Her eyes move to my face.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Fine. The magic in here is dense.”
She watches me for one more second.
“The convening is in two risings,” she says. “We need to prepare.”
She leads me to a smaller chamber off the main corridor. Maximus is already there, standing at the far wall, arms crossed. Mira sits in one of the stone chairs with her hands open in her lap.
Seraphina stands at the center and talks.
“Every word spoken in the convening hall carries the force of law. A Fae will tell you the absolute truth and leave you believing the opposite. They will answer the question you asked and ignore the question you meant.”
She turns to Maximus.
“When Lanthar presents the alliance, Syrenne will oppose it. Her opposition will be factually correct. That is what makes it dangerous. Your job is to make the truth you carry more compelling than the truth she carries.”
Great. A truth contest. In a room full of beings who can smell a lie before it finishes forming.
When she finishes, Mira stands.
“I want to see him,” she says.
Seraphina goes still.
“I’ll go with you,” Seraphina says.
“No,” Mira says. “Celeste.”
Seraphina looks at me. I look at Mira. Her hands at her sides, the burn scar on her left wrist catching the Lithenmere’s ambient glow.
She doesn’t explain her choice and I don’t ask.
“Let’s go,” I say.
The Lithenmere opens a path I haven’t walked before. Deeper than our chamber. Lateral rather than descending. The stone here is different, smoother, the veins in the walls running in wider patterns that look almost like writing.
Mira walks ahead of me. Her spine is straight and her stride is even and her hands are fists at her sides.
The passage opens into a garden. Inside a mountain.
Trees with silver bark growing from stone floors, their roots threaded with light. A pool of water that reflects light from no visible source, its surface so still it looks solid. The air is cool and smells of minerals and green growth.
The trees lean toward the entrance when Mira steps through. All of them. A slow tilt.
Mira doesn’t let it slow her down.
Lanthar is standing beside the pool. He turns when Mira enters. His face does the thing I watched it do in the great hall. The controlled stillness cracking along a line so fine it’s almost invisible. But this time, without the courts watching, the crack stays open.
I stop at the garden’s edge to give them a measure of privacy, while still lending Mira my presence.
Mira stops ten feet from him.
“You announced me as your Granddaughter.” Her voice is level. “You tore the Veil for my mother. You exposed yourself to do it. You knew what that would cost. You did it anyway.”
Lanthar doesn’t answer. He doesn’t step forward.
