Page 168 of Zenith Court

Rev reached the door, then looked back. “Sadie asked for a second helping of eggs. First thing she’s asked for without thanking me first.”

Nobody answered at once. Kieran looked down at the cloth in his hand. Jonah’s fingers found mine beneath the blanket. Rev nodded as if we had said enough and closed the door behind her.

We sat up around the tray. Kieran tore the first loaf open while it was still hot enough to sting his fingers.

“I’m going downstairs after this,” he said. “Those ovens have been cold for years, and I intend to offend everyone who ever allowed that.”

“Delphine asked me to help with the west-wing files,” Jonah said. “Then she told me they could wait a week.”

“Will they?”

He considered. “A day.”

“Reckless,” Kieran said.

Caspian poured coffee into four mismatched cups. “Aldric wants me at the witness benches by midday.”

“And?” I asked.

“He knows where to find me.”

We ate in the wreckage of the bed, passing bread and cups from hand to hand. Kieran got crumbs in the quilt and made no apology. Jonah buttered a heel and set it in my hand. Caspian’s bare feet stayed tucked beneath Kieran’s calf.

“Marrow asked after the two of you,” Caspian said to Kieran and me. “He wanted you to know he was grateful the shoulder held. The admission appeared to pain him.”

“Tell him I’m touched,” Kieran said. “I’d send flowers, but I have bread.”

“You are not sending Marrow our breakfast.”

Kieran guarded the loaf against his chest. “Finally, someone protects breakfast.”

Caspian rose and opened the window the rest of the way. The hinges caught halfway. He pushed until they gave. A cartwheel struck a rut in the square below. Someone called for a length of rope. A dog barked until someone shouted its name.

Across the square, two women raised a line of washing between buildings that had kept their shutters closed for years. A sheet caught the morning wind and snapped once, bright against the stone.

I lay back among the three men I loved. Below us, the cart rattled on and the dog kept barking.

48

Astra

Cheap paint covered the old brass plates on the Conclave chairs. It had dried unevenly, and flakes of it marked the fingers of anyone who forgot and touched a name.

In the weeks since the reversal, the room had kept its tiers, its narrow aisles, and the chairs nobody had ever meant to make comfortable. The founding basin sat beneath heavy canvas at the center. The water channels still sounded inside the walls, but the iron anchors were gone from the floor and daylight reached the lowest row.

Some of the old lineage names remained visible beneath the new paint. The circle had left them there deliberately. Each chair now bore a plain new label chosen by the people who would use it rather than the family that had once claimed it. Cloths hung from the aisle rails for anyone who came away with blue paint on a sleeve.

We entered together and received nothing more alarming than nods. Caspian wore a coat without cuffs. Kieran’s burned wrist had healed to a pale band, and he took the steps slowly because the joint still stiffened in the morning. Jonah walked half a pace behind my shoulder. Delphine sat near the back with Lior’s latest letter folded atop a closed folder. Cosima had already taken the scribe’s stool.

Linden stood at the low table in the same gray coat he had worn when the Hall condemned us. Four sheets lay square beneath his hands.

He read, “The Council of the Star-Marked Court, its offices, its basins of record, its Article Seven and all subordinate protocol, is dissolved as of this reading. Authority passes to a witness circle, chartered this day, empowered to record and not to rule. Let it be entered.”

He set the page down.

The same voice had once read Article Seven over us at the Hall. I remembered Kieran laughing because silence would have frightened them more, Jonah shifting until his shoulder nearly touched mine, Caspian standing at the basin with his bare wrist beside mine. This time Linden’s last word crossed the room and no guards stepped forward. Kieran exhaled. Jonah’s boot remained planted beside mine. Caspian did not lower his wrists.

“That’s all?” I asked.