“You had no idea, did you? That Grandmother recorded it.” Aria’s voice took on a hard edge. “I had a lot of solitary nights for reading, Father. You didn’t tell anyone because you couldn’tlive with your mother’s regret—it meant she made amistake. It meant she was not a flawless monarch, as you believe we all must be, and in your eyes, revoking a law would have displayed weakness in the Crown. What did you care about little Dorothy? You were too young to attend her execution. You didn’t have to hear her screams in memory as your mother did; you only knew that when she spoke of Dorothy, it made you uncomfortable. Her regret made you uncomfortable.
“So you ignored the new law. You buried it. And when Charlie Morton was discovered to be an Affiliate, you broke that law, taking the very path your mother tried to protect you from, repeating her mistakes but far, far worse, because at least she had the strength to admit them.”
She snapped the journal closed.
Court members and guards alike maintained a funeral hush, all of them staring at the king and his daughter, opposing forces on the dais. Aria’s father met her eyes, but he remained stone-faced. He didn’t speak.
Say something,she willed. Inside, her anger boiled together with grief, mixing in a steam that misted her eyes. Her fingers trembled on her grandmother’s journal.
Though she’d thought it frozen and abandoned on a mountainside, a quill reared in her mind, too quickly to halt, this time with only one accusation.
Who brought you to the lake?
She remembered swimming with her father, clinging to his neck as she cried in fear of drowning. She remembered his strong arms holding her close, his deep voice rumbling softly in her ear. “I won’t let go until you’re ready, Aria.”
The unshed tears burned her eyes. She clenched her teeth.
I’m not ready, Father.
I’m not ready.
But she had to let go.
She released her quill, the one that had tried so hard to shape her in her father’s image, and she released the words clenched behind her teeth:
“For this crime of lawbreaking and treason—betrayal of the previous monarch—it is the duty of the Upper Court to decide if King Peregrine may be pardoned. I submit nay.”
Then she waited, and her heartbeat began the count. It would take a majority vote to convict her father and remove him from the throne.
For a long moment, no one moved.
“Your Majesty?” prodded Lord Philip, his voice hoarse. “Have you no defense?”
The king said nothing.
The queen stood. “You may think this is pettiness, a vendetta for other reasons, but my mother-in-law spoke to me about Dorothy. I remember her regret. As for the rest of it—I believe what has been presented. I submit nay.”
Marquess Haskett scoffed. “Her Majesty hasn’t attended a meeting in a year, and she comes to dethrone her husband? This is nonsense. I submit pardon.”
“I submit pardon,” Countess Redford agreed.
Aria felt the shift in momentum threatening to grow, but Earl Wycliff stood as a rock to stop the river.
“I hope we might all consider the full circumstances of recent events in this court,” he said gruffly. “In truth, something fractured the day Charles Morton died, and we have felt the growing effects ever since. Now we have found the truth of it. I submit nay.”
Three against pardon. Two in favor.
Aria looked at Lord Philip. The man stared helplessly back. She knew there was a lifetime of duty warring inside him—the debate of loyalty to country against loyalty to monarch, with the division between them nearly impossible to find.
The man’s lips moved, and it took Aria a moment to understand the silent question:A featherstitch?
In response, she moved her eyes to the peace treaty, resting on the bench before him. Her father had intended to march against Northglen in war; Aria had sacrificed for peace. It was the best argument she could give in her defense—the proof of her own loyalty to Loegria.
Philip stood. His first attempt at speech made no sound, and then, in agony, his voice emerged. “I submit nay.”
Four against.
But it was not yet a majority, and Marchioness Elsworth submitted pardon.
