Page 183 of Maksym

He sat with his hands folded in front of him, spine straight, expression unreadable in the way our family had learned to become unreadable under hostile eyes. But I saw the brief cut of his amber gaze toward Maddie.

There was apology in it. Fear too, though not for himself.

Maddie’s hands were clasped tight in her lap. Her knuckles had gone pale against the black lace at her wrists. She stared at the chamber doors as if she could hold them closed by will, and still knew they would open. Her whiskey-colored eyes were wide but dry. Bronc stood in the gallery; I felt the presence of Iron Valor like pressure against the back of the room. Yet Maddie did not look for her brother now.

She looked where Grace looked. At the doors.

The Magistrate inclined his head. “Summon the witness.”

A guard moved. The doors opened.

Sloan Lynch entered alone between two Council guards.

She was not dressed like a woman who had come to perform. No funeral softness. No theatrical mourning. Her clothes were dark, simple, severe enough that all ornament seemed to have been stripped from her by the last several days. Her face carried exhaustion poorly hidden beneath determination. She kept her chin up.

Good.

A woman surrounded by enemies sometimes had only the angle of her chin left to spend.

As she crossed the floor, the gallery watched her with appalling hunger. Ironwood watched with betrayal already forming. Others watched with the crude curiosity of those deciding how much courage cost when purchased by someone else. Lucian watched too, though his smile had thinned.

Interesting.

She looked once at Maddie. Only once.

Whatever passed between them was too brief for me to name, and I would not insult either woman by pretending I could. Pain, perhaps. Regret. Affection damaged but not dead. Guilt arriving late and carrying no guarantee of forgiveness.

Maddie’s mouth tightened. Sloan looked away first.

The witness stand waited beneath the truth spell’s silent teeth. Sloan climbed the shallow steps and took the seat. Her posture was stiff enough to seem proud until I noticed her fingers curl around the edge of the stand. She held it hard. Hard enough that her knuckles whitened. Her jaw remained set, but her throat moved once.

The Magistrate spoke the oath in the old form.

Sloan answered. Her voice held. Barely.

The truth spell settled over her with a low vibration I felt through the soles of my shoes. Some witnesses flinched when it touched them. Sloan did not, but her fingers tightened.

Grace picked up her pen and approached the lectern. She let the room finish deciding what it feared before she began to teach it why.

“Miss Lynch,” Grace said, her voice calm, measured, and very soft in the enormous chamber. “Let us begin at Obsidian.”

She did not begin with the altar. That was why she was dangerous.

Lesser counsel would have rushed toward the blood because blood made rooms listen. Grace understood that blood without foundation became spectacle, and spectacle could be argued around by anyone shameless enough to call it tradition. She began instead at Obsidian, where purple light and old desire had hidden the first small movements of a trap.

“Miss Lynch,” she said, “you worked at Obsidian.”

“Yes.”

“As a server.”

“Yes.”

“How long had you worked there before you met Madelyn Baucaum?”

Sloan’s fingers remained wrapped around the edge of the witness stand. “Several weeks.”

“You were Ironwood pack.”