Page 33 of He Who Ignites The Flame
“You were given an unfair trial,” Lucia said, her silver eyes dulling as they slid from mine. “The system was manipulated, and our laws failed you.”
To say they had failed me was an understatement. They hadn’t failed me, but they had failed Calliope. They failed Vesa, who, for all I knew, had been left to rot in the forest, her memory dishonored.
“What do you know of it?” I asked, arching a brow.
She shook her head. “Not enough. Your file had an unauthorized modification, and the more I look into it, the more things don’t add up. Portions of the file are missing.”
My grip tightened on my dagger. Of course, someone had tampered with it. I stared down at the blade in my hands, my skin heating. “You told Micah I was up for execution.”
She nodded. “When the Tabularius, Salwa, looked into it further, it wasn’t part of your original sentencing. It was added recently without authorization. Damien didn’t authorize it. He had no knowledge of it, and neither did The Council.”
When I didn’t speak, she leaned in, reaching out to rest a hand atop mine. “Who wants you dead, Barrett?”
Voices echoed through the grand hall, the attendees shouting over each other. I barely made out curses thrown my way, the demands for my death. The guards at my back stood at attention, their hands resting atop the hilts of their swords. I lifted my gaze to The Council, eight heads sitting side by side in their chairs. One chair—the one Father would have taken— was left empty. The king stared down at me from where he sat, donning the immortal crown made of shadow-stained dimós branches, adorned with starlight imprisoned in gemstones. Damien Archonis, a living legend for what he had done for our kingdom in the near four hundred years since he’d been crowned after his parent’s assassination. His eyes were cold, unreadable... tired. I’d seen him a few times before but had never been introduced.
“The witness may step forth,” a voice called, and I flexed my hands, hating the icy touch of the warded iron shackling my wrists—how it snuffed out my magic that wanted nothing more than to watch him burn.
Atticus stepped forward, avoiding my glare.
Jude’s father and Kyrios of House Leukós, Hestis, spoke from where he sat at the end, his short silver hair swept back from his face. I watched, unable to speak against him, to share of his personal ties to Elias and whatever deal they had formed over the binding of Calliope to his son.
“Atticus Stratos,” Hestis said, his cold gaze sliding to my uncle, “you are here to testify as to what occurred the night Elias and his family were murdered. Do you swear to speak true?”
“I do,” Atticus said.
Hestis dipped his head to him briefly. “Share your knowledge.”
“Your Majesty, Kyrios of The Council,” Atticus said, his head swiveling as he looked to each and every one of them. “I stand before you to beg justice be swiftly dealt for the murder of my brother, Elias Stratos, his bonded, Cassia Stratos, and their daughter, Calliope Stratos.”
I stiffened.
“I implore you to share what happened three nights ago with the rest of the congregation,” the Kyrios of House Latros said, her head held high as her hands lay folded against her cream healer robes.
My stomach turned as I imagined all the different ways Atticus could spin this to his benefit, the lies he would weave.
“I was summoned by Elias that night when Calliope disappeared before her binding. She had agreed to be bound to Jude Galanis to form a union between our houses.”
My skin heated despite the wards, anger flaring deep in my chest, and I ground my teeth together. I wanted to protest, wanted to correct the lies he was already laying out, but Jissena’s warning flitted across my mind.
You must be calm. Don’t let your anger get the better of you. If you’re calm and show them you aren’t the dangerous person he will paint you out to be, you will stand a better chance.
“He worried for her safety, as did I,” he said, and I bristled as I remembered how cruelly he had smiled as he set his men on us, when he watched as they slit Vesa’s throat in front of Calliope. Her screams haunted my thoughts in every moment since, and I feared they would forever.
“We searched for her, only to find she had abandoned the village, fleeing her oath,” Atticus said, his face solemn, as if he was saddened, and my gut twisted.
Gods, he was twisting the truth far worse than I could have imagined, painting her as a deserter, an oath breaker. She had never agreed to be bound, instead forced by Father. She hadn’t been given a choice.
He continued. “We encountered a warrior of the order, Vesa Lanis.”
For a moment, I almost wondered if I had imagined Lord Damien stiffen, a flicker of something passing across his face as his brows pinched together.
“We only wanted to talk, to bring her back to safety,” Atticus said. “She was crazed, and it wasn’t until she attacked one of my men that we realized she was using Aethersbane to render them powerless.”
White hot fury shattered my thoughts like blistering wyvern’s breath. My chest heaved as I wrestled down the urge to strangle him, forcing myself to listen to this monster tell one lie after another, allowing it to stoke the slumbering flame until I could unleash it in a full untethered blaze to burn him alive in the most agonizing way. I could still hear Vesa’s cry of pain as the arrow—laced with the Aethersbanehehad used—pierced her shoulder, rendering her powerless.
No. They couldn’t believe this.
“A warrior of The Order attacked a member of the aristocracy?” the Kyrios of House Aíma said, his brows furrowing.
