I scoffed.
“Why is it that you only tolerate ‘the monster’ when it serves your agenda?” I demanded. “You allow Talon entrance to your city when you need his power, yet you fear that one mortal living amongst them could dismantle your kingdom.”
Evander’s hand slammed onto the dais, the crack of it like a lightning strike as he surged to his feet. “That is by our decree! We trust the wisdom of this council to navigate the dark, but we cannot—will not—trust a girl who has lost her soul to it.”
I ignored him and answered my own question. “It is because the truth threatens you.”
“Kaelia,” Dame Seraphina hissed.
“And you worry,” I continued, “that now that the veil has been lifted, we will tear down the very laws you would kill to uphold.”
The scrape of Evander’s chair against the stone was a jarring sound. He stood at his full, towering height, and jutted a finger in my direction. “Silence!”
I stepped around the stand, moving into the open space of the hall, my head held high despite the sodden weight of the chains I could still feel in my mind. “I will give you anything but my silence. Haelen deserves the truth, even if I must pay for it with my last breath.”
Evander’s face burned a scorched red, his lips thinning into a line of resolve. “Then it is settled.”
My brow furrowed, a sudden falter in my pulse.
“Kaelia Vaser,” he began, his voice devoid of a single stir of mercy. “I hereby sentence you to death for crimes committed against Haelen.”
A screech split through the room and I knew the sound had come from my mother.
My eyes widened, not expecting him to place truth to my words. “I do not believe my crimes deserve such a heinous punishment, sir.”
“Well, we do not require your beliefs to make such decisions,” he snubbed, straightening the scattered parchments.
The noise of my mother’s sobbing rose in a frantic tide, but I could barely hear her over the deafening ringing in my ears.
Death.
They were going to kill me.
My father had always told me my defiance would land me in a grave, but I had never imagined the soil would be so cold, or the end so swift.
Dame Seraphina rose, her palms resting flat against the table. “This is a matter of the city. We deem this a public execution.”
“You cannot!” my mother shrieked. She threw herself over the bench, batting away my father’s reaching hand as she lunged for the center of the hall.
A guard intercepted her, his massive frame forming a wall of armor that blocked her from my sight.
“Please,” she gasped. “She is a child.Mychild!”
Tears filled my eyes as I watched the guard’s gloved hand nudge her shoulder back, pushing her back into her seat.
She darted around his reaching grasp, rushing toward me with her arms outstretched. The guard’s hand flashed out, catching a thick handful of her hair, and he wrenched her back. Her head snapped at the force of it, and a cry of pain splintered the silence of the hall.
Without thought, I charged forward and drove my shoulder into the small of his back, the impact of iron against bone vibrating up my arm.
He grunted, his boots skidding on the polished marble as his grip on my mother loosened.
She scrambled away from him, her small hands patting down her disheveled hair.
The guard whipped around, his teeth bared and his hand moving to the mace at his belt. I did not allow him the time to draw the weapon, I kicked my leg out, relishing in the pain shooting through my ankle when it collided with his hip.
The guard flailed and the moment his body struck the marble, the silence of the hall shattered.
A flurry of silver-clad figures swarmed me, a sea of polished metal and crimson leather.