The second house’s lawyer, or whatever these creatures called their lawyers, stopped mid-sentence.
The first house smiled, slow, as if tasting the future in the air.
Envy said, “You have heard the correction. The compact stands as written. The appeal is denied.”
That should have been the end.
But the bronze-skinned archdemon from the left gallery—the one whose hair was thick like wool, whose eyes looked like pools of hot resin—rose from her seat and walked to the edge of the mercury pool. She wore a robe cut to leave her arms bare, and her skin was patterned in shifting sigils that moved under thesurface, like the print on a glass of champagne when you turn it in the light.
She said, with a voice that landed at the base of my spine, “Sovereign, your Kept has the trick of the load-bearing word. She is immeasurably skilled.”
The gallery went absolutely still.
Envy did not answer. He looked at me.
The compliment was a trap, but also not a trap—it was a real compliment, but in this place, to have your Kept praised in public was a double-edged sword. The court watched for the reaction.
I could feel the weight of every eye in the room on me.
And before I had even heard myself, I did what I had done for my whole life when a person had given me a compliment:
I laughed it off.
“Oh, that wasn’t really that impressive,” I said, light, the practiced deflection. “Anyone would have said it.”
In the same instant, the bond at my wrist snapped tight.
Not pain. Worse than pain—a deep, sickening discomfort, as if a hand had reached into my chest and curled its fingers around my actual heart. The gold at my wrist flickered, then ran red, then black. I felt it at the base of my spine too, a hot ring, a collar just under the skin.
The gallery felt it.
Envy did not look at me.
He stood, and the gold at his cheek went pure, hard, almost sharp with anger.
“Court is adjourned,” he said.
He did not help me up. He did not touch me at all. He walked out, the doors of the gallery swinging open before him like they were terrified to be late.
I tried to stand.
The discomfort made my knees shake.
Hewaitedformeoutside the gallery doors, still in the full black-and-gold of the Sovereign, the shimmer at his cheek like a blade catching a sunbeam.
He did not say anything.
He only held out his left hand, the bare one, palm up.
I put my hand in his.
He walked me, silent, through a corridor of unmirrored stone.
It was the first room in the palace with no reflections. The walls were black, rough-cut, cold to the touch.
The corridor went on, turning and turning, until at last it opened onto a circular chamber.
The Hall of Mirrors.
