Diaspor Aspenwind's Arc

Chapter 14 of 18

The guards carried Diaspor through the rising day and set him down before a hall of lavender stone. Gold scrollwork crawled up its columns. A round door of pale wood stood open at the top of three shallow steps. The bands of yellow light still held his wrists. Behind him, high in the canopy, the swarm followed and settled in the boughs without a sound. The guards exchanged a look at that. One of them pressed a palm to his back and walked him inside. The council waited in a half ring on a raised floor of polished stone. Five fae, crowned, wings stilled, robes of gold and lavender pooling at their feet. The oldest at the center lifted one finger and the guards stepped back. Diaspor knelt where the floor was marked by a circle of inlaid gold. He could feel the swarm outside the walls, a low hum through the stone. The council heard it too. Every face hardened. He told it plain. He named himself a Guardian of the library. He named Kess and how she died. He named the two weeks of false trail, the burned hive, the fight in the willow roots. From inside his coat he drew the shattered pendant and laid it on the gold circle. Purple and black shards, the chain snapped, the center cracked through. "Proof," he said. "The hunter is dead. I killed her." The oldest councillor leaned forward and touched one shard with a fingertip. She drew her hand back as if burned. "And the swarm in our trees?" she asked. "They chose you. We hear it. Unseelie work answers to your voice." Diaspor kept his eyes on the floor. "They followed her. When she fell, they followed me. I did not ask for it." A younger councillor stood. "That is no answer. A Guardian does not wear an unseelie crown. Sever the bond before this hall, or we brand you unseelie and you leave these stones in chains." The oldest nodded once. "Choose, Aspenwind. Now." Diaspor lifted his head. He thought of the hum in the trees, the gold wheel pendant heavy at his belt, the only leash that kept the swarm from the villages between here and the coast. He thought of Kess. "I cannot sever it yet," he said. "If I cast them off untethered, they will hunt where they please. Brand me, if that is your law. But let me hold them until I find the way to end them. Then I will come back and stand for whatever sentence you set." The hall went still. The oldest councillor raised her hand, and pale yellow light bloomed across his chest and burned a mark there through cloth and skin. "Unseelie," she said. "Go. Do not return until the swarm is gone." The guards cut his bonds and set him outside the door, the swarm rising from the trees to meet him.