21
Chapter
Elayne’s Will
Liora
For ten winters I had crossed the cobbled yard of the manor house hauling tubs of ash and bundles of green firewood, my head bowed, my stride rushed with the fear that my own shadow might inconvenience the masters.
This morning I crossed that same yard with a dark blue wool cloak draped over my shoulders, the clean air of the plateau filling my lungs, and the leather folder of the Vhal chancery tucked firmly beneath my left arm.
At my left walked Darian Corven, his black steel sword belted at his hip, carrying the calm, measured bearing of a sovereign who needed neither to raise his voice nor draw steel to turn back a mutinous guard.
At my right, Iven Ardel carried his leather case of testing reagents, while Clerk Vael held the iron dispatch box sealed with the triple crimson wax of the Crown against his chest.
Behind us, twenty royal infantrymen of Asteria’s loyal guard marched in two tight columns, their boots crunching on the frost-hardened snow, forming a corridor of burnished spears that cut off all access to the stables and the lower road.
Beside the stone rim of the well, Mina dropped the wooden bucket she was drawing for the morning’s first scrub.
The pail struck the ice with a dull clatter, slopping a murky stream across the stones, and the cook froze, her chilblain-reddened hands pressed to the coarse cloth of her apron, her mouth slack in sheer disbelief.
Beside her, Barek halted his wheelbarrow of straw, slowly drew off his greasy wool cap with shaking fingers, and fixed his tired eyes on mine, bowing his head in a deep, solemn reverence meant not for the royal soldiers, but for Lady Elayne’s lawful daughter.
My scent was no longer choked by rancid vinegar, lye, or lead acetate salts.
It rolled across the open yard with a deep, untamed clarity: cold rain on warm granite, night-blooming flowers opening in shadow, and the sharp salt of the western tides.
The stable hands, laundresses, and herdsmen peering over the yard walls shrank back half a pace on pure biological reflex, recognizing in the air the living presence of a pure-blood Omega whom the regime of the manor house had tried to crush into ash and servitude.
I did not veer toward the low kitchen door, nor seek the tool shed.
I climbed the four granite steps of the front porch, lifted the iron latch with my own hand, and shoved wide the two carved oak leaves opening into the manor house’s great hall.
The great hall smelled of damp holm-oak wood smoldering in the stone hearth, old beeswax on the coffered ceilings, and the stale scent of dried lavender Maevra used to mask the material rot of the house.
My stepmother stood beside the walnut sideboard, dressed in her finest gown of dark green velvet, her graying hair gathered beneath a hairnet of faux pearls that quivered against her temple.
Her eyes were sunken and rimmed with red after three days of strict house arrest, her complexion ashen, her jaw clenched in venomous spite, yet she held her chin high with the hollow arrogance of someone who still believed the isolation of the plateau would shield her from the royal courts.
To her left, Celene sat cowering in a leather armchair beside the hearth, weeping quietly, her hands twisted into a crumpled taffeta skirt. On the landing of the main staircase, Oria waited, wrapped in her gray worsted shawl, her eyes fixed on the entrance, her knuckles white against the banister.
And beside the east window, Captain Riven Thorne waited with a dark scowl, breastplate buckled and arms crossed over his chest, flanked by two sergeants from his detachment who kept their hands well away from their hilts under the watchful eyes of Darian’s infantry.
Seeing me enter at the head of the party, clad in clean clothes with my brow uncovered, Maevra took a violent step forward, her eyes bulging.
“At last you bring that lunatic in!” she shrieked, her shrill voice echoing off the ceiling beams. “Sovereign Darian, I demand your guards clap her in irons this instant! That bastard broke the latches on my attic, set fire to the garret, and assaulted me in my own bedchamber with a bronze candelabrum to loot the family chests!”
Darian halted two paces behind my shoulder, clasped his hands behind his back with commanding stillness, and fixed her with an amber gaze so cold it seemed to freeze the hall.
“The Lady of House Valen has the floor in this room, Lady Maevra. And you will hold your tongue until the chief clerk of the chancery formally calls upon you.”
Maevra opened her mouth to retort, but the primal Alpha’s presence rolled through the room like a slab of lead, thickening the air until Thorne’s two sergeants lowered their eyes to the floorboards.
The woman swallowed hard, drawing back half a step until the hem of her gown brushed the leg of the sideboard.
I stepped forward with three steady strides, stopping at the exact center of the rug where for ten years I had poured wine with my eyes fixed on the guests’ boots.
I unbuckled the brass clasps of the leather folder, drew out the two sheets of parchment Vael had dried and flattened on felt, and laid them open on the walnut table.
“I am no deranged drudge, Maevra. And these lands have never belonged to your bloodline.”
The woman stared down at the sheets, an ashen pallor washing over her cheeks.
“Those… those papers have no legal force. The Asteria district court granted me universal stewardship and guardianship of the estate upon your father’s death.”
“Your universal stewardship was obtained through the willful mutilation and deliberate concealment of a Crown deed,” Clerk Vael cut in, stepping forward with his wire-rimmed spectacles and opening his official register.
“The document Liora Valen has just spread across this table is the primary clause executed by Lady Elayne Valen before the chief notary of the Vhal chancery twenty-one winters ago.”
Vael cleared his throat, settled the glasses on the bridge of his nose, and read with a clear, measured voice, each syllable falling like a hammer strike into the silence of the hall:
“‘I declare as sole, universal, and lawful heir to all my estate holdings, arable lands, high plateau pastures, and patronage rents my daughter of blood, Liora Valen. This decree shall enter into full effect on the day the heir attains twenty-one years of age, expressly forbidding any sale, conveyance, leasehold, encumbrance, or imposed guardianship that lacks her free, informed consent ratified in person before the pack tribunal.’”
Maevra curled her trembling hands into fists, stabbing a crooked finger toward the table.
“That clause is void because it lacks the lineage appendix! Elayne was an outlaw… a woman who brought the blood of a rebel pack to our lands! Asterian law strictly forbids the conveyance of land to unregistered bloodlines!”
“The lineage appendix is right here, Maevra,” I said, my voice steady, pointing to the second parchment where the walnut ink and the seal of three gray waves remained intact.
“The very appendix you tore from the original will and kept locked in the secret drawer of your escritoire to blackmail me, force suppressants down my throat, and push through the illegal sale of the eastern parcel to land steward Barel.”
From the window, Captain Thorne stepped forward, resting his right hand on his sword belt with military bravado.
“Sovereign Darian, if that parchment bears the outlawed seal of the Gray Tide, the bearer must be placed under immediate military custody on reasonable suspicion of treason and armed conspiracy against the Crown.”
Darian didn’t even turn his body toward him; a slight lift of his brow was enough for four royal infantrymen to lower their spears in unison, cutting off Thorne’s path and pinning him against the stone wall.
“Captain Thorne seems to forget that the customs ordinance expressly forbids prosecuting the bloodline of a lawful heir without prior deliberation by the Council of Elders,” Darian said with razor-sharp coldness.
“And you possess neither command nor jurisdiction in this room, Captain. Stand back to the rear unless you wish me to order you disarmed for contempt of the Crown.”
Thorne gritted his teeth until the cords of his neck stood taut beneath his chainmail, but he took two paces back and held his silence.
Maevra saw the legal net tightening around her and turned to her last resort.
She looked toward the gallery where the stable hands and kitchen drudges crowded behind the guard, throwing her arms wide in a pitiable, theatrical display.
“Mina! Barek! You have known me for twenty years! You know Liora has suffered delirious fevers and fits since childhood… Everything I did under this roof was out of charity toward her father’s memory!
I gave her apothecary remedies only to quiet her spells and shield her from her own unstable nature! ”
“The only medicine you ever gave Liora was lead poison to silence her voice,” a trembling voice called from the stairs.
Every eye turned toward the oak treads.
Oria descended slowly, her back straight, tears streaming down her face, moving with a steady stride I had never seen her take in her mother’s presence.
In her right hand she held the hawk-headed brass key, and in her left, a brown glass bottle identical to the one Maevra had carried to the garret on the night of the storm.
“Oria, hold your tongue!” Maevra roared, lunging toward her with clawed hands, but two soldiers crossed their iron-rimmed oak shields, stopping her dead. “Shut your mouth unless you want to be thrown into the snow without a copper of dowry!”
Oria did not blink, nor did she falter.
She reached the foot of the stairs, crossed the hall without glancing at her mother, and set the brass key and the bottle of poison on the walnut table beside my mother’s parchments.