Page 72 of Rhapsody of Ruin
“Then when,” he asked, and madewhensound like an oath and a threat and the geography of a man who refuses maps that don’t include the road he needs.
I might’ve broken then, even knowing what it would wreck. Whatever defenses I had cobbled together from temple lies and forged notices and glamour-held sleep nearly gave way beneath the memory of his mouth. My body wanted to take the step. It wanted to burn in public and let consequence collect us both. It wanted to love him with the same ferocity with which I meant to keep a child alive.
But that would have set the room on fire in the wrong direction.
I set my voice where I had to put it: cold; trained; queenly. “You do not interrogate me in public like a lover whose pride aches, Rhydor. You call me to law; and I answer with law.”
We looked at one another without blinking until the lanterns seemed to slow. The council’s buzz, muted by ritual, receded beneath the sound of our lungs remembering how to do air as a duty.
He didn’t move again. The veterans did, barely. Torian’s chin lowered a fraction, and Korrath’s cane stopped tapping.
Maelith breathed, and the chamber obeyed, because that is what it was built to do. He lifted the petition. “By law of veil and vow, the Masks, ”
“, will wait,” I said, not loud; right. The law likes that tone. “By privilege of princess rank, I claim delay.”
Stone digested the word the way it had been trained and hummed its acceptance, an organ note in the body of the hall. That note meanshours. It also meanshate.The room teaches itself to dislike anyone who makes it remember it bowed to something else before it learned to prefer its own power.
Maelith’s mouth tightened; Sylara’s loosened into a dangerous smile. The Masks froze in the middle of their smooth first step. The lacquer made them monsters; the hesitation made them men again. The crowd rioted in whispers.
“Privilege,” Sylara said sweetly, turning in a slow circle to let her voice harvest as many ears as possible, “can be useful when one needs time to dispose of… unfortunate truths.”
My heart smacked once against my ribs, and then listlessness replaced its violence. Rhydor’s expression had not changed. That was worse than the alternative. If he’d yelled, I could’ve met it. If he had softened, I’d have thought it was mercy I didn’t deserve and my body would’ve remembered last night with too much gratitude to survive today. He had turned to steel. And I had taught him to.
I didn’t let the room see any of that.
“I don’t require time to dispose of anything,” I said, letting the anger that traveled with my love of grammar do the speaking. “I require the law to respect itself while it performs.”
“Then perform,” Maelith said, and even through ritual I heard the man who’d learned he loved manipulatingwordsbetter than he might have loved wieldingweaponsif he’d been born into a less glittering realm. “Tell us where you went and why. Tell us why you prefer Temple silence to King’s clarity. Tell us why your absence has made the Masks necessary.”
The wordKingwas a cut, not at me; at Rhydor. The room’s pleasure jumped.
I let my eyes go still. “Law asks a question only if it wants an answer that makes it heavier. You don’t want to be heavier, Maelith. You want to pretend you didn’t make yourself light enough for rumor to wear like a mask.”
“You lie prettily,” Sylara purred. “It will be a shame to ruin the performance with facts.”
My jaw ached with not using my teeth. “The facts you bring are fifteen syllables and three servants. The law deserves better.”
The Masks shifted again, the smallest of movements, like a shark in a deep channel flexing in its sleep. Their captain’s gauntlets didn’t sound against one another. The polished plates caught light and thirst in equal measure. Closer, I could see the runes etched into the lames: not decorative; binding. Each stroke described the shape of obedience, and the men inside them made their lungs small to better wear it.
Rhydor’s veterans read the motion. Brenn’s grin disappeared; Tharos’s iron fingers made no noise but curled; Torian’s hand lifted an inch, a command rehearsed three times in a firelit yard and twice on a road where we had expected horror,hold until I make you move; then do not let anything living touch her skin.
They had learned to pretend to be pageantry in a palace that thinks itself safe. They could become violence faster than any noble could finish applauding the cleverness of their costumes.
I could feel Rhydor’s gaze between my collarbones. He had not forgiven me, or himself, or the law, or the morning. I didn’t need his forgiveness; I needed his choice. The law would not restrain itself out of courtesy. He could make it. He might not. Even dragons get tired of saving women who refuse to find a cleaner way to live.
The herald raised his staff for the recitation that precedes rough hands.
“I invoke,” I said, and the staff froze because ritual hates a misstep and the Shroud had already accepted that word once today. “Princess privilege: hours to assemble witnesses. Hours to bring ledgers and law. Hours, Maelith, to keep you from letting rumor become the only scripture you read.”
Ritual slotted the syllables into its machine, and the floor sang its acceptance as if happy for the distraction. The lanterns dipped as if a draft had found them. The Masks, who are flesh before they are mask and know what it means to be paid to do a thing ugly enough to need glamour for cover, exhaled in the smallest of ways. Relief. Annoyance. Hunger delayed.
Noise came back into the room like a storm breaking: gasps, low laughs, words folded over fans, an excited child’s whisper lifted and shushed. I stood still and let the weather pass around me.
Rhydor’s mouth moved. A word I did not hear, my name, again, maybe; a curse meant for civilization; a prayer he had never learned, maybe all three. His hand went to the paper Torian had given him and crumpled one corner. I didn’t know whether that meant he recognized my move,buy hours, or only that he hated me for forcing him to stand between law and woman again. The heat of him reached me. The cold of me reached him back. If we had been inside our bodies alone instead of inside the world, the room would’ve caught fire and frozen shut simultaneously.
“Council adjourned until hour of verdict,” the herald cried, relieved to have something to say that ritual knew what to do with. “Masks stand down. Petitioners prepare.”
Sylara brushed her fan against Maelith’s sleeve like a cat showing a man how to pet it properly and dipped in a curtsey shallow enough to remind the room she respected it because it was her mirror, not her lord. “Three hours,” she breathed, just loud enough for the nearest twelve to adopt the number and consider themselves initiates. “How delicious.”
