The chamber opened wide, its walls hung with banners and gilded frames. One painting in particular caught her eye, a portrait of the royal family. The King sat forward, steady-eyed; the Queen’s hand rested protectively on the shoulder of a boy scarcely ten. Ilys realized with a start she had never seen them in public. She found herself admiring the King for it, for shielding them from the ceaseless games and ruthless machinations of court.
Conversation swelled as they entered, overlapping voices pulling at her attention.
“Enough coin has gone to war,” one minister said, pitched loud enough for others to hear. “Plague relief must take priority. And trade—without it, famine will finish what the sickness began.”
Another, older and sharper, cut in, “And still, the treasury is emptied into campaigns we cannot win.”
Assent rippled through the room, soft from some, defiant from others. Politeness cloaked it all, thin as gauze over a wound.
A lady in pale green leaned toward her companion, voice low but urgent. “Did you hear? The eastern ports have closed. No grain from the Lowlands in three weeks.”
Her companion, a young noble with ink-stained cuffs, snorted softly. “Closed, or seized? The sea’s been crawling with rebels and thieves both. Perhaps the Veilwalkers should turn their knives toward that.”
The jest drew a few nervous laughs. Ilys felt their eyes brush her veil like moths against glass. She tried to look past them, past the gleam of the silver plates and the too-bright chandeliers. A musician plucked at a lute in the corner, his song thin and mournful. Ilys’s gaze snagged on the far wall, where a draft stirred one of the banners. Beneath its folds, she glimpsed the edge of another painting—a battlefield this time, horses rearing, the King astride his steed with sword aloft. She had seen the same image in a hundred chapels, but here, the paint had darkened. The sky behind him was the color of ash, and the faces of the dying had been rendered with too much detail.
At the far end, Lord Veylen stood near the throne, leaning so close his lips were brushing the King’s ear. The King did not move, only nodded once, gesturing to a herald.
The bell struck three times.
“Please,” the herald announced, gesturing toward the elongated table. “Be seated.”
Ilys sat near the King, Grim beside her, Baron across. The King lifted his goblet, smiling faintly. “To the Veilwalkers, who keep faith with us.”
A chorus of,“to the Veilwalkers,” echoed, though not all voices met the toast with conviction. Crystal clinked like distant bells. Servants emerged from the shadows, bearing silver dishes that steamed in the candlelight. The smell of roasted pheasant mingled with sweet cloves and the faint iron tang of wine. Platters of honeyed carrots and dark bread passed from hand to hand while golden sauces gleamed like liquid fire beneath the chandeliers. Ilys reached for none of it. The smell turned her stomach. She kept her hands folded in her lap, veil falling like a curtain between her and the others.
Across the hall, laughter broke from another table, thin and rehearsed. The King’s counselors leaned toward one another, voices low and serpentine. Ilys caught the nameWestmarch, followed byaccusations, and the sound of a chair scraping roughly against the stone. She focused instead on her plate, untouched. The silver caught her reflection, a ghostly shape mocking her.
“Eat,” Grim directed without looking at her. “It’s expected.”
She obeyed, taking a bite of the bread. As she chewed, her gaze drifted down the table. Jewels flickered in candlelight like tiny suns. Laughter rose and fell, but the current sounded much too rehearsed. They glanced, they assessed, they performed. Ilys had once thought she might envy this, the crowded rooms, voices overlapping, a hundred souls pressed close enough to feel human again. But here, among them, she saw only performance and restraint. These were not free people. They were bound by silk and custom, shackled by politeness and fear.
It struck her then how different this was from her own small world. The long evenings in the Sanctum when Grim and Baron would argue over the placement of a blade on the game board,Rowenna humming while she mended the same torn hem for the third time. Those moments had felt ordinary then, almost dull. Now, they seemed impossibly rich. Honest.
And then the King rose.
At first, no one noticed his rise. The courteous scrape of his chair was the kind of sound that would normally go unheard beneath the clatter of plates. But one by one, voices faltered. A servant froze mid-pour. The low hum of the hall collapsed into stillness.
The King stood at the head of the table, his goblet still in hand, the candles glinting off the silver embroidery of his robe. He looked from face to face—ministers, nobles, the Veilwalkers—until the silence grew taut, expectant.
The King’s voice filled the hall, low and steady, more priest than monarch. “It is written that no man may serve two masters, for a heart divided is a heart already lost. Where loyalty strays, rot follows. From one unfaithful oath, a kingdom may fall.”
A murmur moved through the hall but he did not pause. His gaze swept over them, unhurried, almost tender.
“I have learned,” he continued, “that the truest test of faith is not in abundance, but in adversity. A man may stand firm when praised, yet crumble when tried.” He let the phrase hang, the echo of scripture heavy in the air.
He paced a step, the train of his robe whispering against the marble. “There are those among us who believed they could divide their hearts and offer one half to the crown. The other to rebellion. But the Veil does not divide. The Veil is whole, or it is nothing.”
Silence deepened. Someone at the far end coughed, and the sound seemed almost profane. The firelight wavered across his face, golden and cold.
“These men have been weighed,” he said, and his voice grew firmer. “Their allegiance was not whole. They pledged their faithto crown and cause, to obedience and rebellion. A choice divided is no choice at all. And so, though my soul recoils, I must speak the names that Death himself has weighed.”
He stopped speaking. The silence that followed was total. Slowly, deliberately, his eyes moved from one end of the table to the other through the ranks of ministers, the soldiers, the servants pressed to the wall, until they came to rest upon the Veilwalkers.
“Lord Cestel of Westmarch,” he said at last, the name falling like a bell-tone.
Voices shouted, chairs scraped. One man surged half to his feet, only to be shoved down by a guard’s mailed hand.
“Minister Deyrin of the Treasury.” A woman wailed, cut short when a hand clamped over her mouth.
