Caeliras breath had only just evened. Her weight resting against me lightly. Her pulse still a little too fast beneath my palm. The world had narrowed to the sound of rain easing its grip on the roof, to the fragile illusion we had earned this quiet.
That was when the wind changed.
I felt it before the knock came. A pressure at the base of my skull.
The storm tightening its jaw.
Three strikes sounded against the door.
I tightened my hold on her for a single breath, just long enough to still the question rising in her body. Then I shifted my weight and eased free, already moving before she could speak.
I walked to the door, careful to keep my face neutral, to keep worry and fear where she couldn’t see them.
When I opened it, a Storm Court guard stood just outside. Shoulders squared. Behind him, just to the right, was an Ember Court messenger.
My gaze went to him immediately.
“Lord,” he said quietly, eyes flicking once toward Caelira before snapping back to me. “The Ember Court requests audience.”
I gave a single nod.
“Let them speak.”
At my words, the Ember Court messenger stepped forward.
He did not enter. He did not bow. He stood precisely where the law allowed him to stand. His gaze never leaving mine as he moved. Ash-red and iron-black marked him as Ember. His hood was thrown back in formal respect, his expression composed and practiced. This was a man trained to deliver dangerous words and survive doing so.
Behind him, half a step to the side, another Ember figured remained in place. Not a guard, but a witness. A reminder that nothing spoken here would only belong to this room.
The Ember Court messenger inclined his head once.
“Atlas Vaelstrom,” he said, his voice settling into the cadence of ritual. “By decree of the Hall of Crowns.”
Of course it was.
“By authority vested in the Hall before the division of courts,” he continued, “a destabilization has been formally recognized. A sealed balance has been disturbed.”
“Pursuant to that finding, the Hall hereby invokes the Writ of Sequestration.”
The words landed like a blade slid between my ribs.
“The individual known as Caelira,” he continued, his gaze shifting to her, “of no registered House, has been identified as a catalytic nexus.”
For a fraction of a second, everything inside me went white and narrow, like the instant before lightning strikes flesh. My hand curled at my side, slow enough not to be noticed, nails biting into my palm hard enough to anchor me.
Sequestration.
They weren’t asking.
They weren’t negotiating.
They were claiming her.
“She is hereby ordered surrendered into the custody of the Hall of Crowns.”
I moved, fast and violent, the way lightning hits metal. One breath he was speaking. The next my hand was around his throat and his back struck stone hard enough to ring.
The sound echoed down the hall.
