Seren Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 12 of 26

Seren's claim still rang in the shrine when the eldest of the six raised a hand. The echo cut off. In the sudden quiet, he spoke one word in the gods' tongue. She understood it through the nectar. Second. He wanted to know which seated god would formally back her petition. Without a second, her claim would not enter the divine record. Cassidy had spent her standing on the cup. She could not also stand as second without being ruled a faction of one. Seren had an hour of divine speech and no god willing to raise a hand for her. She walked back to the court floor. Her staff still stood planted between the six. She pulled it free. The sigil dimmed against her palm. She had counted on Isaiah to second her, but Isaiah was hidden and half-drained from seating her, and naming an exile here would sink the claim faster than silence. A scrape at the outer arch. A girl stepped through the doorway with a twisted staff of colored crystals and a mohawk that caught the shrine light like wet glass. Amber. Behind her came a figure in a stained apron, orange hair loose, carrying a small iron disc on a leather cord. Ganzie. Seren had not asked either of them to come this far. "You forgot something," Ganzie said. He held the disc out flat. A dark wheel, spoked, older than the court above them. "Found it under the counter after you left. Belongs to your line. Read the rim." Seren read the rim in the gods' tongue. The wheel named itself. It named the law it carried. Any bearer of this wheel could compel a seated god present to second a lawful claim, once, and the god so compelled could not refuse without forfeiting their seat. It was old. It was quiet. It was still binding. Amber planted her staff beside Seren's. "Pick one," she said. "Before the hour runs." Seren turned the wheel in her hand and faced the six. She looked past Cassidy, who had already paid. She looked past the two who had ordered her death. She stopped on the eldest, the one who had asked for a second. She lifted the wheel level with his chest and spoke the compelling line. His face did not change. His mouth opened against his will. In the gods' tongue, flat and cold, he said the second. The shrine took the words and folded them into the record. The petition entered. The eldest lowered his hand. His eyes found hers with a promise she did not need translated. He had been forced to raise her, and he would spend the rest of the hearing tearing her down for it. The other five now knew the wheel existed, and knew which house held it. Her claim was on the record. Every god in the hall was now her enemy by name.