Chapter 17: The Elder's Coup

The knife never reached the glass.

The Elder caught his daughter by the wrist two steps short of it, so hard that she cried out.

"Fool," he said, very low. "Not like this."

Odette sagged against his arm, sobbing.

The blade stayed in her fist, and her blood ran down it in a thin line.

The Elder turned to the hall with his hand still locked round her wrist.

He had been a statesman for forty years, and I watched him put his face back on.

"My daughter is overwrought," he said. "She has been poisoned by the Fallen, as all of you can see."

"The glass is a mirror of blood, and blood can be made to lie by a Lord who has sold his mind to a thief."

"I will not stand in my own court and be shamed by sorcery."

He raised his free hand.

"Captain. Take Lord Rooke into custody."

The grey guards came off the walls, a dozen of them, with swords out and boots loud on the stone.

Cassian watched them come with the blank face of a man behind a pane of glass.

He had not moved since the knife left his hand.

"Cassian," I said.

Nothing.

I walked in front of him and put my back to his chest, and the nearest guard stopped.

"Look at them," I said, to the hall. "Look at him."

I raised my voice until it hit the back pillars.

"Draw a thimble of his blood on Tobias's lancet, here, now. It will run green at the rim, the same as hers."

Nobody moved.

"That is why he looked at me like that at the first sitting. That is why he drank from her cup in front of every one of you and never looked down."

"He did not choose her. He was poisoned."

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