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He had followed me. He stood apart from the others at the top of the tiers, immaculate in black, the torchlight catching the silver at his temples. He wasn't smiling anymore, and for once there was nothing guarded in his expression.

He looked down at me kneeling in the bloodied sand, with the feral lying quiet beside me and a broken man's head in my lap. What I saw on Vance's face was not anger, surprise, or fear.

It was hunger, plain and unmistakable. He looked at me as though he had finally seen my calming power first-hand and had already begun thinking about how to claim it.

Then the first stroke of midnight sounded from the bell tower above the Great Hall and carried across the island.

The sound brought everything else rushing back.

I was supposed to be in the Great Hall, beneath the wolf-and-dragon banner, surrounded by candlelight and masks. The Council of Iron would already be gathered, and at the altar a man with gold eyes would be waiting with a knife in his hand to sever me.

22

Chapter 22

Wren

Oda's gray-robed staff came down into the Pit for Silas. I watched them lift him carefully between them, and as they carried him toward the ladder, he looked back over his shoulder. His lips moved, but I didn't need to hear him to know what he was saying.

Go.

So I went.

I climbed the covered steps and crossed the frozen courtyard with my bare feet bleeding against the flagstones, my ankle throbbing with every step. Tamsin's green silk dress hung from me in ruined strips. The velvet laces had torn loose along one side, and the skirt was soaked dark to the knee with sand and blood, some of it Silas's and some of it mine. The bandages around my palms had come half undone and dragged loose from my hands, but I didn't stop to fix them.

Midnight had already passed. Somewhere ahead of me, Kaelen was standing at an altar and waiting for the ceremony to begin.

I pushed open the great doors of the Hall.

The music had stopped, though a thousand candles still burned and the ice sculptures continued to melt in slow drops along the walls. Three hundred students in masks and formal silk stood in two long rows on either side of the polished floor, leaving a wide aisle between them. At the far end of the Hall, beneath the wolf-and-dragon banner, a stone table had been set on the dais and covered in white cloth. A single candle and a single knife rested on top of it.

Every face turned toward me.

I knew what I looked like. My dress was torn almost beyond repair, my feet were bare and bleeding, there was sand in my hair, and blood had dried all the way to my knees. The bandages around my hands were filthy and loose. On my first night in this Hall, I would have done almost anything to avoid being stared at by this many people.

Tonight, I kept walking.

No one tried to stop me. As I made my way down the aisle, people stepped aside and gave me more room than I needed. Solace moved first, then Saltmere, Skyreach, Bramblegate, and finally Fenhall in their black uniforms nearest the dais.

Tamsin stood near the front with both hands over her mouth. Jax was at the end of another row, his mask shoved up onto his forehead and his eyes burning gold. Portia Vale backed away so abruptly that her heel came down on someone else's hem.

I passed all of them without lowering my eyes. Blood marked the floor behind me with every step.

Oda was already waiting on the dais. She must have known another route out of the Pit, because she stood at the head of the stone table in her gray robe with a heavy old book open in her hands. Her enormous gold eyes followed me as I approached, but whatever she thought of my appearance remained hidden.

Aldric stood at his son's right shoulder, immaculate in black, with his hands folded behind his back.

Less than two hours earlier, he had held me on the dance floor with his thumb pressed against the thread at my wrist and told me that we weren't finished. I had pulled myself out of his hands in front of his envoys, gone straight to the Pit, and turned his Culling Exam into evidence of everything he had tried to keep buried.

Now I had returned barefoot and bleeding to stand in the ceremony he had arranged.

His expression remained pleasant, but I watched his gaze move over the ruined dress, the blood on my legs, and the bandages hanging from my hands. Nothing in his face changed, yet his attention had narrowed completely onto me.

Delphine stood a pace behind him in white, perfectly composed. Her face revealed nothing.

Kaelen stood on the other side of the stone table.

He wore formal black and held himself very straight, with both hands at his sides. He had gone so pale that for a moment I wondered whether he was ill. His eyes were fixed on me, and I realized they must have been there from the instant the doors opened.