Page 87 of Rhapsody of Ruin
“By right of favor,” I said, my voice cutting through the storm, “I demand formal delay.”
The captain of the Masks faltered. His black helm turned, glinting, uncertainty flaring in the hesitation of his step.
The chamber breathed all at once, the silence breaking into frantic murmurs. Even the wards along the walls seemed to hum in confusion, as though unsure whether to tighten or yield.
Elowyn stood behind me, her presence steadying, fierce, a pulse of twilight against my fire. I drew in a breath that tasted of roses and ash and let it burn into words.
“Over my ashes,” I said.
The line cracked like lightning across the chamber.
The Masks froze.
The nobles gasped, half in horror, half in awe, their jeweled masks tilting toward me as though they could drink the fire from my defiance. The captain hesitated, his gauntleted hand hovering just shy of signal.
Maelith’s staff shifted, obsidian catching the lantern glow. His eyes narrowed, calculating, already reshaping plans in the shadow of my words.
And above them all, Iriel watched.
Silent. Masked. Unmoved.
But I saw the flicker in his gaze. He would file this moment away, carve it into ledger and memory, a debt he would repay with interest when the time came.
I planted my feet harder into the marble, shoulders squared, every line of my body declaring what my voice had promised: if they wanted her, they would step through dragonfire, shields, and my ashes to claim her.
The council held its breath.
For one heartbeat.
For two.
The Masks did not advance.
The law bent, not broken, held at bay by fire and defiance.
And in the charged silence, with every noble mask staring, with the Shroud itself humming unease above us, I knew: nothing would be the same after this.
Chapter 42
Elowyn
The chamber doors had not stopped ringing in my bones when he touched my elbow.
Not a gentleness. Not a command. A pressure at the hinge of my arm that saidmovein a language older than law. Shields clapped in our wake like thunderhead applause, the wall of iron my husband had raised against the law he had just defied. The Masks did not follow, not yet. Their hesitation hung in the air like the last second before lightning strikes.
Rhydor steered me into a seam in the stone that only servants and soldiers knew, a narrow door tucked behind a tapestry woven with moonlight and lies. The corridor beyond was close and unadorned, mortar smelling of damp chalk and old oil. Ward-light pulsed along the ceiling in a thin vein, slow as a tired heartbeat. Our footfalls rapped over slate, clean, efficient sound, unlike the ceremonial hush of the council floor. The contrast made my skin prickle. I could feel the chamber we’d left behind like a body I’d slipped out of, its gossiping organs still at work.
We moved fast and without speech. He was heat, compressed and banked, a furnace that had not forgotten what fire is. When his hand left my elbow my body wanted to follow it, as if the air had learned the shape of his grip and couldn’t quite remember how to hold me upright on its own.
We turned twice, three times, down passages that never see silk. I brushed the wall with my fingers and felt where chalk runes had been scuffed by years of hands tracing them in the dark, quiet prayers for a safe shift, a safe errand, a safe sin. Somewhere below, gears clanked to a slow stop as Torian’s signal reached the locking bars. Above us the Shroud shivered,a tremor I no longer let myself call omen. Incense still clung to the stone here, thin and stale like perfume on a dress a day after a party. Sweat cut through it: the sharp salt of fear and heat, of men who had prepared to die and were told instead to wait.
Rhydor didn’t look back. He set a pace I could match because my pride demanded it, because my breath had been measured into an instrument long before I learned to sing to anyone. My mask bit into my cheekbones. I didn’t lift it. His voice, “Over my ashes”, still reverberated under my ribs and threatened to turn the calm I wore into something reckless and human. I had no time for that softness. I had no time for anything but the next step, and then the next, and then the door he chose.
He shouldered us through a final turn into a chamber tucked under the spine of the palace, one of those narrow rooms where seamstresses meet or scribes take their wine when they are finished quilting down a lie. It had a window the size of a man’s palm, high and barred, a slice of the Shroud smeared across it. It had a hearth not lit and a chair that had been broken and mended poorly. It had a door that would hold if men pushed and give if men rammed; and a lock you could convince to act like a wall if you knew the glyphs it wanted.
He released me only long enough to draw a line with two fingers along the lintel, quick, practiced strokes, the kind of ward you learn in a campaign because you’ve watched too many men die for want of a door that knew when to be stubborn. The latch responded with a soft, final click, and the faint bright seam that marked the threshold’s spell closed like a mouth choosing not to speak.
Then there was only stone and breath and him.
