused patience of someone content to let noise happen around her without needing to contribute to it. Julian, immaculate even at this hour, refilled his sister's tea before she'd finished asking for it, the small kindness so automatic by now that nobody in the family bothered thanking him for it anymore.
At the head of the table, the old man ate slowly, savouring each bite with the unhurried satisfaction of a man who had learned, across two centuries, exactly how rare mornings like this one actually were. Beside him, Alaric said little, as was his custom, though the corner of his mouth kept curving faintly at whatever nonsense his children produced. Elyria sat close to him, her plate barely touched, watching all five of her living children with the particular soft attention of a mother who never quite stopped counting them, even now, even here, even on a morning this ordinary and this good.
Dorian and Ilsa sat near the middle, her hand resting lightly over his beneath the table, neither of them paying much mind to the conversation, content simply to exist inside the warmth of it.
It was into this — the gold light, the easy noise, the particular unbothered peace of a family with five children safe at one table and nothing more urgent that morning than tea and horse stories — that the knock came. It landed hard against the front doors, three sharp raps that carried all the way through the hall and silenced Marielle mid-sentence. A moment later, muffled voices in the entryway, one of them raised, insistent, and then the dining hall's own doors opened to admit a guard looking distinctly unhappy about the situation he was currently escorting through it.
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The Hummingbird came in a step ahead of the guard's hand at his shoulder, blond hair uncharacteristically disheveled, his usual easy composure entirely absent, replaced by something tight and exasperated around his mouth. He looked like a man who had run most of the way here and lost an argument at the door on top of it.
The room's warmth cooled immediately.
The old man set down his cup with quiet, deliberate precision. Alaric's gaze sharpened, already assessing the intrusion the way a soldier assesses anything that arrives uninvited and out of breath. Marielle's fork paused halfway to her mouth. Even Julian's easy pleasantness folded away into something more guarded.
"My apologies for the hour," the Hummingbird said, and for once there was no performance left in his voice at all, none of the usual sleaze or theatre, only urgency worn thin from having carried it too far, too fast. "I wouldn't have come like this if it could wait."
"You weren't invited to come at all," Alaric said, flat, unmoved, the tone of a man who had spent decades keeping strangers at arm's length from his family's table and saw no reason to relax that instinct now.
"He's with us," Dorian said quickly, rising halfway out of his seat. "Grandfather — he's the intelligence man Reiner introduced us to. He wouldn't be here unless it mattered."
"It matters." The Hummingbird's eyes swept the table once, landing briefly on each face in turn before settling, finally, on Elyria's. Something in his expression faltered there, just slightly, the look of a man about to hand someone a thing he wasn't entirely certain they were ready to hold. "I need to speak with your family. Now, if possible. Not after breakfast."
Ilsa was on her feet as well now, her voice steady, cutting through the room's rising tension before it could sharpen any further. "Let him speak. Whatever this is, he didn't run halfway across the district at dawn over nothing." The old man studied the Hummingbird a long moment, weighing the intrusion the way he weighed most things — slowly, without haste, though something in his ancient eyes had already begun to sharpen with the particular alertness of a man who had waited fifteen years for exactly this kind of interruption and had learned, over that time, never to dismiss one outright.
"Sit," he said finally, gesturing at the empty chair nearest the door. "And speak quickly. My patience for surprises before my second cup of tea has never been what it once was."