Chapter 29
DIEM
Iwasn’t expecting the warmest welcome, but the reception I received in the ballroom was glacial. A hundred eyes of blue and brown—and a handful of orange—noted my arrival, and not a single knee bent. It seemed my abdication of power had already taken root.
This was your plan, I reminded myself, holding my chin high despite the slight. You wanted a Crownless Emarion.
My urge to demand their submission was the only reminder I needed of why this council was vital. Power was a poisonous gas, corroding you from the inside the more you breathed it in. The line between using it to help and to hurt was dangerously thin and rarely all that clear.
“There are some people I’d like you to meet before we begin,” Eleanor said, hooking her arm in mine.
She hurried me into the crowd and began a series of introductions—mostly young, all members of elite Houses.
It didn’t take long for me to realize these were her Embers.
They were more aloof than I’d expected, showing the cool detachment of their older kin rather than the fire for revolution she had suggested.
Then again, all eyes were on me, and openly defying their Houses was a perilous game.
As we made our rounds, I kept an eye on the others.
Taran and Zalaric quickly ingratiated themselves with the Unhoused Descended, who’d made the trek from their villages on the realm’s distant western coast. With their simple clothes and weathered bodies well acquainted with labor, they looked shockingly like mortals.
Most had been cast from their Houses for disobedience, though some had been abandoned simply for having magic too weak or a bloodline too distant.
I wondered, with great unease, if that made them more likely to challenge the Houses or an easy target to be wooed back under their influence.
On the other side of the room, Alixe was talking with Nidara, who I’d appointed as the Ignios Regent over the passionate objections of the desert’s noblemen.
Luther paced in a wide circle, trying to keep me in sight while simultaneously avoiding his father, who was chasing him in a zealous effort to speak.
My brother stood awkwardly by himself. He was carefully watching Doriel, who had pulled the head of House Benette aside to a quiet corner, both their faces animated with intense discussion.
That left me deeply unsettled. I looked again for Luther, hoping I could signal him to intervene.
His father had finally caught up, and Luther was listening to him speak with a troubled frown.
After a moment, his gaze snapped to Garath, Remis’s brother and one of my loudest detractors, who was seated at the council table beside Marthe Hanoverre, my other bitter foe.
Both were smiling.
That unsettled me most of all.
“There you are!” Eleanor’s bright voice pulled my attention back to the short, stocky man whose hand she clutched. “I’m so pleased you agreed to take the seat.”
The man gave a clipped grunt and tried to yank his hand back, though he only succeeded in pulling Eleanor closer. She looked back and forth between us and beamed. “I suppose you two need no introduction.”
I stared blankly at him. Something about his face was vaguely familiar, but with my Sophos magic trapped by the cuffs, whatever memories he inhabited were too hazy to place.
If his scowl was any indication, he had no problem placing me. “You have no idea who I am, do you?”
My eyes shot to Eleanor in an urgent help me stare. “I’m certain we’ve met, but your name . . .”
“Perhaps you remember my cousin—Perthe Benette.”
The world flashed icy and dark, that name a falling axe. Suddenly, I was back on Coeur?le, sitting by a grave, alone and cold and hungry and losing myself to madness.
“Yes, of course,” I said hoarsely. “Perthe was very special to me.”
“So it’s true? He’s dead?”
On my wrist, one of the cuffs shuddered and cracked.
I managed a nod. “I’m sorry for your loss. He served his realm with honor.”
His stare hardened. “He served you. I warned him you’d get him killed, but he insisted we both owed you a life debt.”
The memory of our first meeting finally came into view: A burning building. An unconscious man. A desperate Perthe, begging me not to leave either of them behind to die.
“You were at the armory,” I murmured.
Eleanor’s mortified stare ricocheted between us. “Oh—I thought . . . I heard you saved Norwick the night of the rebel attack. I, um . . . I assumed you’d both remember.”
“I don’t recall much from that night,” he said. “I woke up in so much pain, I begged them to kill me just to end it. After the fifth hour of listening to me scream, I’m surprised they didn’t.”
Eleanor gave a nervous laugh. “Well, we’re both so glad they didn’t. Look at you now, healed and strong. Thank the Blessed Kindred for sending Her Majesty to rescue you.”
Neither Norwick nor I answered as we held each other’s stare.
“Perhaps it was fate,” Eleanor offered. “The Blessed Kindred must have known this day would come.”
“You mean the day I’d have to sit at a table with the same people who tried to kill me and treat them as equals?” He jerked his head toward my mother. “All because Her Majesty decided to let the rebels go free?”
“The man responsible for the armory attack is in the north,” I said. “And if I find him—”
The words sputtered to a stop.
I had found Vance, and I’d spared him the death he deserved. I could not promise justice to Norwick when I was the reason that justice had been denied.
So I did the thing I so rarely chose to do: I told him the truth.
“You’re right. I did let the rebels go.”
He balked. Eleanor cringed.
“The Guardians have done many terrible things, but so have the Descended. If I took the life of every person who participated in an injustice in our past, there would be very few left in this room. I’m trying to bring the realm—the continent—together in a way it has never been, where all people are equal.
” His eyes rolled, mine narrowed. “Yes, Norwick, that’s what I believe. That all of us are equals.”
“So they bomb our buildings, and you reward them?” he said, looking repulsed. “That’s the kind of Queen you’re going to be? That’s what my cousin lost his life for?”
Anger and sorrow spiraled inside me.
“Perthe was killed by Crowns, not rebels. And you’re gods-damned right that’s the Queen I’m going to be.
Giving the mortals a voice isn’t a reward, it’s a right.
” The crack on my cuff splintered deeper.
“I am fighting a greater wrong than one burned armory. Perthe knew that, and he chose to support me. I will not let his death be in vain.”
I turned and stormed away before my emotions overcame me and every influential person in Lumnos watched me crumble at once.
A foreign concern rumbled in my chest. I knew without looking that Luther had seen what just occurred. Before he could find me, I shot toward my seat at the head of a circle of long desks set in the center of the room and loudly cleared my throat.
“Let’s begin.”
Conversation hushed as everyone shuffled toward their seats.
Chairs had been placed at each table for the council members and their advisors, along with several rings of benches for all who wished to watch.
The sections for the Houses were filled to the very last seat, as was the section for the mortals.
Even the Unhoused Descended and the Ignios refugees had their share of supporters.
My section was filled only by my brother.
Though I’d offered a seat to every House in Lumnos, I was disappointed when all but the Twenty Houses declined, likely out of fear of retribution from Marthe Hanoverre. My hopes of diluting the power of the Descended elite would take more work than I’d thought.
What really caught my eye was the table for House Corbois. I’d grudgingly accepted that the Corbois seat would go to Luther’s father, but it wasn’t Remis reclining leisurely in the chair. It was his brother Garath, with Aemonn at his side.
Remis wasn’t even at the table. He sat among the spectators, watching his son with the deepest frown as Luther crossed the room and whispered in Eleanor’s ear.
Her face went pale. She and Luther shared a somber look, then she whispered something back. Luther’s eyes lifted to mine. Without a word, he walked away and took his seat.
I raised my voice to address the room. “Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the governing council of Lumnos. As you know, I am delegating my authority as Queen of Lumnos to this council, except for command of the Royal Guard and any Emarion Army soldiers present in Lumnos, which shall remain with me.”
“Until that Descended in the north is dead,” Marthe Hanoverre said loudly. “Then, the Guard will be ours to control.”
“Until the war ends,” I clarified. “Whatever form that may take.”
Her peppery eyebrows inched higher. “Are you saying you do not intend to kill him because he is your father?”
“My sire, not my father. I will do whatever I must to protect this realm and the people in it, but Ophiucae is not the only threat to a peaceful Emarion.”
“Indeed,” Garath said, flicking a look toward my mother.
“The council will be made up of fifteen votes. Five to the mortals—”
I nodded to the mortals’ table, where my mother was seated beside four others chosen by the residents of Mortal City.
I was relieved to see that one was Henri’s father, a man I knew to be fair, even toward Descended.
I also recognized two others, a well-liked farmer and a man known to be the town’s biggest gossip.
The fifth had fire crackling in my veins: Brant, Vance’s second-in-command during his time as head of the Lumnos Guardians.
Brant had never trusted me, even then, and the look on his face as he watched me said his distrust had become outright hate.
“Another five votes to the Houses of Lumnos—”
“Only five?” Marthe interrupted. “You said all the Houses would be given a vote.”