Then the room exploded into chaos.
“You’re going to call me a coward?” Leighton thundered, leaping from his chair. “We haven’t forgottenyourcowardice, Baron Amador. Strange that you’ll call us cowards for refusing to fight now, when you refused to fight in the last war!”
“Order!” Kalie cried, slamming her gavel down on the table. “Order!”
“You’re a reckless fool.” Leighton kicked his chair aside and marched to the door. “You’ve doomed us all.”
The ancient oak doors slammed shut behind him.
As if his departure was a rallying cry, others rose. Kalie’s lips parted in stunned dismay. Two of Leighton’s relatives pushed their chairs back and strode for the doors. Hewlett’s pale-haired siblings rose from their seats at the foot of the table and followed. One, two, three, four of them. Then Hewlett himself.
Kalie gaped at him.
“I lost one family to one of your wars. I won’t lose another.”
“Wait—”
Hewlett had already followed the others through the towering marble archway.
Eight of her advisors, nearly a third of her council… gone.
Kalie slumped into her chair, pressing her hands to her face. She needed twenty-one votes. She was now at twenty.
Less than that. Count Harrington had taken up Leighton’s position and was screaming at Julian’s mother.
As a storm of curses flew between them, Kalie’s blood boiled, and she slammed down the gavel. “I said, order!”
As Harrington spat another curse at Julian’s mother, Julian’s father leapt in, backed by Haeden’s mother. Spittle flew between their flushed faces. Their guards, posted around the room, reached for weapons. They weren’t alone. Everywhere, shouting nobles turned on their cousins and spouses.
Shaking, Kalie turned to Uncle Jerran. “End this. Please. Get me out of here.”
At once, he rose to his feet, and his purple cloak billowed around him.
At once, the room fell silent.
“This meeting is adjourned.”
Kalie stumbled towards the marble archway, pushed open the double doors, and staggered into the hall. Vague voices flitted around her. Footsteps pounded against the floor, but she didn’t look back. She couldn’t see the chaos she’d created.
She couldn’t face the truth: they wouldn’t follow her.
She wasn’t good enough.
So she ran.
Her heels skidded across the tile and the marble walls blurred around her as she rushed away, struggling for air that didn’t come. The moment she burst into an empty hallway, she slumped against a marble pillar and buried her head in her hands. She’d known they hated her. She’d known some of them wanted her dead. But she hadn’t thought—for them to side with Carik after he’d killed Aunt Calida?—
She couldn’t breathe.
He would get away with it. All of it, and her own people didn’t care.
“Hey.” Mylis’s quiet voice seemed impossibly loud in the silenthallway, and as his footsteps tapped against the tile, his gentle hand landed on her shoulder. “Breathe, Kalie.”
She sucked in a gasp of air, but it didn’t go into her lungs.
“Breathe.”
Her hands dropped to her sides. “I hate him,” she choked out. “I hatethem. How can they just—how can they do nothing when he killed?—”
