Chapter 15: The Trial of Return

I woke alone, and the bed beside me was cold.

The ring on my wrist had been warm all night. Now it felt like a scar.

I found him in the corridor at noon with Odette at his elbow.

He looked at me the way he had looked at me from the throne.

"Cassian," I said.

"Lord Rooke is resting his mind," said Odette, sweetly. "Please don't tire him."

I leaned close to him, and I smelled it on his breath.

Green and bitter.

I said nothing at all, because she was watching, and because I finally understood what the cup was for.

At dusk the whole Court came down to the catacombs again.

Seven hundred candles, the same pillars, the same cold breath out of the graves.

The Mirror threw its red halo across the floor, and Tobias stood beside the frame with his spectacles pushed up and his hands folded.

He gave me one look, short and steady.

The Elder read the claim from his scroll.

"The Unwritten woman Elspeth Rainsford asks the glass whether her Unwriting was just. Let her blood answer."

I walked to the Mirror in front of seven hundred people and pressed my hand to it.

The old cut on my palm opened, and the glass drank.

It pulled once, and then it went dark.

No window and no smear of red. Not one candle on a polished floor.

"Nothing," said the Elder, and the Court breathed out. "She has no years in her blood. The glass took what it took. The Unwriting stands."

"It stands because I'm empty," I said. "You emptied me."

"The Court emptied you."

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