Page 79 of The Thirteenth Count

The room went silent between one breath and the next. He stood in the hush with the white branches arching over him and the harvest of his valley glittering on every table, and he smiled.

“My lords and ladies,” said the High. “Your attention.”

He had it. He’d had it before he stood. Sixty faces turned toward the dais like flowers starved for a sun they’d never seen, and Aurelius Blackwell let the silence ripen, unhurried, a man who had never once in his life been interrupted.

“Tonight we celebrate a harvest.” He lifted his glass, and candlelight ran along the crystal. “The Thirteenth Count has concluded, and the valley has given generously. You hold the proof of it beside your plates.”

A warm murmur of appreciation moved down the tables. Someone near Fern touched their phial as one touches a medal.

Twenty people, Fern thought, and kept her face soft and empty.

“But a Count is not measured in drams alone.” The High’s gaze traveled the room and came to rest—she felt it land like a hand on the back of her neck—on her. “It is measured in what it finds.”

Sixty faces turned.

“Miss Silverbell.” His voice was warm, thick, close, something rotting sweetly underneath. “Join me.”

Her legs carried her up the length of the ballroom because Lady Blackwell had spent weeks teaching them how, past the tables, past the phials, past the wet-eyed curiosity of the upper tiers, to the open floor below the dais. She curtsied to the exact depth she’d been drilled. Around her, the black dress moved like deep water.

The High studied the dress, the blue gloves, then the dress again. His gaze sharpened before the pleasant mask returned. “You’ve all heard the stories,” he said to the room, without releasing her from his gaze. “White smoke at a Rootfolk Count. An anomaly. A curiosity.” He smiled. “I prefer the word discovery. The valley’s blood runs deeper than we knew, my friends, and this House does not let deep things go to waste.”

Polite laughter. Fern’s face stayed soft and empty.

The High raised one finger.

A servant materialized at her elbow with a small silver tray, and Fern’s careful emptiness nearly cracked down the middle.

On the tray sat a dish of silver dust. A lancet. And a resonance crystal.

Not here. Not now.

“My son tells me your control has come along remarkably.” The High settled back half a step, giving the court sightlines, a showman clearing the stage. “Show them what the Count found, Miss Silverbell. Show them the rose.”

Somewhere behind her, at the High Table, she heard nothing at all—a silence with Cassius’ shape in it.

Fern drew off her left glove.

She did it slowly, finger by finger, and she understood the picture she made only as she made it: Blackwell blue peeled away to bare Rootfolk skin. A ripple of reaction moved through the nearest tables. Let them ripple. If he was going to bleed her for their entertainment, they could watch her take his color off to do it.

The lancet stung. A dark bead of blood welled in the candlelight. Oathblight feathered from the wound in fine black threads. Sixty Highbloods leaned forward together, hungry in the way of people who had only ever seen blight on other people’s hands.

You are shouting when you should be whispering.

Fern whispered.

The silver dust rose from the dish one grain at a time. No flare or whine, just perfect control. It gathered above her open palm, condensed, and turned. A stem. The curl of petals, each one distinct. Thorns fine enough to prick.

The rose revolved slowly in the air between her and the High, shedding candlelight, perfect and pointless and entirely under her command.

The ballroom released a sound she had never heard from a room before, a soft, involuntary exhalation from sixty people at once.

“Hold it,” the High said pleasantly. And then, to the room, while her blood fed the working drop by drop and the strain gathered like a hand slowly closing around her spine: “This is what the Count is for. This is why we ask what we ask of the valley. Raw blood is a resource, my friends. But refined blood, cultivated blood, blood taught its place and purpose…” He gestured at the rose, at her, one sweep of the hand that made no distinction between them. “…is the future of Thornvale.”

The rose did not waver. Fern’s arm burned from wrist to shoulder. She held the High’s gaze over the turning petals and gave the court her softest, emptiest face, and inside the cold, in the place Lady Blackwell had carved smooth, she thought: Look closely, all of you. Learn what I can do quietly.

“Enough,” said the High.

She let the rose sigh apart. Silver dust drifted down onto the tray like the first snow of White Season, and the ballroom broke into applause, bright and delighted, ringing off the marble.