Melody Valentine's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

By eleven, Melody had finished her refusal and locked it inside a leather folio with her initials pressed into the cover. She stitched the pages shut with dark thread so no one could claim she had altered it after the fact. She set the folio on top of the anvil, next to her water flask and a packed lunch from the manor kitchen. She would eat her own food. She would drink her own water. Whatever the court set at the threshold, she would not touch it. At a quarter to noon, the moss inside the ring shifted. A black marble pedestal pushed up through the grass, wrapped in living thorns. A glass dome rested on top. Inside the dome, a red rose burned with a slow, sparkling light. Melody recognized the shape of the offering before she understood the species of trap. This was the welcome cup in its court form — sealed, beautiful, and binding. To lift the dome was to accept hospitality. To accept hospitality was to be a guest, not a claimant. Guests could be housed, fed, entertained, and dismissed. Claimants had to be answered. At noon, a tall stone pillar rose at the edge of the ring. Its polished face caught the sun and threw white streaks across the moss. The light struck the mushrooms and the circle opened. Melody stood. She picked up the folio. She left the flask and the lunch on the anvil. She stepped over the ring with her own boots on her own ground and walked past the pedestal without slowing. She did not look at the rose. She set the sewn folio on the marble beside the dome and spoke clearly enough for the court she could not yet see. "I decline the cup. I am here as claimant, not guest. My refusal is bound and dated. Read it before you speak to me." She kept walking. A voice answered from inside the trees, thin and careful, and asked her to wait. A figure stepped out from behind the pillar — small, gray-cloaked, hands empty. Not the seneschal. Someone lower. The messenger said the court would convene to receive her, but they would not seat her until she heard what they had prepared to offer. Melody understood then what her refusal had bought her. She had kept her standing. She had not bought the throne. She had bought a hearing, and the hearing would be the fight. She nodded once and followed the messenger deeper into the ring, the sewn folio left behind her on the marble like a closed door.