The Lightbringer raises her head, revealing those fucking eyes again before inclining her head. “Your Majesty.”
“You know who I am?”
The girl glances around the table. “It’s not difficult to guess.”
Her voice sounds hoarse. Scratched. I wait for my mother to offer water, but she doesn’t. “Where do you place in the Lightbringer hierarchy?”
A small frown. “I have no place in the hierarchy.”
“That’s a lie,” I snap. “Every single one of you has a place.”
They’re fucking obsessed with it.
She almost glares. I see the way her eyes tighten at the corners, the way her lips purse before the expression slips away. “I was left at the High Solar’s temple in Solvandyr as an infant. My parents could not be traced. I lived at the temple for several years and was sent for military training at the age of six, as is the law.”
A neat story. Valcor speaks next, to my surprise. “You’re highborn. Why were you not adopted?”
She surveys him. “Since my bloodline could not be confirmed with any certainty, none stepped forward to claim me.”
“And what happened then?” Her gaze swings back to me, and I lean back in my chair. “Between military training and Eres finding you in the Veilspire?”
“I…,” she shifts. Her lips twist as if she’s in pain, before she straightens. “I finished training and moved into the lower ranks to complete mandatory service.”
When she says nothing else, I wait. My hand gestures at her. “And then? Or do you need more time to come up with a story?”
Her gaze drops, but not before I see the glare. “I was given to a lieutenant in the Solvandyr army. I was… with him, in the Veilspire. I attempted to intercede when the unit burned a village, and killed a Solvandyr soldier. What you came across was my punishment.”
Silence falls across the table. She offers no further details. Just those few lines, delivered in a quiet but clear voice.
I study her intently.
Even I can admit that she makes a believable victim on the surface, even if I don’t believe a word of it. But if it’s true—
“Then she may well have information,” Nythen surmises. He ignores the witch completely, addressing my mother. “From this lieutenant. She may not even understand it. Assuming her story is true.”
Eres’s hand slams down on the table. “You’reunbelievable.”
“Enough,” my mother snaps. “Lyra. If given the choice, would you return to Solvandyr?”
It feels as though the air in the room grows warmer as the Lightbringer shakes her head. “I ask for sanctuary, Your Majesty. I don’t want to go back.”
Sanctuary?
“That’s not something we offer,” Nythen blusters.
But Darian interrupts him sharply. “We’ve never been asked.”
A Lightbringer, seeking sanctuary with the enemy?
As one, all of us look to my mother. She taps her fingers against the stone, deep in thought. “You will understand that I cannot simply allow you free reign in Umbraxis. At this point, we have only your word and Eres’s testimony to confirm that you may be who you say you are.”
When I tilt my head toward the girl, assessing her response, she’s staring hard at the floor. Her fingers, dark and swollen,appear from within the folds of my cloak, and she winces as she uses them to pull the cloak more tightly around her. “I understand. This… interrogation. If it will help. I would submit to it.”
If it was even possible, my shoulders tighten further. Her words only serve as proof that she has no idea what she’s doing. Nobody would volunteer for interrogation by Nythen. Nobodysane, at least. And even though when I first heard of her arrival I sided with him, now I find myself… uncertain.
Perhaps it’s the sight of her hands, or the way she leans to one side, accommodating the injury in her stomach. The thought of her undergoing more of that—
“No.”
