Rina Dustveil unfolded the letter for the third time that morning, her fingers steady despite what the words meant. The seal had been broken when she bought it from the courier — someone's discarded correspondence, sold for coin when the recipient never claimed it. She'd recognized the signature immediately. Lord Kesrith, the same fae lord who'd called for her exile, had written to someone else about a problem that needed solving. A cartographer who asked too many questions. A map that had been planted, not forgotten. Rina read the date again. Two weeks before she'd found it. She needed proof beyond a single letter, something Lord Kesrith couldn't explain away. The gazing orb sat in his study, according to rumors she'd collected over six months of careful listening. Dragon-clawed stand, blue and green glass that showed secrets to those who knew how to look. If he'd used it to watch her movements before the exile, it would still hold traces of those viewings. She folded the letter and tucked it inside her coat. The stolen map had cost her everything once already. Now it would buy her way into Kesrith's private rooms, because he wanted it badly enough to have framed her for taking it in the first place. The study rose before her three nights later, twisted wood and amber windows glowing in the dark. She'd waited for the moon to turn, when Kesrith traveled to settle border disputes. The door opened to her lockpicks after two minutes of work. Inside, the orb waited on its stand, swirls of blue and emerald frozen mid-motion. Rina placed her palm against the cool glass. The surface rippled. Images bloomed inside — herself, weeks before the theft, walking past the map room. Kesrith's voice, recorded somehow in the glass, giving orders to move the map to an easier location. Her own face again, discovering it. She pulled her hand back. The orb had seen everything, recorded his manipulation frame by frame. But the study itself told her something worse. Kesrith's desk held a contract, already written, offering her reinstatement in exchange for the map and five years of service. He'd always controlled her only path back. Rina took the contract and left the orb where it stood. The letter and contract together would prove nothing to the court — Kesrith had too much influence to be challenged directly. But he didn't know she had them yet. She folded the papers together and slipped them into the hidden pocket where she kept her debts and her plans. The map stayed with her, as it always would. Kesrith had engineered her exile to force this exact bargain, but he'd miscalculated one thing. She'd already lived without the court for two years. She could survive without it longer still, until she found leverage that mattered. The evidence changed nothing about her exile. It changed everything about what she'd accept to end it.