Fuck.
Even though he’s hooded, his face half cast in shadow, I still feel his stare shred across me, leaving a prickly trail.
Not sure what I did to deserve his foul attention, but I wish I could take it back.
I rip my gaze away, looking to the empty stone throne set amongst the Nobles’ seats, wondering when King Fade is going to join the party.
Perhaps he’s making a late entrance?
The Chancellor slams his gavel three times, my heart thumping in unison. He sets down the tool and breaks the seal on a scroll, unraveling it—signifying the start of my trial.
My heart drops.
I come to the grim realization that our boastful king must still be in Drelgad, disappointment lumping upon me …
Damn. There goes all my fun.
I was so looking forward to telling him he’d be better off shoveling colk shit than governing The Fade.
Silence roars as the Chancellor leers down at me over his hooked nose, brown and clear beads hanging from his lobe, his ruddy beard whittled into twin braided tails. “Fade law states that those who hear the Creators’ songs are obliged to wear elemental beads,” he says, his voice a conjuring drawl that echoes through the space seemingly runed to amplify sound. “It is first noted that you wear none and that you are showcasing as a null.”
The scribe three paces away from me—sitting behind a desk beside a white-robed Runi—scratches at a scroll with a bloodred quill, the sound carrying so well it almost feels like the words are being etched into my flesh.
“I thought I was a null,” I announce, shrugging. Flesh-ripping pain flares across my back that makes my insides shudder, my next words spoken past gritted teeth. “Imagine my surprise when Clode whispered pretty words in my ear and helped me pulverize the lungs of all those soldiers.”
A sea of murmurs float down from above.
The Chancellor’s eyes narrow. “From what I understand, you spoke Clode’s language fluently enough to suggest you’ve been hearing such words for a while.”
I offer a wide smile. “Beginner’s luck.”
“Lie.”
I flick a sideways glare at the broad, blond-haired Runi, my gaze dropping, scouring the two gold buttons adorning the central seam of his robe. An etching stick and a small musical note.
Truthtune.
He garnishes me with a stony stare, and I frown.
“Rude.”
“And Bulder?” the Chancellor asks. “What of him?”
I cock my head to the side. “Haven’t you ever wished the ground would split and chew on your enemies? Guess my dream came true. Lucky me.”
“Not a lie.”
“See?”
The Chancellor condemns me with a seething scowl, like he’s picturing me being chewed by a hole in the ground as we speak.
Clearing his throat, he begins reading from the scroll. “You, self-appointed as Prisoner Seventy-Three”—he peers down at me, eyes narrowed, and my smile widens in unison with his deepening frown—“are hereby charged for the murder of twenty-three soldiers of The Crown—”
“Twenty-five,” I correct, and the room bursts with murmurs again as the Chancellor raises a brow.
“Excuse me?”
If he’s going to read out my charge, he might as well get it right.
“Personally, I lost count. But the guard who led me here said I killed twenty-five.” The Chancellor opens his mouth to speak again, but I cut him off with a swift, “Also, I’d like it added to the record that I bit off the tip of Rekk Zharos’s finger. I only recently managed to flick out what was left of it from between my tee—”
“That’s enough.”
“Pity.”
He flays me with a stare, and even the scribe pauses his incessant scratching. “Do you find this … amusing?”
“You misread me.” I let all the humor fall off my face, my response a bite of bloody flesh spat at him with a sawtooth snarl. “I find it fucking tragic.”
This time, there are no murmurs. Just a gluttonous silence that grates my bones.
“Truth.”
Yes, it is.
“Bring in the evidence,” the Chancellor bellows.
I marinate in the seething echo of his outburst while a male comes up the shaft of stairs at my back, toting two sacks he dumps on the ground before me, then loosens the drawstrings. He begins pulling out flaps of preserved flesh, flopping them on the ground in a semicircle around me, each bearing letters carved with my own hand.
Unmistakably.
I’m certain nobody else has handwriting like mine. Certainly nobody old enough to be out there slitting throats and dumping bodies off the wall. I hope.