Page 70 of Rhapsody of Ruin
I turned back to the table, smoothing the parchment flat with one hand. The wax gleamed under my palm, the seal of inevitability pressed into its surface.
“Maelith, you will present it. Your voice carries the weight of tradition.”
The old man inclined his head. “As you wish, my prince.”
“And Sylara, ” I let my gaze drift to her, watching the curve of her lips, the satisfaction glittering in her eyes. “You will speak as witness. You will sharpen the whispers into a blade. Make it appear as concern, not malice. You are skilled at that.”
She laughed softly, fanning herself. “And you, Iriel? What role will you play?”
I moved to the mirror set into the far wall. Its frame was carved of silver branches, its surface catching more than reflection, it shimmered faintly, the glamour within it stirring. I looked into it and saw myself: tall, masked in shadowlight, every angle honed, every line deliberate.
My face gave nothing.
“I will not speak,” I said. “Not a word. I will sit in silence, as though the council’s work pains me. Let Maelith call for order, let Sylara paint the story, let the petition carry its own weight. I will not bloody my hands. They will do it for me.”
I studied my reflection, the stillness of my expression, the neutral mask I had practiced for years. Satisfaction curled beneath it, quiet and sharp, but the mirror showed nothing but calm.
The key was silence. Silence let others twist themselves into ropes. Silence let the law appear untainted by ambition.
And when the Masks dragged my sister to the floor, when Rhydor burned in rage but could not stop it, no one would look to me as architect. They would look to law. To tradition. To inevitability.
I reached out, tracing the cold surface of the mirror. My face did not change.
Neutral. Controlled. Above reproach.
The perfect heir.
Behind me, Maelith gathered the scrolls, Sylara whispered to the captain, the candles hissed and burned lower.
The pieces were set.
All that remained was to watch them fall.
Chapter 33
Elowyn
The council floor was a theater of knives, and tonight every blade had my name carved into it. Lanterns drifted in slow orbits beneath the ribbed vault, each sphere of ward-fire suspended by threads of glamour so fine they looked like moonbeams made visible. Their silver halos washed the chamber in cold light, gilding masks, catching filigree, setting a thousand jeweled eyes to glitter. The stone itself seemed polished to a high sheen, the inlaid veins of Shroud script pulsing faintly with law’s lazy heartbeat. It smelled of crushed myrrh and beeswax, of the waxed leather of scabbards, of bodies that had dressed themselves in incense and fear.
I entered alone.
My footfalls clipped the marble’s edge, too loud, too singular, and a hush rippled outward through benches tiered like an amphitheater of judgment. Fans stilled. Heads angled. The weight of a hundred stares fell across my throat like a necklace soldered shut. I kept my shoulders straight and my chin high, my mask the correct crescent of obedience, its onyx edge kissed with a thready line of silver. Behind the lacquer, my face was calm. Beneath it, the skin of my cheeks felt too tight, like a drum pulled past its pitch.
Across the floor, the only fire I trusted stood flanked by iron. Rhydor. He did not look like a man returned from steadying a kingdom. He looked like a blade just before it meets the whetstone, all edge and withheld bite. His veterans stood a half-step behind in a formation that would have looked ornamental to anyone who had never watched them lock shields. Tharos’s iron hand rested on the mouth of a scabbard; Korrath’s canetapped once in the same rhythm to which ash soldiers have marched for generations; Brenn’s grin glimmered like a dare that he would withdraw the moment it cost me. Torian’s gaze alone was still, counting.
Rhydor’s eyes found mine and held. The memory of his mouth, the ache of it; the warmth of it; the cruelty of last night’s need, flared along my lips as if the air itself remembered. Heat swam low in me, humiliating in its honesty. His gaze didn’t soften. It burned. He didn’t move toward me, but the space fell away.
The herald struck his staff. The sound cracked through the chamber like a cage door slamming.
“Council convenes,” he intoned, voice trained to throw itself against stone and land everywhere at once. “Masks of Lunareth, attend. By law of the Shroud, by veil and vow, we gather.”
A soft murmur answered, the rustle of silk and whisper of parchment sliding into position. Each ritual word locked into the ward-lines beneath our feet, and the floor thrummed with the satisfaction of its own authority.
Maelith stepped into the lantern light, tall and spare, robe weighted with tradition. He looked like the law grown into a man: dark hair silvered cleanly at the temples, mouth thin enough to cut, eyes the color of ink that had been left in a cold room too long. In his hands he carried a folded parchment sealed with silver, the seal impressed with the twin crescents that meant petition and punishment.
“By right of precedence. By witness. By wound,” he said, as if reciting a prayer to a god only he still believed in. “This body has received a grievance against the Princess Elowyn Thalassa: breach of consort oath, concealment of heir, dereliction of royal duty. Twelve houses sign. The law asks only to see and to know.”
He laid the parchment on the lectern as if setting down a measured blade, and Raven House, men who loved to memorize the sound of knives, leaned as one to feel the air it displaced.
