Page 35
Chapter 34
A Trial
In no time at all, we were at the gates. A crowd of nobles swelled down the promenade behind the other four elders, called to watch by Aeron.
I’d turned my head to stare at the spot I’d met Nier as Elder Welkin dragged me past. Wishing I could be back in that moment, as terrifying as it had been, while also dreading seeing any moving shadows. A sigh of relief escaped when I saw none.
At least he was safe from this spectacle, far away on the ground somewhere, defending his people from the blight we’d inflicted on them.
Elder Welkin relaxed his tight hold on my chain as he shoved at the rusted gates, and I looked around frantically. My chances of running were even slimmer now, as I noted the guardians hovering above us, arrows already notched. A long horn blast sounded, calling people from their homes, and the streets quickly filled as well. Many taking to the skies to get a better view of what was happening along the promenade.
Three familiar faces stood out as I spied Adrita pushing through the throng of nobles, Mara close behind, and Haniel shadowing her.
As soon as I caught their eyes, I shook my head at them. I refused to have anyone else suffer my fate alongside me. Not after what my mother had just endured.
A loud screech heralded the opening of the gate as two guardians took over and pushed them open, pebbles scattering in their wake. One bounced to the edge as I watched. It sailed through the halo encircling the citadel, leaving a fading, golden shimmer in its wake as it disappeared into the abyss on the other side. My body seized as fear gripped me.
Nothing good was going to come of those gates being open.
Although it was exceedingly strange that I’d always been drawn to this very spot, perhaps a part of me had always known I’d end up here.
A warm breeze swirled leaves around the tattered hem of my robe as if the very air were agitated, and I felt the goddess drawing near, like an extra layer of warm sunlight against my skin as the light around us seemed to shine brighter.
The elder showed no acknowledgment of her presence. I wondered how long ago he’d stopped feeling her, or if he ever had. He was too busy yanking me forward by the chain, out onto the cracked forecourt, as pain shot a line of fire up my numb, bruised arm. I could see the blooming purple marks between the elder’s fingers where he’d earlier gripped me in a vise of steel.
To the residents of the citadel, who prided themselves on purity, I knew I must look a sight—with my hair in disarray and my torn robe soaked in my mother’s blood. Then there were the accompanying gore-splattered guardians that flanked me on either side as Aeron brought his flight to the fore. It was all reflected in the devastation in Mara’s eyes as she pushed through the last of the crowd to stand behind the elders and their retinues, followed by Adrita and Haniel.
“Silence,” Elder Welkin called in an amplified voice that echoed up the promenade. The slight rise of ground toward the citadel ensured everyone standing got a view of the spectacle laid out before them. All the shocked murmurings halted. Nobody wanted to miss a word. “My people. It is a dark day for the Neven. It befalls me to tell you we have a traitor amongst us. One who conspired with our enemy, the Fallen, to let wraiths loose within our citadel.”
Shocked gasps broke out amongst the nobles. Many gathered children to them, while others frantically looked back up toward the citadel, afraid of being attacked at any moment. Elder Welkin let the chatter swell and their fear fester, as calls for swift retribution rang out.
The rising outrage didn’t reach the common townsfolk hovering at the back or above the houses. They were silent and watching everything unfold warily, many eyes fixed on me in trepidation. They, too, suspected the true monsters were in front of them and that my fate had already been decided.
It was long minutes before Elder Welkin called for silence again.
“Do not fear. Our guardians fought valiantly and defeated the wraiths. Yet we suffered many needless losses in the attempt, all due to the actions of one selfish Neven.” He didn’t need to name me, as glares turned in my direction. It was clear who he was accusing.
“What proof do you have?” Adrita dared to call out, and I held my breath as I silently pleaded with her to back down. I just wanted this over. I couldn’t watch anyone else suffer today. My grief was already threatening to drown me where I stood.
“Proof? Of the wraith attack? Apart from the dozens of brave guardians who now lie dead beneath our feet?” he answered with icy disdain, gesturing at the state of the flight surrounding him. “Dare you ask the ones who survived and now stand in front of you?”
“Proof of a traitor,” Adrita countered.
“Consort Mort, would you kindly step forward with your accusation and your proof?”
The crowd parted, and my mother’s consort stepped forward. He straightened his silvery tunic and smoothed his coiffed hair as he came, his many jeweled rings glinting in the light, like a preening peacock. He turned and bowed low before the elders, milking the moment before he turned to the audience.
At a gesture from Elder Welkin, his orb floated lazily over Consort Mort’s head to amplify his voice, sending it booming over the promenade so nobody could escape its lies.
“It saddens me to announce I had to search Alula’s room this morning, as she was missing. I found something startling and highly concerning, so I reported it to our esteemed elders.” He pulled Nier’s large black feather from his tunic pocket with a flourish before he held it aloft. It looked out of place in the bright daylight, like a sliver of night come to life. I wanted to snatch it from his oily hands but the gold chain prevented it.
A loud caw had heads swiveling toward the gate, where an unusually large black raven had landed. Even with its size, it was clear the larger feather hadn’t come from a bird.
Shocked murmurs started up again, and a few shouts rang out from the crowd, but I couldn’t make out the words. I was focused on the sight of Fionn, with several of the gardeners from earlier and two of my brother’s friends in tow, discreetly moving into position near the Apex Flight. I tried to make eye contact with Fionn, but he wasn’t looking at me. He searched the crowd with a frantic air.
“What does Vessel Leora have to say about this? Or Wing Commander Kiran?” Adrita called out loudly. A few other shouts backed up her request. It was unusual for Elder Welkin to allow a crowd be so unruly while he was speaking, but he looked quite content, confident that their fear would eventually damn me.
“Vessel—“ Consort Mort began as he puffed out his chest, but Elder Welkin abruptly cut him off, taking back his orb.
“Sadly, Vessel Leora went to our aid and was one of the brave Neven who fell, making the actions of her daughter even more abhorrent. Wing Commander Kiran is currently being questioned to determine his role in his sister’s betrayal.”
“What?” Consort Mort turned in shock. “Leora is dead?”
So his plan hadn’t been to betray his vessel, only me. The feather fell forgotten at his feet as all of his ambitious plans and manipulations turned to dust. Without a vessel, he was still a high noble, but he had no power or influence. I had no time for him. He could lie in the gilded bed he’d made.
“You are dismissed, Consort Mort,” Elder Welkin announced, with callous indifference.
The consort stared at the elder with his mouth hanging open before he snapped it shut and walked stiffly back to be swallowed by the pressing crowd. He was a statesman and knew when he was beaten, for today anyway. He didn’t shed a tear for my mother as he disappeared, but there was a flurry of murmurings amongst the crowd. She hadn’t been loved by our people, but she had been admired, maybe even a little feared.
She deserved more. She deserved for songs to be written about her and the sacrifice she’d just made. Not just for me, but for these people too. Their ambivalence had tears stinging my eyes.
Fionn finally met my gaze, and the raw grief that burst from him was almost tangible. His eyes dulled as a light went out, even as he straightened and locked his gaze on me.
My lips trembled as I subtly shook my head for him to stand down. I was grateful to have support in this moment, but I refused to let anyone else die for me today, and they would die if they intervened. There was no way they could win this fight, as more guardians arrived to hover above the gates and the promenade. Even with the help of the thralls, we didn’t have the numbers.
Mouthing my brother’s name as subtly as I could, relief swept through me as he nodded stiffly at me. If anyone was going to survive this day, I chose Kiran. He was going to need all the help he could get to make it out of whatever cell they were holding him in, but I knew my brother was resourceful and hard to keep down. With Fionn’s and his friends help, he’d do it.
The building pressure eased in my chest, taking the burn of adrenaline with it. If Kiran was taken care of, and Mara was too, I had nothing left to fear. There was only me.
“Nobody has been banished in two hundred years. She deserves a trial,” Mara called out in a reckless attempt to defend me.
“A trial is a mercy of the elders, and she deserves no such thing. Learn your place, potentiate,” Elder Welkin snarled. His facade cracked momentarily before he pulled himself together again. “Or do I need to question you about your whereabouts this morning too?”
The threat was clear, yet she stubbornly held his gaze.
That I had friends willing to put themselves on the line for me now was bittersweet, but I had no wish for them to join me up here in chains.
“Mara was with me this morning,” Haniel said, jumping to her defense as he possessively put his hand on her hip from behind.
“And yet she turned up with Wing Commander Kiran.”
Tension stiffened Haniel’s stance, and his voice sounded strained. He’d picked a side, but I didn’t think his position was as certain as he’d hoped, especially now that he was no longer needed to spy on me. His only influence now was Mara.
“You are correct, Elder Welkin, but only because I asked him to escort her while I trained. He was bringing her back to me. She is innocent of any wrongdoings of the Fenix family. I will vouch for her.”
I silently pleaded with Mara to back down. Her forearms tensed, and I knew she’d be clenching her fists within the folds of her robe. She wrestled with herself for a moment before she dutifully dropped her gaze at a sharp nudge from Adrita. The look Haniel shot me was full of reproach for the path I’d taken, endangering us all.
“Keep a better handle on your potentiate, Haniel, or the elders may reconsider your offer.”
Haniel blanched, and the irate elder glared a moment longer before he grew bored with them. He turned to me with mock solemnity, wearing his assumed victory like a crown upon his head. “If the people want a trial, so be it. Do you deny the feather is yours, Alula Fenix?”
“No,” I answered. Nothing I could say in this moment would save me, and I refused to give him the satisfaction of begging for my life. The feather was mine. I would not deny it.
“Do you deny you met with a Fallen?”
“No.”
He looked a little surprised at that but collected himself for his next question as he held his hand up to silence the crowd once again.
“Were you working with anyone else in the citadel in your nefarious plans?”
I had no nefarious plans. I only sought the truth, so my answer was easy. “No.”
He was careful in his wording—not accusing me of drawing the wraiths, but letting the crowd damn me with their imaginations. I couldn’t blame anyone for the outraged gasps. A week ago, I would have done the same.
Yet the suspicious elder simply narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth. I was too compliant, making it too quick for him. Robbing him of his show and his victory over me. He wanted me tormented. He needed to watch me not just be banished, but my reputation annihilated, never to rise again. I could see it in his eyes.
He half-turned to the crowd with a flourish of his robes and stood taller as everyone watched him closely.
“Alula Fenix, as the Welkin Elder and with the authority of the Lumière Codex, I charge you as a traitor. As such, you will be banished from the citadel, never to be spoken to or seen again by any citizen, under threat of their own banishment.”
Careful not to show my relief on my face, I swallowed it down. Banishment would sit heavily on me, but I could deal with it. I’d longed to leave the citadel for more years than I could count. If they pushed me through the wielding surrounding the citadel and my wings turned black, I could live with that. The world had always cared more about the color of my wings than I had.
Only, he wasn’t done yet. My relief was short-lived as he briefly turned his back to the crowd. His smile was predatory as he flashed his teeth, and that hint of madness glinted in his eyes. He leaned toward me, and I forced myself not to flinch.
“Unfortunately for you, we have learned from our past mistakes and will not tolerate the making of any more Fallen. You do not deserve to join your filthy friends. That would be no punishment for your sins.” My stomach dropped as he turned fully to the crowd and spread his arms wide in rapture. “My people, behold what happens to those who offer themselves up as false idols.”
Every member of the elder’s flight drew their bloody swords high, then turned toward me in unison in a practiced maneuver. Aeron lowered his sword and stepped forward, accompanied by two guardians flanking him. He didn’t smile. He’d learned showmanship from the best of them.
He spun his sword in an elaborate, showy motion. It picked up the sunlight as it sparkled off the honed edge, highlighting the intricate sigils carved all along its length. The sigils almost seemed to glow. It looked nothing like the swords most guardians carried, and I wondered where he had gotten it.
With a bow of his head, he presented it to his father, who took it from him with a barely suppressed grin while handing over my chain to his son.
“I didn’t want it to come to this, but I have no choice,” he said in a quiet tone, playing the reluctant enforcer.
“You have every choice and you know it,” I answered, warily meeting his gaze, unsure of his intentions. He’d offered for me, against his father’s wishes, so surely he’d seen something in me.
His features hardened as he tensed and dragged me in a half circle, so that all I could see was him and the halo at his back while I was held immobile. An icy fear speared through me as the shouting of the crowd intensified, drowning out his words so that only I heard them. “You of all people know choice is an illusion in this citadel, Alula. A mere trick of the light.”
His words and his position in front of me confused me. Biting my lip as I tried to stop my scrambled, panicked thoughts from getting distracted, I forced myself to think, but I was out of time.
Surely Elder Welkin wouldn’t stoop so low as to stab me in the back?
Angling my head, trying to see what was happening behind me, I saw my tiny bluebird friend had joined the enormous raven sitting at the apex of the curved gate, making an unlikely duo. They were watching with a still intensity that was very unbirdlike. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it, of this whole faux trial.
Maybe I was hallucinating this entire thing. Or maybe I was still asleep, dreaming, and none of this cursed day had happened.
Feeling the numbness from my bruised arm spread up my chest and into my head, I knew my outward calm was deceptive. I was near hysteria and silently hyperventilating.
Aeron pulling my chain taught jolted my focus back to him, as the two guardians who had flanked him grabbed my wings and roughly pulled them back from my body.
My back spasmed in pain, and horror filled me as sensation swept back in. This was no hallucination.
It was unthinkable, yet terrifyingly real.
“I’m sorry,” Aeron whispered.
“No!” I cried out a moment before agony split my world apart.
Table of Contents
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- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35 (Reading here)
- Page 36
- Page 37