Page 23 of Rhapsody of Ruin
The air between us tightened. The pages froze, their smirks fading.
I let my voice rise, cold as the steel in my hand. “By statute of court safety, I place this page under formal warning. The next offense is expulsion.”
A ripple of shock moved through the gallery. The page in question blanched, his glamour threads collapsing into smoke.
Iriel’s smile thinned, brittle. “Dragons quoting our laws. What next?”
“Respect,” I said, “for the rules you pretend to live by.”
For a heartbeat, the court seemed to teeter, as if waiting for fire to break from my throat. But I did not give them fire. I gave them iron.
The page stammered an apology down into the court. Thin, forced, but spoken.
The retainer sagged, his breath ragged. Shame streaked his face deeper than fury had. He dropped to one knee, muttering broken words.
I touched his shoulder. “Armory duty for the day,” I said, steady but not cruel. “Steel steadies the hand better than grief on a battlefield.”
His head bowed lower. “Yes, my prince.”
Torian stepped close as I watched him leave. His voice was quiet, cutting. “We cannot keep surviving these moments. Every day they bait, and every day we swat back. We must start winning favors, not just stopping losses.”
He was right.
I exhaled, feeling the iron weight in my chest. “Then we play their game.”
“You hate their game.”
“I do.” My jaw clenched. “But I will not let them decide the field alone. Tonight, at the audience, we start making moves of our own.”
Torian’s gaze sharpened. “Calculated moves. Not just fire.”
I nodded once. “Calculated.”
Across the court, Sir Thalen stood in the shadows, helm tucked beneath his arm. His eyes had not left me since I caught the spear. Awe lingered there, but more than awe, curiosity. He had seen my restraint. He would remember it.
Let him.
The court wanted a beast. Tonight, I would give them a dragon who knew their laws better than they did. And when Elowyn forced me into step beside her again, and she would, I would be ready.
Chapter 14
Elowyn
The small audience chamber always looked gentle at first glance, as if it were nothing more than a hush of silver and glass. It lied. Shadowglass panels lined the walls in perfect planes, catching lanternlight until the room shimmered with a hundred reflections of the same soft glow. But the floor gave it away if you knew how to read it: runes like roots threaded the obsidian in long, curling veins, pulsing faintly at the edge of sight, the wards breathing in time with the Shroud. Even the air tasted sweet and wrong, resin and smoke over steel, as if the room had been perfumed to hide something that bled underneath.
I entered with measured steps and a smile that had taken me fifteen years to master. The courtiers felt it, the shift in attention when I crossed the threshold, and turned their masks toward me in a ripple of silk and feather. I held their gaze and let them believe the mask was all I was.
My mother presided from the silver dais, veil spilling like liquid moonlight. She did not incline her head; she never did. But the faint turn of her wrist told me I could begin. I felt that flick like a pressure in my chest. It said: be beautiful, be obedient, be useful.
Rhydor followed a pace behind me and to the left, exactly where protocol placed the foreign prince when summoned to a small audience. He moved like a mountain dragged into a hall that wanted rivers. His veterans took the walls the court had grudgingly offered them, bodies still, gazes sharp. I felt the heat of him at my back even before I saw the way the ward-light sheened across his armor. The room inhaled a little deeper with him in it, as if it, too, did not know whether to welcome the dragon or brace for flame.
I gave the court bland ceremonial praise. It was the way these sessions always began, the hymn to order that tasted of perfume and old rules. I complimented the lanterns, how they had been refilled with fresh oils gathered at Veilturn. I nodded to the musicians hidden behind shadow-screens and murmured thanks for the ward-keepers whose work had kept the corridors temperate through last night’s feast. The right words, spoken with the right softness. I watched my mother’s veil for the smallest tremor of approval and found none. Good. If she had been pleased, I would have missed something.
Then I gave them my knife wrapped in silk.
“As proof of the flourishing between Wonder and Ash,” I said, the formal cadence lulling, the pivot invisible until it landed, “each week we will host games of wit and contest within these halls. A series for clever minds rather than cruel hands. A gift from Wonder to Ash.”
Silence fell with the clarity of a blade drawn from a sheath.
