COW Homework 2: Mystery Plot

Hamon Trice discovers the twisted web that surrounds Leodryn Thewarin and Kathara Helery and their past.
What does he discover? He discovers that Leo's mother decided to discard her elder son in favor of a healthier-seeming younger one, and that the father objected and it almost ended in one of the rare divorces of Dome society. That when the brother died, the older one was taken back, so it really wasn't all that unusual (not something he could use for Zoya). But he also finds out about their baby. That Leo and Kath had a child (rare for pairings like that to happen due to rigorous birth control). He finds out about the long, if rare, history of children with Orphan parents, and what happens to those kids usually.
How close does he get to discovering who their son really is? Not too close, but he knows that this kid exists. That's enough to disgust him with the whole system.
Why is he investigating this? Something about the old records strikes him as off. The old woman is long dead, before her second son died, and of course the switch happened ages ago, but this is just something that is going to strike him as weird. It's important because...
He's looking for a way to evocate Zoya. Some loophole, some past situation in which someone has been evocated under unusual circumstances, so he's looking into all the ones that don't fit the usual pattern. There are actually not a ton of them. And then he runs into Leodryn and Kathara and starts to wonder why the son listed in their records wasn't kept.
In the end, with his new information, he gives up on "raising" Zoya to his level, and instead follows another tradition he found: to make a switch with a younger sibling. He had a younger brother his parents had to orphan out, and so he tells them that they should make the switch.

Key Plot Beats

Hamon and Zoya's quiet romance has been building up, and he announces his intentions to her, to try to get her to a place where they can officially be together. Something that she takes for what it is, a romantic gesture that comes from a place of love. But she cautions him that this probably isn't going to end well.
Revelation: this isn't the first time someone has tried this. Not that he didn't know it, but it's a reminder, and it would be the first time in the story world that this would have come up.
Someone threatens him. Some cousin of Leo's, who doesn't want his aunt's history coming up (this is one of the most recent instances of all this going down).
Revelation: there are elements to this that are not kosher. Not just unspoken and kept quiet, but downright hidden. Hamon is rejuvenated and wants to try harder to find the truth of things, not even just for Zoya but to satisfy his own burgeoning curiosity about the situation.
He finds Leo and Kath's records, of how Leo's younger brother died and then Leo was evocated.
Revelation: This is entirely out of order. Sure, sometimes that happens, but for the most part parents give up their babies, not the children who already know them, unless there's health concerns. Why was it sequenced like that? What was up with the parents? Why did Kath accept the fiance switch so easily? This is especially dramatic because Hamon knows the couple, and their kids. He met them at a work function. They seem cool. Not weird at all.
The Darostrate warns him, somehow. He's drawing attention to things, and he needs to be more subtle in his search. "Yes, the information is there, but we're not supposed to actually look." That kind of thing. She likes him as an employee and doesn't want to see him get tanked over a girl. And then he's beaten up on his way home from work.
Revelation: there's something else in there that no one wants him to find. It's not what he already knows because that was easy enough. Most people even know that Leodryn was evocated. Hamon looks at this, and it's just weird enough that, hey, this could be the thing that he's looking for to get Zoya out.
Zoya agrees to help him figure this out, putting her own job at risk, because she is also a curious bean. She's a lot more blase about it than Hamon would have thought. A lot more so than he would. "But what else can they do to me? I don't even like these people. I'd work somewhere else in a heartbeat if my assignment changed."
Revelation: With both of them digging, they find out that the two in fact had a relationship prior to Leo being evocated. And that there was a baby. And that the baby was spared but they weren't allowed to raise it. Which surprises Hamon since it sounds easy enough especially once Leo was boosted, but Zoya's surprised because the baby wasn't just aborted, or the parents exiled to the outside. Because that's a thing. Yes, people are very serious about Orphans not having kids. There are some exceptions, if the kid has certain genetics and if someone just lost an infant, but usually either they're quietly gotten rid of, or the parent with either the involved genetics or the Orphan in the equation is exiled (executed).
And to make things even more interesting, they discover that Leo being evocated was due to his father being special and calling in all the favors, and so was the baby surviving (even as an Orphan Scion). So he was a severe exception, but he paid for it, and so did Kath.
This revelation is the big one. This is why the whole situation back then was a mess, and Hamon's big hope is crushed. But he barely even notices that because wtf. He had no idea things could be this bad. Or that the situation was so easily manipulated. The system he knows is harsh but it's even-handed. They all have to go through these things. He's disgusted, Zoya is resigned, and they argue about how shocked he is at this.
In the end, after some confrontation with the cousin, and a lot of soul searching, Hamon approaches the Insignia Council and requests to trade places with his younger brother, who as the younger was made an Orphan at birth. The council is utterly shocked, but there is precedent for it (albeit usually parents making the decision for young children, not fully grown adults deciding to give it all up for a sibling who will probably not adjust all that well). So Hamon's status is switched with his brother.
He tells Zoya about this after the fact, and she just about slaps him because she thinks he's doing it to be with her, and he kind of is, but not completely. Yes, he has given up on the idea of Zoya being an Equivalent, but not because it was entirely out of reach. On the contrary, he gave up because he wasn't willing to compromise her integrity and his to go through what would be necessary to make it possible. But at the same time, he wasn't willing to give her up.
So now they can be together, and Hamon knows a massive secret about the main storyline of the series (even if he doesn't know that it applies to the MC Corydon Wildauer).

Subplots

To be woven into the main story above, to varying degrees. Hamon encountering his younger brother. It's important that they both want the switch to happen. It would make Hamon kind of a jerk if he just decided "welp, bro, you can just take my life and I'll take yours because I don't want mine anymore. Good luck!" So even if he ultimately doesn't think this will be a positive experience, it has to be something that he knows his brother wants, and that might benefit them both.
To do that, he needs to find his brother. Not unheard of, but frowned upon and rather difficult. They seal the records of Orphans for a reason. But luckily, Hamon's search for the truth in this would put him in the path of ways that he could use to find the information, and if I had a sibling in that classification I would want to know more if I was already looking into things. So they'll interact multiple times through the story for sure. Well, depending on how long it is.
Getting to know Leodryn Thewarin. A nice emotional beat if Hamon takes the time to get to know the person he's investigating, to get an idea of what being abandoned and then "saved" would do to someone's psyche. Because Leo has adapted well, he's got a good life, and a great family, but there are definitely mental scars there, and I think it would help Hamon's search to see that. (And it would supply drama, to begin to see the cracks in the system.)
Still doing his day job. He does have work to do, and there's a pretty good chance that he's slacking off on it to do his investigating, so having that interaction could be an extra stress. Plus there's his family and friends who are going to be a bit worried about him, so having them pop up would be good. Because they're not bad people, so watching Hamon go down what to them would be a rather inexplicable path would be almost heartbreaking for them.
The romance with Zoya. He's had a crush on her since the first day he saw her, and after he helped her and Rosh save Cor, they grew closer. And so they've been dating. Sort of. As much as someone who has a set list of marriage prospects and someone who is supposed to avoid even the idea of a found family can be together. But they're falling in love, and that relationship and the development of it is a huge undercurrent of the story.
Countered with the forced romance with his assigned fiancee. Because Hamon does have a fiancee, so to speak. That's how this world works. You do get some choices, but it's a limited list, and he's in his mid twenties which means he would have been pressured to officially decide by now. The fact that he's not married is starting to border on odd. So he does have someone he's meant to marry, and the interactions with her when contrasted with Zoya would be fantastic.
I don't think he'd actually love her. Not that these kinds of relationships can't come out of love, or develop into love easily, but in this case he's already given away his heart. There's also the fact that he'll be getting pressured to marry her, so they can have their two kids and carry on society properly, so it adds urgency to his finding a solution for getting Zoya's status to match his own.

Relations

Protagonists

Hamon Trice is the protagonist here. I want him to be the focus in this little doodle because he's a fun guy and he seems pretty smart. And in this particular society, he's fantastically bold for choosing to give up his place for Zoya.

Allies

Zoya is definitely an ally. So can Rosh but I'm not sure. I want one other of my previously mentioned side characters to be in it as well, but I'm not sure who just yet. One on the side of the constituents, some "normal" citizen.
Maybe it can be someone who would show up in Book One. I'll need to keep an eye out for what kind of personality might spring up, and what kind of position the person might take. Who would become Cor's friend?
Also that one lady who was the Darostrate in the book would also make a really good ally because she'd come out of it sideways. She was a crappy person in the other book, so having her be helpful in this story would be interesting.