Page 73 of Rhapsody of Ruin
Maelith gathered the petition with the air of a man consoling himself that he had made life into a table and could therefore set knives on it and call it safe. The Masks backed into their corners in choreographed threat, and the nobles collapsed inward toward one another in warm, poisonous clumps.
I did not move. If I broke my posture before the room learned to translate it, I would teach it, again, that it could make me flinch.
A trio of junior lords in leaf masks pretended to aim their heads toward Maelith while aiming their eyes toward my throat. A woman in a veil of pearls put a gloved hand to her mouth and decided not to faint. The steward’s apprentices, black ink on their fingers, wriggled in their benches like boys who had just learned they could make noise and not be punished for it. Law loves to watch itself be popular.
Rhydor finally moved, one step; two, enough to bring him within the radius of my name without breaking propriety. The heat of him reached the skin at the base of my throat and reminded it of a mountain ledge and what my body had decided to let it do in the name of a future that had not yet learned how to be kind to us.
“Hours,” he said roughly, his gaze moving over my face as if memorizing where to aim anger he couldn’t afford. “What will you do with them.”
“Make the law heavier than gossip,” I said. “Make Maelith hold his own pet blade by the edge.”
“And after,” he asked, and this time the word meantwhen the hours don’t save you because you won’t save yourself with them. “What then.”
My mouth made the shape of a smile because my face has a long training in civilization. “Then the dragon stands,” I said. “That’s what they came for, isn’t it? To see if a man will choose a woman over a world he’s trained himself to lift alone.”
He didn’t answer, because the answer would have to beyesand thatyeswould humiliate him in front of masks who would applaud him and then find a way to punish him for teaching them to enjoy courage.
He said nothing, and my body hated him for it, and my mind loved him for not making me flatter him for it, and the law waited patiently because law can.
A stench of crushed myrrh rose as if the room were trying to cover the smell of what it had almost done. The lanterns bobbed as people stood, and the murmurs climbed the tiers in waves. I turned at last and walked the length of the floor with my mask steady, my spine telling the benches a lie about not fearing. The ward-lines hummed under each step, counting them; stone remembers feet better than faces.
When I reached the arch, the breeze sneaking in through some high stone seam moved his cloak just enough that the smell of leather and clean heat reached me like a hand I did not permit. I did not look back at him. I wanted to. Wanting is not the same as doing. The law will punish you for pretending that it is.
The chamber behind me roared softly with rumor; before me, the corridor stretched cool and shadowed; and above, beyond allof it, the Shroud’s thin silver trembled as if it, too, had learned to love the hour that hurts.
I tightened my fingers against the smooth line of my onyx mask until the lacquer squeaked, and I kept walking.
Three hours. Three blades. Three ways to bleed or to make the law do it for me.
And somewhere beneath this palace, a ledger waited with a codex and a hymn and a gloss that would teach Maelith how a word likewillingcould become a weapon pointed in the wrong direction if he let it.
Let them come. Let them rehearse their cruelty. Let them hurry.
I had delay. I had breath. I had a man who would stand even if it killed us.
The storm gathered in whispers and took my name into its mouth like a sweet. I did not look back to see whether Rhydor’s hand moved toward his sword or his heart.
I knew which one I needed him to choose.
And I knew the cost if he did.
Chapter 34
Rhydor
The corridor outside the council chamber was a throat of stone, narrow and echoing, the kind that teaches even kings to lower their voices. Lanterns burned in iron brackets at intervals, ward-fire caught in cages of twisted vinework, their light too clean to be natural. The air tasted of beeswax and crushed myrrh and something metallic that lived only in these halls, law, maybe, or the residue of a thousand swallowed oaths.
I stood in the long shadow cast by the last pillar, waiting. Behind me, the chamber breathed its own weather: the hush of ritual settling, the hissing tide of whispers, the rustle of fans. The Black Masks had stopped mid-step, my wife had bought herself hours, and the crowd chafed at the delay the way a blade resents a scabbard. Hours. Not safety. Not mercy. Just a pause sharp enough to cut a man on either side of it.
Torian ghosted to my elbow. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. I felt his gaze on the door, felt the fine-tuned quiver of a strategist about to spend men like coins. Down the corridor, Korrath’s cane tapped once, twice; Brenn murmured a joke and then didn’t finish it. Tharos flexed his iron hand and made no sound at all. They had already mapped the length between this arch and the far stair, marked sightlines, counted doors. We had rehearsed this moment on a training floor that smelled of oil and rain:if they move for her, make the hall learn what steel is for.
The chamber doors sighed. A wash of cold air and incense spilled out. Masks flowed into the corridor in bright currents, eddying around the pillars, gold filigree catching light, lacquer eyes reflecting nothing. The nobles made a rehearsed show ofdisappointment at adjournment, but their steps were brisk with hunger: a storm delayed is better than none at all.
And then she came.
She did not rush. She did not shrink. Elowyn crossed the threshold alone, a seam of midnight silk in a river of brighter lies. Her mask sat perfectly on her face, onyx crescent, silver edge, a shape a woman wears when she’s learned it’s easier to become the moon than to keep asking the sun for heat. The sight of her landed under my ribs like fire introduced to dry tinder. It should not have been like that. Not now. Not here. And yet the memory of her mouth, the taste of it, the way my body had taught itself to pray to hers, lit the corridor in a way lanterns envy.
She saw me. Of course she did. There’s no world in which Elowyn enters a room and misses the dragon. You can smell us even when you pretended you wanted incense more.
