Page 40 of A Taste of Silver
"The law is the law." Lady Meren's smile was all edges. "Unless you suggest we ignore the Codex when it is inconvenient?"
"I suggest we not hand power to an untested girl who appeared from nowhere?—"
"Hardly nowhere," a new voice said. Lord Cray, elderly and, according to rumor, perpetually silent, spoke from his corner. "We all know where she has been. Hidden. Protected. Kept ignorant of her birthright. We were the ones who summoned her after all. The question is not who she is. It is who benefits from her return."
The council erupted. Voices rose, accusations flew. I stood in the eye of the storm, my silver marks still exposed, watching alliances form and fracture. Some wanted me dead. Some wanted me controlled. A few, I realized with a jolt, wanted me crowned.
None of them asked what I wanted.
"Enough." Prince Aldric's voice sliced through the chaos. "Lady Solis will be given quarters befitting her station while we deliberate. She is under the protection of the Crown until a decision is reached."
A polite prison. He was deciding my fate.
"Magister Drell, you will continue your examination of the bloodline records. Lord Vex, double the palace guard. Lady Meren, prepare a report on the economic implications of a Mirror Queen's return."
They each nodded at their assignment. Their eyes slid past me, landing on the tapestries, the water pitchers, anywhere but on me. I wasn't a person anymore. I was a problem to be solved.
"You're dismissed," Prince Aldric said, his gaze finally meeting mine. "All of you."
The council filed out, a silent, shuffling dance of precedence and power. I moved to follow, surprised there were no guards there to guide me, but a hand touched my elbow. I turned. A servant woman, gray-haired and nervous, stood in the plain browns of the palace staff.
"A moment, m'lady?" she asked.
I glanced at the departing council. None paid attention to two women, one a royal problem and one invisible. I nodded.
The servant led me through a side door into a narrow corridor, a vein running unseen through the palace's heart. The woman checked both directions before speaking.
"I'm Nira. I served your mother."
The words stopped me cold. "You knew Queen Lyralei?"
"Knew her, loved her, helped birth you." Nira's eyes glistened. "She made me promise, if you ever returned, to tell you the truth. The real truth, not what the histories claim."
"Tell me."
Nira glanced around again, then pulled me into an alcove hidden behind a tapestry. The space was barely large enough for us both, an intimacy of conspiracy.
"Your mother didn't die in childbirth, whatever the records say. She lived for years after you were born. Raised you herself, taught you the old ways." Nira's voice dropped to a whisper. "She died sealing the Mirror Realm. Not from the Sundering. She died preventing something worse."
"Worse than the Sundering?"
"The Crimson One." Nira's face paled at the name. "A mirror entity of immense power. It wanted to merge the realmscompletely, no barriers, no distinction between reflection and reality. Your mother stopped it, but the binding required..." She swallowed hard. "It required a willing sacrifice. A Mirror Queen's life force to power the seal."
My marks burned beneath my gloves. My mother hadn't abandoned me. She had died protecting everyone.
"There's more." Nira gripped my hands, urgency making her bold. "The Binding Chamber. It's restricted, but I can take you. You need to see where it happened. Where she made her choice."
We moved through servant passages, narrow corridors that smelled of lye and old wood. Nira knew every turn, every hidden door. We descended stairs I hadn't known existed, deep into the palace's bones.
The Binding Chamber's door was unadorned, just solid iron etched with protective runes. Nira produced a key from her apron, worn smooth from years of secret keeping.
"I clean it," she said, her voice defensive. "Someone has to maintain the protective circles."
The door opened on silent hinges.
The chamber was a void of perfect, circular black stone. The walls rose to a domed ceiling where crystals grew like frozen stars, providing a light that never dimmed, while the floor commanded all attention. Binding circles within binding circles were carved deep and filled with silver that hadn't tarnished in decades. The patterns were a terrible beauty, mathematical precision and artistic inspiration fused into one.
Ritual tools hung on the walls: silver knives, crystal bowls, implements whose purpose I could only guess. Everything was maintained, waiting.
