Court of Beautiful Liars

Elian’s bead screamed without sound.

That was the worst of it.

This scream entered through her marked palm.

It went under skin, under thought, under the ordinary defenses of disgust and anger, and opened there like a wound remembering itself.

Mara saw a room she had never entered.

A cradle carved with silver stars.

A woman in a blue robe clutching a bundle to her breast while three attendants tried not to look at her face.

Lady Vesta younger by eight years, standing beside a silver basin with red ash in its bottom.

King Edran at the door, white-faced and furious.

A baby’s hand, small enough to close around one of Mara’s fingers.

No. Not Mara’s.

The mother’s.

Princess Maelleth’s.

“Please,” the woman said. “Please. He has a name.”

The vision tilted.

The baby cried once, not loudly. A frail, offended sound. Alive. Irritated. Unimpressed by ceremony.

Elian, Mara thought.

The bead burned beneath her palm.

The baby’s name struck the glass like a key too late for the lock.

Then the room vanished.

Mara came back to the workroom with her hand clamped over the pigment tin, Lady Vesta watching her with awful satisfaction, Soren beside the broken window holding the cloth against the frame, and the archivist pressed so hard against the wall that he seemed to be reconsidering the physical advantages of becoming wallpaper.

The scream continued inside Mara’s bones.

Not sound.

Recognition.

A child remembered by glass because everyone else had been ordered not to.

Lady Vesta said, softly, “Do not open it.”

Mara’s teeth clenched.

The tin vibrated beneath her hand.

“Elian,” she said, addressing the heat beneath her palm, not the room. “Maelleth’s child. The failed taking in year twenty-three.”

The tin’s vibration faltered. Mara lifted her hand, taking the mark away from the path. The scream stopped; the cloth over the broken window still stirred in the wind.

“He was in the register,” the archivist said before he could catch himself. “The canceled line. I copied it before the alteration.”

“Write what you copied,” Mara said. “Not a title. His name, his mother, and where the entry is.”

Lady Vesta turned on him. He said no more, but the others had heard. Mara took his name and wrote his words beside Pask’s dated entry, with the archive office where he could be called to account. Naming the child had steadied a trace already answering her; she would not mistake that for undoing the taking. Nor was her memory, alone, enough to identify everyone held in the connected glass. They needed other people and records for that.

The archivist made a small, broken sound.

The mark bit deeper beneath her glove. A third line of heat crossed the first two; she could feel the new angle although the leather hid it.

Lady Vesta stared at her clenched hand as if she had found a knife in the cradle of an enemy child.

“Remove your glove,” she said.

Mara curled her fingers. “No. And you knew his name.”

Lady Vesta’s face closed.

Soren turned from the window, leaving the cloth wedged in the broken frame. “Lady Vesta, this room is damaged. The evidence is unstable. The king should be informed before—”

“The king will be informed.”

“Then I will escort Mistress Vey to him.”

“You are relieved of oversight.”

“By you, yes.”

The distinction was beautifully placed.

Lady Vesta heard it.

Her eyes sharpened.

“The king’s written authorization includes relevant chapel records,” Soren said. “These are relevant.”

The archivist gasped.

Lady Vesta’s gaze did not leave Soren. “You are making allegations you cannot survive.”

“I am stating facts I can document.”

“Can you?”

His jaw tightened.

There it was. The weakness. They had stolen the records. The bead had come through Els. The logs were under seal. The lower vault had been entered without permission. The workroom window had shattered after Kael wrote across it like an ill-tempered ghost with princely handwriting.

Facts, in Aurelune, were not enough.

Facts needed permission.

Mara hated this kingdom with increasing professional clarity.

She took Elian’s tin, set it into her satchel, and began gathering her papers.

Lady Vesta’s head turned. “That object is crown property.”

“It is evidence of murder.”

The word struck the room flat.

Not like a dramatic accusation.

Like a tool dropped on stone.

Murder.

Soren went still. The archivist looked as if he might faint after all. Lady Vesta’s face did not change, but her eyes went old and hard.

“Careful, Mistress Vey,” she said. “One cannot murder what was offered.”

Soren said, sharply, “Lady Vesta.”

Too late.

Mara placed both hands on the table and leaned forward.

“Calling it an offering does not absolve you. I am keeping the bead.”

Lady Vesta smiled faintly. “You will not leave this room with it.”

Mara smiled back.

The door opened.

Prince Dorian stood in the threshold, dressed in pale gold, black gloves, and the expression of a man who had arrived either too late or exactly when he intended.

Behind him, two servants carried a covered replacement window panel. Behind them, Els stood with a broom and dustpan, white-faced and trying very hard not to look at Mara’s satchel.

Dorian took in the room in one glance: broken window, blue-tinged lamps, Vesta rigid, Soren pale, archivist dying privately, Mara with bloodless fury and forbidden evidence in her satchel.

His brows rose.

“I see the restoration advances.”

No one laughed.

Dorian’s smile faltered. He stepped inside and bowed to Lady Vesta.

“This is a sealed matter,” Lady Vesta said.

“Leave.”

“Gladly. Unfortunately, my uncle has requested Mistress Vey’s presence in the Hall of Saints.”

Soren frowned. “Now?”

“Yes. Court presentation.”

Mara stared at him. “What?”

Dorian’s gaze flicked to her, then to her satchel, then back up. A warning, swift and gone.

“He is presenting you as Royal Conservator of Sacred Glass.”

Lady Vesta’s expression turned lethal. “The court presentation is tonight.”

Dorian smiled. “It was. Now it is in twenty minutes.”

“By whose instruction?”

“The king’s.”

“His Majesty is resting.”

Dorian’s smile sharpened. “He gave the order before resting.”

Mara looked at Soren.

He did not know whether this was true.

Interesting.

Dorian looked at the broken window.

Lady Vesta said, “Mistress Vey cannot be presented while under relic inquiry.”

“Tell him why, then.”

“Dorian.”

Not Highness.

Not Prince.

Dorian.

Lady Vesta corrected herself a breath too late.

Dorian’s face went still.

Mara saw the mark hit.

This was not the glass taking hold. Vesta had addressed the heir as a disobedient boy in front of servants. He made her wait while he recovered the rank she had stripped away.

Dorian’s smile returned slowly.

“My lady,” he said, “if you intend to forbid the king’s appointed restorer from attending the king’s court, I will of course inform him. With details.”

Lady Vesta watched him.

Then Soren.

Then Mara.

The calculation was visible now. She had lost the room for the moment, not because she lacked authority, but because too many people knew too many fragments and none of them were safely alone.

Distributed knowledge, Mara thought.

Old systems survived by pieces.

Perhaps they could break by pieces too.

Lady Vesta adjusted the glove at her wrist.

“Very well,” she said. “Mistress Vey will attend. The bead remains.”

“No,” Mara said.

Lady Vesta’s eyes cut to her.

Mara lifted her satchel strap. “The bead comes with me.”

“That is unacceptable.”

“Then confiscate it publicly.”

The silence that followed was as neat as a cut.

Dorian’s eyes brightened.

Soren looked at Mara as if she had just climbed onto the queen-window and begun kicking out support joints.

Lady Vesta understood the trap immediately.

Public confiscation required public naming. Public naming required the court to ask what a clear mourning bead was doing in the restorer’s workroom. Public explanation would become dangerous very quickly, even in a room trained to lie.

Mara saw Lady Vesta consider calling her bluff.

Mara also saw the moment she decided not to.

“For now,” Lady Vesta said, “it remains in your custody under relic observation.”

Lady Vesta turned and walked out.

The archivist hurried after her, clutching his ledger as if it contained instructions for breathing. The servants remained in the doorway with the replacement panel, looking doomed. Els did not move.

Soren exhaled once.

“That,” he said, “was reckless.”

Mara adjusted the satchel against her side. The tin containing Elian’s bead pressed against her hip. The tin holding Pask’s hollow-glass sliver sat beside it. Two impossible objects in cheap pigment tins. Aurelune deserved the indignity.

Dorian looked at the covered window. “What did my cousin write?”

Soren’s posture changed.

Mara looked at Dorian. “Your cousin?”

Dorian looked at the fragments. “Yes.”

Cousin.

Not dead prince.

Not traitor.

Cousin.

Mara stored that.

“Butcher,” she said.

Dorian’s amusement vanished.

“Then?”

“Ren.”

Dorian closed his eyes.

Only for a second.

When he opened them, he was court again.

“Vesta hated that.”

“She broke the window before he finished.”

“Yes,” Dorian said softly. “She would.”

Soren’s voice was low. “Highness.”

Dorian turned toward him.

“You should not be here.”

“I know. Neither should she. But Vesta was here.”

Mara looked at Els, who still stood frozen at the threshold.

“Els.”

The girl startled.

“Have them set the panel there. Sweep what you can without touching glass barehanded. Do not touch any sealed tins. Do not answer anyone who asks what broke the window. Tell them Lady Vesta objected to ventilation.”

Els nodded.

Dorian looked delighted. “She did.”

Soren rubbed one hand over his face.

Mara pointed at him. “You. No fainting, vomiting, reminiscing through glass, or confessing treason while I am gone.”

“Dorian.”

The prince turned to her.

“Get me through court without losing the bead, the logs, or my temper beyond strategic levels.”

His smile turned real enough to become dangerous.

“Finally. A commission suited to my gifts.”

The Hall of Saints was designed to make everyone beneath royalty feel unfinished.

It was long, vaulted, and flooded with colored lamplight despite the daylight outside. Lamps burned behind glass panels set high in the walls, each panel showing a saint of Aurelune or one the kingdom had borrowed and improved. Saint Alis appeared near the east end, hands bleeding over a white pane. Saint Orlan was there too, looking cleaner and better funded than the leaking version Mara had left behind. Sweet Pella held a child. Saint Varric held his severed tongue on a silver plate. A nameless martyr knelt beneath a crown of thorns and glass.

Between the saints stood courtiers.

So many.

Too many.

By day, Mara had seen the court as movement in corridors: velvet, fur, lowered voices, glances at her hands. In the Hall of Saints, the court gathered into its true form. Not a crowd. An organism. Silk and hunger. Perfume and calculation. Mourning beads and family jewels. Men in dark coats embroidered with silver roots. Women in high collars bright with glass drops. Young nobles watching everything with bored cruelty. Old nobles watching everything with unbored cruelty.

They all turned when Mara entered.

Not all at once.

That would have been vulgar.

Awareness passed from group to group like a ripple across wine.

The disgraced restorer.

The woman who entered the chapel at moonrise.

The king’s new pet craftswoman.

The possible corpse in progress.

Mara wore her dark travel dress, hastily brushed, her hair repinned with Els’s help and two stolen black pins. Dorian had offered a court gown. Mara had declined on the grounds that if the court wanted a restorer, it could endure seeing one.

Soren walked at her left, composed again, though pale. Dorian drifted at her right with the lazy elegance of someone pretending not to be an escort.

They continued.

A knot of young men near a wine table stopped speaking as they approached. One wore a string of black beads around his wrist and looked at Mara as if she were an amusing stain on court fabric. Another stared at Dorian with the careful hatred of a man who had once lost something expensive at cards. A third watched Soren and looked away too quickly.

Useful.

Mara had no time to catalog every enemy, but she could begin with posture.

The court had arranged itself in layers. Old blood nearest the dais. Administrative officials to the side. Clergy in white and gray beneath a window of Saint Varric. Military men near the doors. The heir visible but not central, because Dorian had entered with her and because the court had not yet decided whether that was insult, alliance, or accident.

King Edran sat at the far end beneath a silverwood canopy.

Today he wore a crown.

Not the coronation crown. Mara knew that immediately. This one was narrow, silver, and set with pale stones that might have been diamonds but were almost certainly glass. It rested lightly in his white hair, more suggestion than burden. His black court coat made him look thinner than before, and the blue of his eyes seemed brighter from illness or candlelight.

Lady Vesta stood to his right.

Of course she had reached him first.

Her face gave nothing away.

Father Caldus stood among the clergy, visibly wishing theology had assigned him a safer kingdom. Near the dais stood several men and women Mara did not know but disliked preemptively. One, a broad woman with silver-threaded braids and a chain of red glass tear-beads, watched Mara with open curiosity. Another, a thin man in blue-black velvet, smiled too much.

Dorian leaned toward Mara. “Countess Yra. Useful. Lord Pellan. Venomous. Bishop Harrowden. Ambitious in the theological sense, which is worse than the ordinary kind.”

They reached the prescribed distance from the dais.

Soren bowed.

Dorian bowed with exactly enough elegance to make obedience look optional.

Mara bowed as low as she could without making a point.

Again, a small point may have remained.

The king noticed.

His mouth curved faintly.

“Mistress Vey,” he said. “You have had a busy morning.”

“Your Majesty’s palace is generous with incident.”

A faint murmur moved through the court.

Lady Vesta’s gaze remained steady.

Edran lifted one hand. Silence restored itself.

“We are told,” he said, “that the chapel’s condition is more complex than first believed.”

Mara heard the wording.

More complex.

Not dangerous. Not active. Not bloody. Not full of stolen children and a prince in glass writing accusations across windows.

Complex.

A court word if ever one had slithered.

“It is,” Mara said.

“And yet you remain willing to proceed.”

Another trap.

If she said no, Lady Vesta would seize the work. If she said yes, she accepted responsibility for a machine she did not yet understand. If she hesitated, the court would smell weakness and season it for dinner.

“I remain willing to inspect, stabilize, and determine what restoration would mean.”

The court reacted to that, softly.

Determine what restoration would mean.

Edran’s eyes sharpened.

Lady Vesta’s mouth tightened.

Dorian’s amusement warmed beside her.

Soren went very still.

The king leaned back. “A precise answer.”

“I restore precisely.”

“So we hope.”

He stood.

The hall shifted in response.

No one gasped. No one moved to help him. That would acknowledge weakness, and weakness at court was apparently treated like blood near chapel glass.

Still, the effort cost him. Mara saw it. So did everyone else, though everyone else had been trained not to see aloud.

Edran descended one step from the dais.

“By royal authority, witnessed before court, clergy, and household, Mara Vey is appointed Royal Conservator of Sacred Glass for the duration of chapel restoration and coronation preparation. She is granted access, workspace, materials, and such assistance as her craft requires.”

A murmur.

There it was.

Public legitimacy.

A collar made of gold thread.

Mara felt the court reassess her. Not equal. Never that. But no longer merely a tradeswoman. She had been given proximity to power, which meant she had become dangerous in a small, temporary, entertaining way.

Edran continued. “She answers in matters of sacred protocol to Lady Vesta Lorne, Keeper of Relics and Ceremonies.”

Mara’s jaw tightened.

Soren’s expression did not change.

Dorian whispered, “There’s the knife.”

The king’s gaze moved to him for the barest instant.

Dorian fell silent.

“In matters of structural and artistic judgment,” Edran said, “she answers to me.”

Another murmur.

Lady Vesta did not react.

That was not a compromise. That was a division of custody.

Mara became, officially, a contested object.

Wonderful.

The king lifted a small silver badge from the table beside him. A servant brought it forward on a velvet cushion. The badge showed Saint Alis’s hand holding a pane of glass. Beneath it lay the thorned crown.

Mara stared at it.

She hated badges.

Badges made work look owned.

The servant stopped before her.

Mara did not take it.

The hall waited.

Soren’s voice came very low from her left. “Mara.”

She took the badge.

It was heavier than expected and cold enough to bite through her glove.

The moment it touched her palm, the mark beneath her skin burned.

Not painfully.

Recognizing.

Across the hall, every clear mourning bead chimed.

Not loudly.

Not long.

A single tiny note, repeated at dozens of throats, wrists, collars, and ears.

Clear glass.

Child beads.

Mara heard them.

So did the court.

Faces went still across the hall.

A woman near the clergy clutched the clear bead at her neck. A young lord covered his wrist. Countess Yra’s eyes narrowed. Lord Pellan stopped smiling. Father Caldus closed his eyes.

King Edran’s face remained calm.

Lady Vesta’s did too.

That told Mara everything.

Dorian whispered, “That is new.”

Mara looked down at the badge in her hand.

Saint Alis’s silver hand gleamed against her glove.

The mark burned again, then settled.

Edran spoke as if nothing had happened.

“Aurelune welcomes skill, even when it comes wrapped in difficult temperament.”

Polite laughter, too fast and too relieved.

Mara pinned the badge to her dress.

The court watched her hands.

She gave them a steady view.

“His Majesty is generous,” she said.

Edran smiled, but she had heard enough laughter for one presentation.

A bell rang from the far end of the hall.

Not the chapel bell.

A court bell, small and silver.

The presentation dissolved into ceremony. Wine appeared. Musicians began playing something cold and intricate in a gallery above. Courtiers resumed motion, now with Mara as one of the approved dangers of the day.

Dorian did not let her retreat.

He put one hand near, not on, her elbow and guided her through clusters of nobility with a skill that suggested a lifetime of escaping conversations by weaponizing charm.

“You need to meet people,” he said. “They know pieces we do not.”

Countess Yra was first.

Up close, she was older than Mara had thought, perhaps in her sixties, with a face made magnificent by refusing softness. Her red tear-beads were not mourning, Mara decided. Or not only mourning. They were trophies. Each one slightly different. Each holding a darker thread at its center.

“Royal Conservator,” the countess said. “My condolences.”

Mara inclined her head. “For the title?”

“For the work.”

“Do you know the chapel well?”

“No one knows the chapel well. Some merely die more informed than others.”

Mara almost liked her.

Yra looked at the badge. “Saint Alis suits you poorly. She was obedient.”

Mara glanced toward the nearest Saint Alis window, where the saint’s hands bled over glass without halo or smile.

“No,” Mara said. “She was recorded that way.”

The countess’s red-beaded throat moved with a small laugh.

“Good,” she said. “Perhaps you will last until the coronation.”

Yra leaned closer. Her perfume smelled of bitter orange and smoke. “If Vesta tells you the chapel is necessary, ask necessary to whom. If the king tells you Aurelune must survive, ask which parts. If Dorian tells you he is a coward, believe him only halfway.”

Dorian sighed. “I am slandered in my own court.”

“You are described in your own court,” Yra said.

Then she moved away.

Lord Pellan came next, though Mara would have preferred mildew.

He was thin, elegant, and overdressed, with blue-black velvet, pale rings, and the expression of a man who had never been struck when he deserved it. His mourning beads were white. Parent, then. Or affectation. In Aurelune, either seemed possible.

“Mistress Vey,” he said, taking her gloved hand before she could prevent it.

His lips brushed the air above her knuckles.

The mark in her palm went cold.

Not burned.

Cold.

Mara pulled her hand back.

Pellan smiled. “Forgive me. We are all eager to touch the hand that touches Saint Alis’s chapel.”

“I charge extra for eagerness.”

Dorian coughed into his wine.

Pellan’s smile remained. “A mercenary saint.”

“I am not a saint.”

“No. Of course not. Saints are usually dead before becoming inconvenient.”

Mara looked at him.

He had said it lightly.

He had meant something.

“Then I will delay sainthood as long as possible,” she said.

“Wise.” Pellan’s gaze moved to her badge. “The chapel is dear to us all. Some of us have given much to it.”

“Given?”

“Lost.” His smile deepened. “Forgive me. Court language.”

Dorian’s expression had gone flat.

Mara noted that too.

After Pellan drifted away, Dorian said, “Do not be alone with him.”

“Why?”

“He enjoys frightened things.”

“I am rarely enjoyable.”

“You are new. That will suffice.”

Mara looked across the hall.

Lady Vesta stood near the king, speaking to Bishop Harrowden. Soren had been trapped by two officials near a pillar and was answering with the dead-eyed composure of a man wishing murder were administratively simpler.

King Edran sat again, wine untouched, watching the room.

Watching her.

The badge on Mara’s dress felt heavier by the minute.

Then a girl laughed near the musicians’ stairs.

The sound was bright, young, and wrong in the hall’s careful hum.

Mara turned.

A group of noble girls had gathered around a low table where glass tokens were being arranged into some sort of game. Colored beads. Clear beads. Red drops. Gray chips. The pieces formed lines, branches, and circles. One girl placed a clear bead at the end of a branch and tapped it with a little silver rod.

The others laughed.

Mara went still.

Dorian followed her gaze. “It is only a game.”

“What game?”

“Succession.”

She looked at him.

His mouth tightened. “Children play it. They should not, but forbidding children from court games only teaches them to play better in private.”

Mara watched a second girl move a red bead over the clear one and remove both from the board.

More laughter.

“What are the rules?” she asked.

Dorian’s voice had lost its brightness. “Branches seek the crown. The crown consumes branches. Whoever survives longest wins.”

“That is not a children’s game.”

“No. It is a royal education.”

One of the girls noticed Mara watching and froze.

Her hand covered the clear bead.

Mara turned away before fury did something tactically expensive.

Dorian said, very softly, “You see it now.”

“See what?”

“All the little ways we teach ourselves not to scream.”

That sentence held no performance.

Mara looked at him properly.

Without charm, Dorian seemed younger. Not innocent. A court had done too much to him for that. But caught, perhaps. A man standing on a road whose destination had been described to him since childhood by people who expected him to thank them for the map.

“You do not want the crown,” she said.

His smile returned. Brittle. “Want is a peasant luxury. Forgive me. I am told I become obnoxious when frightened.”

“You are obnoxious generally.”

“Then no one will suspect.”

A servant passed with wine. Dorian took a cup and handed it to Mara.

She did not drink.

He did.

“Did the chapel show you yourself with no face?” she asked.

His cup stopped halfway down.

“Subtle.”

“I am tired.”

“So am I.”

“Answer.”

His gaze moved over the court. “Yes.”

“Before or after you were chosen heir?”

“Before. It was how I learned.”

Mara’s stomach turned.

“They let the chapel tell you?”

“No. The chapel is less cruel. It showed me by accident, I think. I was twelve. We were playing succession.” He nodded toward the girls. “I hid in the chapel during a feast because Ren was kind and Kael was interesting and I was neither. I touched the north panel. Saw myself crowned. Saw no face under it. Told Vesta. She slapped me so hard my ear rang for a week, then told me I had been blessed with a sacred dream.”

He drank the wine.

“Two months later, my mother sent me to the southern estate. I was brought back after Ren died.”

Mara did not speak.

Across the hall, the clear beads on the children’s game board chimed again.

This time Mara heard something beneath the sound.

Not a scream.

A whisper.

Names.

Dozens of them.

Perhaps hundreds.

Elian among them, now that she knew how to hear him.

Her marked palm burned.

The badge of Saint Alis grew warm against her chest.

The Hall of Saints blurred for one breath.

Not into vision.

Into structure.

Glass everywhere. Not merely windows and jewels. Beads. Portrait hearts. Mourning drops. Game pieces. Badge. Wine cups. Saint panels. The responding pieces made a network of small eyes, ears, storage chambers. She could not tell which other glass was merely glass. The court glittered not because it loved beauty, but because it had made surveillance holy and grief wearable.

Glass stores.

Mara gripped the untouched wine cup so hard the stem nearly snapped.

Dorian noticed.

“What?”

“Too much glass.”

He looked around, as if seeing the hall for the first time and hating what familiarity had hidden.

“Yes,” he said. “There is.”

The musicians shifted into a brighter tune.

Several couples moved toward the open center of the hall.

Dorian looked at Mara with sudden intent. “Dance with me.”

“No.”

“Excellent. A firm opening.”

“I do not dance. And I have evidence in my satchel.”

“Then keep it on. We need a way to speak without stopping in front of the king.”

He set aside his wine and offered his hand. Not touching. Waiting.

Mara saw Soren across the hall notice.

She saw Lady Vesta notice Soren noticing.

She saw King Edran watching all three with the faintest trace of amusement.

Court was glass too, she thought. Lines. Reflections. Light bent through deliberate color. Stand still too long and someone else would decide what image you made.

She put her gloved hand in Dorian’s.

The mark in her palm stayed quiet.

Dorian led her into the dance.

He was a better dancer than she expected, which annoyed her. He did not overlead. He did not press too close. He used motion to turn her through the room, giving her changing angles on the court: the king’s dais, Vesta’s position, Soren near the pillar, the children’s game, Pellan’s too-bright smile, Countess Yra watching from beneath the Saint Alis window.

“You have done this before,” Mara said.

“Yes.”

“Why did you bring me here early?”

“Because Vesta needed to lose the room.”

He turned her past a pair of old courtiers who stopped speaking as they approached.

Dorian lowered his voice. “The king did order the presentation moved.”

“Why?”

“Because I told him Vesta had found something in your workroom and was about to force a private settlement.”

Mara nearly missed a step.

Dorian corrected smoothly.

“You told the king?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because private settlements are where people disappear.”

“And public court prevents that?”

“No. It makes disappearance expensive.”

Mara looked at him.

“Who are you loyal to?” she asked.

His smile was almost sad.

“Today? Expense.”

He turned her again.

Across the hall, Soren had finally escaped the officials and was speaking to Els near the side door. Els looked frightened but upright. Good.

Dorian followed Mara’s gaze. “He will keep her out of Vesta’s way.”

The dance carried them beneath a window of Saint Pella holding a child.

The child’s glass eyes flashed clear.

Mara’s marked palm burned so suddenly she inhaled.

Dorian’s hand tightened. “What?”

The hall dropped away.

Only for a breath.

She stood in the chapel again, but not in memory. In some present-adjacent dark. Queen Seraphine’s broken face loomed above the altar. Red light pooled beneath it. Kael stood inside the glass, one hand pressed to the queen’s missing mouth, head bowed as if holding back a door with his body.

Behind him, small hands pressed from within the side windows.

Children’s hands.

Dozens.

Clear as frost.

Kael looked up.

Not at Mara.

Past her.

At the court.

His mouth moved.

She heard one word.

Soon.

The dance returned.

Mara stumbled.

Dorian caught her by the waist.

Soren was already moving across the hall.

Lady Vesta’s eyes had narrowed.

The king leaned forward slightly.

Dorian smiled down at Mara with courtly ease for the benefit of watchers, but his voice was stripped clean.

“What did you see?”

Mara looked toward the children’s game board.

Every clear bead on it had gone cloudy.

The noble girls stared down, white-faced.

The music continued because musicians, like servants, survived by pretending disaster was not in their part.

Mara drew away from Dorian.

“Your coronation,” she said.

His smile froze.

“What about it?”

Mara looked at the king.

Then at Lady Vesta.

Then at the badge of Saint Alis pinned over her heart.

“Six weeks is too late.”

Across the hall, a clear bead shattered on the children’s game board.

Then another.

Then every silver bell in Valharrow began to ring.