Dawn in the Question Garden preparation alcove. Black stone, iron trellises, glass vials, and stacks of legal papers wait under cold blue light.

Cassian is returned to the interrogation table under guard. The room feels colder and more formal than the previous night.

The interrogation begins with formal clarity. Yelena frames the day around motive, not evidence.

Yelena introduces political motive and watches Cassian's body for involuntary truth.

Cassian refuses to deny his opposition, but he narrows its meaning.

Yelena presses Cassian on his argument with the dead king.

Yelena shifts from political anger to physical opportunity: patrol routes and access to the royal wing.

Yelena turns Cassian's training into evidence of capacity to kill.

Cassian's truthful admissions keep slipping away from confession.

Yelena changes technique from questioning to lawful discomfort.

Yelena angles the interrogation lamp into Cassian's eyes to exhaust evasions without damaging him.

Yelena tries to force the difference between stopping a king and killing one.

Yelena mentions succession, and Cassian's composure frays for the first time.

Yelena notes the missing nursery reference but refuses to chase it without leverage.

Cassian earns his question by answering limited procedural facts cleanly.

Cassian claims the nightly question that Yelena agreed to answer truthfully if she answers at all.

Cassian asks the question that turns the interrogation toward Yelena's own obedience.

Yelena tries to form the answer that she obeys only herself, but the Garden oath punishes the lie before she speaks.

Yelena refuses to answer for the first time. Cassian accepts the refusal as information.

Yelena ends the interrogation without a confession and calls the guards back in.

Outside the Question Garden, Tomas and the guards react to Cassian lasting a second day under Yelena.

Alone after the session, Yelena rereads the king's promise and pauses on the clause about her family debt.