Page 26 of Rhapsody of Ruin
I answered each with the kind of patience that makes men angrier than rage. I laughed where it made them feel flattered. I ignored where it made them feel small. When they tried to draw blood, I offered silk. When they tried to suffocate me with silk, I laid down iron. My tongue hurt by the end of it, as if it had been walking on knives.
Rhydor spoke only once. “We will win or lose with minds,” he said, and the way he said minds made five people in the front row shift their weight as if their feet had found stone instead of glass. His eyes found mine when he said it and something in my chest steadied.
By the time I closed the audience, the courtiers had made plans to bet, the steward had noted three more clauses, Maelith had filled half a page with his even hand, and Iriel had smiled enough to crack his mouth.
I left them with no room to protest. “It is settled,” I said, and I dismissed them before their mouths could form the first foot of the first word of complaint. It felt good. It felt like taking a deep breath after standing too long in my mother’s perfume.
I reached the arch at the same time as Rhydor again. The passage narrowed exactly as before. His cloak brushed my sleeve and my skin remembered the heat of him in a way that hadnothing to do with ward-lines. We did not touch. We did not look. In the echo between columns, the missing gesture felt like a kiss withheld on purpose.
Outside, the colonnade breathed a little easier, as if the room had exhaled us both. I took one step and then another and let the gathered courtiers wash around me like a tide. Their whispers tugged at my skirts and nipped my heels. I catalogued everything and thanked no one.
Halfway to the Moonveil gallery a page intercepted me with a tray and a shallow bow. “For the princess,” he said, and the shape of his vowels told me he had been trained in this palace and nowhere else. On the tray lay a single pale bloom, no scent, just light, and a folded scrap no bigger than my palm.
Nyssa’s hand hovered. “Allow me.”
I took the note before she could and broke the seal with my nail. One line of careful script waited within, no flourish, no signature.
Two nights. If you outlaw glamour, prove you can win without it.
A puzzle? A taunt? A test from the wrong hands? The flower shimmered faintly in the corner of my vision, catching every lantern in a different facet of white.
I folded the note again and slid it into the sleeve at my wrist where no eye could mark it. “Tell the steward,” I said to Nyssa, softly, “we will need two judges from the Whitewood who have never played the court’s game. And tell him to choose one who dislikes me.”
Nyssa’s head snapped up. “You cannot, ”
“I can,” I said. “And I must. If we mean to outlaw glamour, we must win without the scent of it clinging to us, even in the judge’s mind. They will not give us the kindness. We must take the chance.”
Her mouth flattened and then steadied. “Yes, Highness.”
We reached my door. The corridor smelled of beeswax and silver smoke and the sharp green of the rosemary tucked into the sconce by someone who missed air. I pressed my hand to the wood and felt the wards answer with a slow, quiet thrum. My mother’s voice drifted down the hall behind me, silk over iron. I did not turn. I opened my door and stepped into the room I kept as my only true place.
Only once the latch clicked did I pull the note out again and read it a second time. The words did not change.
If you outlaw glamour, prove you can win without it.
I stared at the script until the black marks blurred and steadied. Then I smiled, a real one, for no one but myself, and let it have the teeth I keep hidden in my mother’s hall.
Two nights. I would win with my mind and with his, and with the law. And if I had to crack the floor to let new roots through, I would. I would do it without glamour and without apology.
I slid the note under the rim of the mirror, the one spot in this palace the wards never quite learned, then turned to the window and watched the twilight that never ended press silver against the glass until it felt like a promise.
In the corridor, steps stopped in front of my door. A breath. A pause.
Rhydor’s shadow crossed under the threshold and disappeared again.
I did not open the door. I did not need to. The floor already knew what I would say to him the next time we stood within an arm’s length and pretended we were only pawns.
Truce, yes.
But not for long.
Chapter 15
Rhydor
The game hall of Shadowspire was a cathedral to the kind of power I distrusted most. Lanterns hung in chains of silver over long tables, the light bent and softened by glamour until every card gleamed, every gem on a noble’s mask seemed more brilliant than it was. The walls were paneled in shadowglass etched with constellations that turned ever so slightly when no one looked directly at them, and ward-candles burned in sconces shaped like crescent moons, breathing out a smoke that tasted faintly of cloves and something sweet I couldn’t name. Beneath that perfume lay the odor I recognized from war camps, wax, sweat, the metal tang of greed. Politics had a scent, even when the Fae drowned it in incense.
A hush rolled over the first ring of tables when I crossed the threshold. Not silence, not here, Shadowspire never allowed a full silence, but a tightening, a held breath dragged across a thousand throats at once. Masks turned. Fans paused mid-flutter. I felt the weight of their attention settle like a mantle I had not asked for and would not shed.
