[Evelyn’s POV]
The echo of my own voice still hangs in the air, and I don’t recognize it. That voice was steady and certain.
Mine, but belonging to a woman I haven’t met before tonight.
Aspis screams above the open terrace, white wings spread against the dark sky, and every dragon in the compound answers, a chorus of roars that rolls through the stone beneath my feet like distant thunder.
Draven’s hand is in mine. His fingers are warm, solid, anchoring me to the floor when every instinct tells me to run. I hold on tighter than I should. He lets me.
The great hall fractures.
I can see it happening: the exact moment the room splits, not with swords or shouting, but with eyes.
With the way bodies shift, creating distance. Old alliances recalculating in real time, loyalties tested against a truth none of them expected.
Half the household is staring at our joined hands like it’s an open wound.
Mira stands near the east colonnade, and her face has gone white. She is not angry but shocked, the particular shock of someone replaying every conversation and rewriting all of it. Her hands are shaking. I want to go to my dear friend, to explain, but her eyes meet mine and I watch something shatter behind them. She trusted me, but I gave her lies in return.
Her lips part, and though I can’t hear the word from across the hall, I can read it clearly: Why?
Finn stands beside her, with his jaw working like he’s chewing glass, his arms crossed so tight against his chest that the tendons in his neck stand rigid. When his gaze finally lands on me, it’s fury, raw and justified.
“You didn’t tell me,” he says, loud enough for those nearby to hear. “Every time I talked about my cousins and uncle lost to Mintian raids, you knew but kept silent.”
The accusation cuts deeper than Cassandra’s dagger could have. I want to tell him that his family’s loss was never what I took lightly, but the words die in my throat. What defense could I possibly offer?
Dorian is different. He watches me the way he does with everything: quietly, with whatever conclusion he’s drawn locked behind his teeth. But his hand rests on Mira’s shoulder: a protective barrier between her and me.
We spent hours together in the training yard, debating strategy over cold meals, sharing the kind of easy silence that comes with trust. Now that silence between me and my friends feels like a wall.
The Mintian delegation erupts. Lord Aldric’s senior advisor, a gaunt man named Harath, shoves past two guards and jabs his finger toward Draven.
“This is an outrage! You’ve held a Mintian citizen under false pretenses, harbored a fugitive within your walls, and now you assault a diplomatic envoy? The Alliance will hear of every violation committed under this roof!”
“Your envoy drew a blade on an unarmed woman in my corridors,” Draven replies, his voice carrying the flat calm of a man who has already decided how this ends. “Guest-right was broken by Mintian steel, not mine.”
“Cassandra acted in self-defense! She discovered a wanted criminal lurking in—”
“She tried to kill her sister! Those are different things.”
The word sister ripples through the hall. I feel it land on every face, the confirmation, spoken by Draven himself, that the woman they trained beside shares blood with the house that slaughtered Lyanna’s convoy.
Cassandra stands between two guards near the western arch. She hasn’t spoken since I finished—no struggle, no protest, not so much as shifting her weight. She is perfectly, terrifyingly still.
I pull my gaze from her and face the household. The warriors I trained beside. The people who shared bread with me.
“I know what you’re feeling right now. I know what my name means in this hall, and I—”
“You’re Mintian.” The voice comes from the back of the crowd.
A broad-shouldered warrior named Torren, his scarred face tight with something between disgust and disbelief:
“You’re the firstborn daughter of the house that butchered our people. Lyanna died because of your family’s orders. You sat beside us for months knowing that, and you said nothing.”
Draven’s hand tightens around mine — a silent pulse of pressure that says I’m here — but it isn’t Draven who answers.
Mine, that growl says. She is mine. I chose her, so question that if you dare!
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