Chapter 168 Dreaded Council Hearing 2

Chapter 168 Dreaded Council Hearing 2
Ryn POV

The hands go up and I count them with him.
Carix. Mordain. Then a lord from a lesser house I barely know, then another, then Venn, last and reluctant, but up, because Venn always sides with the count once. Now the count is clear.

Five. It takes five and there are five of them

Mordain doesn't even smile, he just nods.

"The council holds," he says. "Upon the ending of her contract, the human called Ryn retains no standing in Valdris. The ruling stands recorded..."

"Stop the count!"

It's Zevran, and he doesn't raise his voice, maybe that's why the room stops.

He looks at the five raised hands for a long moment. Then he does the thing I don't expect, the thing none of them expect.

He doesn't argue the ruling. He doesn't threaten the houses. He walks across the floor of the chamber, past Mordain in his stolen chair, past Carix and his bound arm, all the way to where I'm standing alone on the petitioner's side of the line, and he stops next to me, shoulder to shoulder, facing them.

Not in front of me. Beside me.

"Let the record hold this too," he says. "Wherever she stands when that contract ends, I stand there with her. If the council rules she has no place in Valdris, then the king has no place in Valdris, because I will not hold a throne in a court that's voted out the person I'd cross worlds for. Rule her out and you rule me out. Then you can have your hearing about who sits the chair next, and I promise you it will be a shorter and bloodier proceeding than this one."

The chamber erupts. Lords on their feet. Mordain's hand flat on the table for a second that doesn't come, because a king has just put his crown on the same side of the scale as a blood slave girl, and there's no procedure written for that.

"You would abdicate," Mordain says, when he can be heard, "over a human."

"I would abandon a court that made me choose. There's a difference, and you'll learn it the hard way if you push me to ever choose between her and this court."

"This is exactly the tyranny we feared." Carix is up now, his pain making him reckless. "A king who sets aside the law of the houses for one woman. This is why we acted. This is why we had to..."

"Carix," Mordain says sharply.

But it's too late, and I see Zevran catch the half-sentence the way he catches everything, and I see him decide to use it.

"Had to what," Zevran says quietly. "Finish the sentence, Carix. Tell the council what you had to do. You were doing so well."

And that's when Isolde steps forward.
She's been at the wall the whole time, hands folded, giving nothing, and I've spent the entire hearing refusing to look at her because she stood with the men who tried to kill him.

It beats me how I kept her in this court when I could have let her fall. So when she moves, every head turns, because the king's second has no place speaking in a standing hearing, but she speaks anyway.

"I'll finish it," she straightens her back.

The chamber goes silent in a different way.

"Isolde." Mordain's voice has an edge of warning in it that tells me, finally, how much they planned together. "You have no standing or right to address..."

"I have five hundred years of standing right in this court, Mordain, which is more than every house at this table combined, so you'll let me speak or you'll have the guards remove your king's second in front of the full council and explain why." She doesn't wait for permission. She turns to the room. "Three nights ago, while the king lay mid-Renewal, helpless, his old body shedding and the new one not yet formed, Lord Carix entered the king's chambers with a blade. Lord Mordain had sent him. The intent was to kill Zevran in the only window of a thousand years when a king can be killed."

The uproar is instant. Mordain is on his feet. Carix is shouting at the top of his lungs. But Zevran, Zevran is perfectly still beside me, because he already knew, and he's watching the rest of the room learn it.

"You can't prove a word of it," Mordain growls.

"I can prove all of it, because I was there." Isolde's voice doesn't waver, and I understand what this is costing her, because the next sentence ends her. "I was there because I helped plan it. I fed Lord Mordain the timing of the king's movements for weeks. I told him when the Renewal would be vulnerable. I stood in the doorway of the king's chambers while Carix drew his blade. I also watched, doing nothing to stop it." She lifts her chin. "I am confessing to treason in this open council. Every word against me is true. But it means I am also the one witness in this room who can tell you exactly what these men are, because I was one of them until three nights ago."

The chamber is in chaos and through it I'm just staring at her, because the woman who poisoned me, who wanted him dead, who stood in that doorway and watched, is dismantling herself in front of the entire court to take Mordain down with her.

"Why," Mordain snarls. "Why would you..."

"Because I watched a human girl hold off armed men with one hand while she poured her own life into a king with the other," Isolde says, and for the first time her voice cracks. "I came to that room to watch him die and instead I watched her refuse to let him, at a cost to herself I have never once been willing to pay in five centuries of calling myself loyal.

I have spent my whole life claiming to be the one who stays. She is the one who stayed." She looks at me, finally, and there's no warmth in it, but there's something heavier than warmth. "I can't undo what I did. But I can make sure the men who tried to murder him don't get to rule her out of existence with paperwork while pretending their hands are clean."

She turns back to the council.

"Lord Mordain orchestrated regicide. Lord Carix carried the blade. I will testify to all of it, under any oath this court requires, with full knowledge that it ends me. So before this council rules that Ryn has no standing, perhaps it should ask whether the men bringing the petition have any standing left themselves, given that two of them are regicides and the woman exposing them is willing to hang beside them to say so."

The chamber detonates. And Mordain, for the first time since we walked in, has nothing prepared.