Page 8 of Sereis
Caelus practically danced in, his excitement at the drama palpable. His silver-white hair floated around him in impossible directions, and he'd changed serving patterns four times just walking to his throne. "Historical significance!" he announced to no one in particular. "A Tribunal! In our lifetime! Well, my lifetime, which granted is quite long, but still!"
Garruk entered last, and his expression made my stomach drop. The Mountain Lord looked . . . troubled. Deeply, fundamentally troubled, like stone cracking under pressure it was never meant to bear. He took his throne with unusual slowness, his eyes finding Sereis and holding there with something that might have been sorrow.
Movement below. Davoren stood, and the hall itself seemed to hold its breath.
The truth-wine in my pitcher didn't slosh. It had turned to slush, half-frozen despite the enchantments meant to keep it liquid. When I looked through the mesh at Sereis, his eyes had finally moved.
They were looking directly at where I stood behind the screen.
Davoren didn't build to his accusation—he detonated it.
"Three assassins." His voice hit the mesh screens hard enough to make them sing, a high metallic note that hurt my teeth. "Three assassins bearing frost-burn marks that only dragon magic could create. Sent to steal or murder my bonded mate."
He moved from his throne like lava flowing uphill—wrong, unnatural, too fast for something that should be slow. Evidence materialized in his hands as if pulled from the volcano's memory itself. "Ice shards, forged from compressed winter." He held them up, and even from behind the mesh I could see they were beautiful, deadly things that caught light like frozen screams. "One shattered on my mate’s hide, but I recovered the others. Each one carries a magical signature."
His golden marks blazed so bright that several servants stumbled back from the screens. Kara stood beside him, her own marks pulsing in answer, and I saw her hand clench on her stomach—not protective now, but angry.
"Witnesses." Davoren's voice dropped to something worse than shouting—cold, precise fury. "Seven of them. All saw the attack. One heard them invoke 'the eternal winter' before my mate fought them off."
He turned to Sereis, and the temperature differential between them made the air itself crack.
"Lord Sereis of the Northern Range." Each word fell like a hammer on glass. "You who claim such perfect isolation, such meditative distance from our affairs. You who say proximitythreatens your control—I suggest that youcravea mate. So much so that you tried to steal mine."
The ice blade came from nowhere. One moment Davoren's hand was empty, the next he held a weapon that shouldn't exist—ice that burned with inner cold, edges sharp enough to cut light itself. He threw it at Sereis's feet with enough force to shatter stone.
It exploded into a thousand singing shards, each one humming a different note of winter.
Sereis moved.
Just his eyes at first, tracking down to the broken blade with something I recognized—genuine shock, quickly controlled but there, real as the ice at his feet. His head tilted, just slightly, and for a heartbeat his perfect stillness cracked.
"That is . . ." He stopped. Actually stopped mid-sentence, like the words themselves surprised him.
The other Dragon Lords shifted uneasily. This wasn't court gossip or territorial squabbles. This was evidence of attempted murder of a bonded mate—one of the highest crimes in dragon law.
But then Caelus laughed.
Actually laughed, bright and delighted as a child at a festival.
"Oh, this is delicious!" He clapped his hands, and wind chimes that didn't exist rang through the hall. "The hermit finally makes a play for power! And what a play! Though honestly, Sereis, assassination seems rather beneath you. I'd have expected something more . . . elegant?"
The temperature plummeted twenty degrees instantly.
Not gradually, not slowly—between one heartbeat and the next, summer became deepest winter. My breath misted in the air, and frost raced up the volcanic walls in patterns that looked like frozen screams, like fractured glass, like the death of heatitself. The truth-wine in every pitcher turned solid, expanding fast enough to crack some of the containers.
Sereis hadn't moved. Hadn't gestured. Hadn't even changed expression.
But winter itself had answered Caelus's mockery, and in that sudden, terrible cold, I heard something that made my bones ache—the sound of a dragon's patience finally, finally beginning to fray.
The trial proceeded like an avalanche—inevitable, crushing, gathering weight with every word.
Witnesses came forward, their testimonies preserved in crystal spheres that played their words back in their own voices—no chance for alteration, no room for doubt. Each piece of evidence built on the last, creating a structure of accusation that felt solid as the mountain itself.
But I watched Sereis through it all, and what I saw didn't match what I heard.
When they presented a frozen trade document—ink turned to ice mid-signature—his fingers twitched. Just barely, the smallest movement, but I'd learned to read the tiny gestures that Dragon Lords didn't know they made. That wasn't recognition. That was bewilderment, carefully controlled but there, like he was seeing his own reflection doing things he'd never done.
The formal questioning began with Garruk, as eldest. The Mountain Lord's voice rumbled up through the floor itself. "Lord Sereis. This ice blade carries your magical signature. Do you deny forging it?"
