Zara Veylinn's Arc

Chapter 8 of 12

Zex lay on the step where Vorik had set him down. His chest rose in shallow jerks. Zara did not kneel to check him. If she knelt now, the court would read her as a girl beside a dying man, not an heir. She stepped over the threshold of the palace and into the great hall alone, her guard at her back and the hound at her heel. The doors closed behind her with a sound like a lid. The hall was full. Nobles stood in tight clusters along the tiles. She heard her name spoken in low voices, and after her name the word rumor, and after rumor the word girl. A man in a red sash near the front turned to the woman beside him and said, loud enough to carry, that a fever-struck witness on the steps was not an oath. Two others laughed. The mood of the room began to tilt. She could feel it tilt. Without Zex upright beside her, they were deciding she was a story someone had dressed up in a gown. She had one thing left they had not seen. She walked to the center of the floor. The star-map threads on her skirt caught the light from the high windows and threw small points of silver across the tiles. She stopped under the tallest arch, where the crown spires of the castle rose overhead in pale stone, and she pulled the seal ring from her finger and set it flat on her open palm. "You want a second witness," she said. Her voice was not loud. She did not need it loud. "I brought two." She spoke a name she had learned from her mother by a fire, and then another. Vorik Zenthall stepped forward from the door, plated shoulders catching the light, and knelt on one knee at her right. A second shape came out of the air at her left, smaller, armored in dark blue and gold, green eyes steady. Zyx'tharon Vael. Bound to the ring. Sleeping in it since before she was born. He bowed his head to her, then lifted it to the room. The laughter stopped. The man in the red sash sat down without meaning to. Guardians did not answer false blood. Every noble in the hall knew that rule. Two had answered her in front of them. The murmur that had been building against her broke apart and reformed as something else — not belief yet, but attention. A herald near the dais cleared his throat and asked, formally, for her documents. The room went quiet to hear her answer. Zara closed her hand around the ring. She had steadied the court. She had not won it. Behind her, past the closed doors, Zex was still on the step, and the rot in his side had not slowed for anyone's oath.