Rogal Dorn did not so much arrive as take his place, like a cornerstone settling. Praetorian of Terra, Lord of the VII, master of redoubt and bastion, he carried duty the way other men carry bones. His loyalty to the Emperor was unbending; to the Princess, it was transitive, immediate, and—if she was honest—a little terrifying.
He stood beside her with the grave respect he would grant a sovereign on a wall walk. "The Palace requires further structuring," he said without preamble. "Lines of fire clarified. Choke points revised. Additional sally ports. And the gardens—"
"—should be protected," she finished, already tense. "But not turned into a prison."
Dorn's face did not change. "Would you consent to a wall around them?"
"No," she said at once, nearly pouting. "They are well guarded. Vines need sun. Fountains need wind."
"A small wall would protect them better."
Silence lengthened. The air acquired edges. Then he said, simply: "It is a beautiful garden. I wish to keep it protected."
She exhaled. Now she understood. This was his language for care. "Show me your designs," she said. "We will find a way."
He unrolled plans on a stone bench. They were exact to the millimetre: curtain walls, angled bastions, covered ways, ditches and glacis, caponiers and ravelins set to deny approach; the calculus of arcs and machicolations and interlocking fields of fire. She pointed, asked, and amended. He listened, amended back.
"Not walls that keep people in," she said. "Walls that keep danger out. And here—windows. Doors. Light."
"Windows are a weakness," he said, reflexively. Then, almost immediately: "Unless they are apertures that force the enemy into the geometry we prefer." A gauntlet tapped a square that became a lens and then a gallery with a view.
They worked until the plan breathed. The garden's perimeters learned to be hospitable without being naive. Sally ports became doors with honest hinges. Redoubts masked as pavilions. A hedge concealed a firing lane without forgetting it was a hedge. He added an exit that no one would ever find on a first look; she added a bench where even a wary man might sit. He marked three gates on the master map by old names the Palace already knew how to hear, minitures for the garden: a Lion's Gate for the northern approach, a Saturnine Gate for the sun‑ward edge, and a modest Eternity Door that opened only inward, for those who lived here.
"My dear Dorn," she said at last, smiling, "I will never feel trapped by your walls."
"Good," he said. "They were not drawn to hold you."
Afterwards, Dorn sent orders to the Phalanx to reposition orbital plates by fractional degrees that would mean everything later. He assigned a cadre of Huscarls to the garden paths with instructions that sounded like prayers: stand, see, do not intrude. The Imperial Palace woke to the quiet arithmetic of new strength. In the works yards, builders learned a new habit: to leave a view where a parapet might have been, and to make the parapet kinder when it could not be spared.
Sanguinius returned in the evening, an apple core in his hand and dust on his boots. He looked at the revised paths and laughed, delighted. "He has found a way to build a wall that lets the sun in," he said.
"Windows and doors," Aurelia answered. "And benches."
"Benches," he echoed, as if the word were a tactic. A moment later, he sat on one like a man testing a bridge and nodded, satisfied. "It will hold."
In Malcador's book, where no ink dried: Sanguinius—compassion weaponised as courage; foresight borne lightly when the child holds his hand. Dorn—love that builds in stone; will to protect sharpened by listening. Beneath that, smaller: The gardens have windows now. That matters more than it seems. He added one more, almost a whisper of ink: A feather in the vine; a bench by a wall. These are policies, too.