Chapter 2
T he bells came before dawn, bronze voices that shook volcanic glass and turned my dream-drunk body to ice.
Not the gentle chimes that summoned us to daily service back at the Drift-Cloud Monastery, but a deep, grinding toll that hadn't sounded in living memory—the Judgment Bells, calling every soul in the Conclave to witness what came next.
"Get up, get up!" Tam's hands shook me properly awake, though I'd already started moving, my body responding to those bells with instinct older than thought. "Tribunal summons. Everyone. Now."
Around us, servants scrambled in controlled panic, pulling on formal serving clothes with trembling fingers. The girl I'd given my food to yesterday pressed herself against the wall, eyes wide with terror she didn't understand.
I understood. My grandmother had told me stories of the last Tribunal—stories that her grandmother had told her—of how a Dragon Lord had been executed for breaking the ancient laws. How his screams had echoed for three days as he burned from the inside out.
The tunnels to the Tribunal Hall were meant to humble us further—so narrow we had to walk single file, so low that even I had to duck in places.
The volcanic stone pressed in from all sides, still warm from yesterday's heat, making every breath taste of sulfur.
Ahead of me, Tam's shoulders barely fit through the passage.
Behind me, someone was crying, trying to muffle the sound.
We emerged behind mesh screens, woven metal so fine it turned us into shadows. We could see out—had to see out, to serve properly—but to those in the hall proper, we were nothing. Less than furniture. Exactly as intended.
The Tribunal Hall stole what little breath I had left.
It was carved directly into the extinct volcano's heart, a perfect sphere of space that shouldn't have been possible.
The walls curved up and around us, polished to mirror-black, reflecting the seven thrones arranged in judgment formation below.
Each throne was carved from a single piece of volcanic stone, sized for beings who could be human or dragon as they chose.
The center of the floor held a raised platform of white crystal that seemed to glow with its own cold light—where the accused would stand.
But no-one was there.
All the dragon masters sat in their thrones, which meant—
"Davoren hasn't formally declared," Tam whispered, reading my thoughts. "He's making everyone wait."
Through the mesh, I watched Sereis. He was motionless. Not a shift of weight, not a turn of his head. He might have been carved from winter itself, white robes pooling around him like frozen water, those pale eyes focused on nothing.
Or everything.
Even from behind the screen, even with the distance between us, I felt the echo of last night's dream. The frost patterns on my skin that weren't really there. The weight of his attention that had seen too much, known too much, wanted—
"Truth-wine," Tam hissed, shoving a pitcher into my hands. The metal burned cold, enchanted to keep the wine at the exact temperature that revealed lies. "Pattern Twelve, the Spiral of Judgment. No variations, no matter what Caelus says."
My hands knew the motion even as my mind reeled. Truth-wine was different from ceremonial wine—older, more dangerous. The stories said it burned liars from the inside, turned their words to ash in their mouths. Three drops could kill a human who spoke false.
We wouldn't be drinking it. But we'd pour it, and if we spilled even a drop on someone who then lied . . .
The other Dragon Lords began arriving.
Davoren entered like a wildfire given form, the air around him shimmering with heat waves that made the mesh screens ping and pop.
Kara walked beside him—not behind, never behind—and I noticed how her hand rested on her stomach now, protective.
Her pregnancy showed more in how she moved than in her body yet, each step careful, deliberate.
The golden marks on her skin pulsed in rhythm with Davoren's breathing, and when she sat—in a chair beside his throne, not at his feet—she positioned herself so she could see every entrance.
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 proximity threatens your control—I suggest that you crave a 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 heat itself.
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?"