The first problem with ruling regalia was that it had opinions about my ribs. The second problem was that everyone in Selene’s receiving chamber kept pretending the opinions were sacred instead of annoying. I stood with my arms held slightly away from my sides while an attendant adjusted the fall of the mantle over my shoulders, tugging once at the clasp beneath my collarbone and then going very still when Cassie made a sound behind me that was not technically a growl but lived in the same neighborhood.
“Breathe, firefly,” Cassie said.
“I am breathing.”
“You are arguing with the act of breathing.”
“It started it.”
The attendant’s fingers trembled against the clasp. I made myself stop glaring at the mirror and tried to soften my face into something less likely to traumatize palace staff before the trial had even started. It did not help much. The mirror was enormous, old emberglass framed in carved gold, and it showed too many versions of me at once: the girl in the Starveil-black gown, the princess in Summer gold, the pregnant wife with one hand wanting to settle protectively over her stomach, the daughter standing in her mother’s palace while her mother lay unconscious behind guarded doors. None of them looked ready. All of them looked expensive.
Selene’s receiving chamber smelled like warm marble, stargazer blooms, polished gold, and the faint clean smoke of court incense. Everything in her wing knew how to behave. The lamps burned steadily. The curtains hung in perfect ember-red falls beside the tall windows. The low tables gleamed. Even the damned flowers had arranged themselves as if their stems understood politics better than I did. I wanted to hate it less. I did not have the energy.
The gown was beautiful, which made resenting it harder. Starveil black caught the light like dusk on water, and deep ember-gold threaded through the bodice and sleeves in fine living veins that shifted whenever I moved. The cut was formal enough for Emberhall, strange enough that Thornspire would probably whisper about it for three days, and fitted enough that I was deeply aware of every breath. My crown was worse. It rested against my hair with a pressure that was not weight exactly, more like being noticed by something with no manners. Rose-gold, black glass, small starlit points worked into the metal. It did not look like Mother’s crown. Thank the gods. It also did not look like a duchess’s circlet, which was a problem I was very pointedly not thinking about until the universe forced me to.
Cassie stood behind me in white and black, and I was unfairly aware of her in every reflective surface. Her consort garb fit her like a threat tailored by someone with excellent taste: a sharp white jacket worked with silver frost-thread, black court skirts split enough for movement, dark stones at her throat, and shadows gathering at her cuffs as if they had also been invited and had opinions about the guest list. Her hair had been swept back from her face, which made the hard line of her jaw more obvious. She looked beautiful and feral and one bad courtier away from becoming a diplomatic incident.
“Stop staring at me like that,” I said.
Cassie lifted one brow in the mirror. “Like what?”
“Like you are calculating how fast you can get me out of here if someone looks at me wrong.”
“I already calculated that.”
“Cassie.”
“What? I did it earlier. This is me admiring.”
Aurora snorted softly from near the door. “That was her admiring face.”
Cassie glanced at her. “Thank you.”
“That was not support.”
“It felt supportive.”
I looked toward Aurora in the mirror and felt something in my chest twist, not badly, just too sharply for a morning that already had claws. She stood with her sword belted at her hip, dark auburn hair pinned back more severely than usual, shoulders square under midnight-dark guard formalwear trimmed in ember-silver. She looked uncomfortable in exactly the way she always did when clothing asked her to be noble before it asked her to be useful. The cut was crisp, practical, and too pretty for her patience, and she kept flexing the fingers of her sword hand like she wanted to remind herself the blade was still there. She caught me watching her and made a face that said if you comment on this uniform, I will defect to the nearest supply closet.
“You look good,” I said anyway, because I valued honesty more than safety in very specific and stupid situations.
Aurora’s eyes narrowed. “I look like someone polished a warning sign.”
“That is a kind of good.”
“She is correct,” Vaeris Cindral said from behind Selene. “A warning sign should be legible.”
Aurora turned her head enough to look at her. “Was that a compliment?”
“No.”
“Good. I was worried.”
Vaeris did not smile, but something in her bronze-gold eyes suggested she might have considered it in a private life none of us would ever be allowed to witness. Selene’s bloodsworn guard stood as if stillness had been drilled into her bones and then sealed there permanently. Ember-brown skin, dark auburn braid, a formal mantle of deep Summer red over black guard attire, one hand resting near her weapon without making a performance of it. She had the kind of presence that made a room behave because misbehaving would be embarrassing before it became fatal.
Selene stood when the last of her attendants stepped back, and for a second the room seemed to arrange itself around her because Emberhall knew its favorite daughter. That was not fair. It was not even fully true. Emberhall had shaped her, polished her, demanded things from her until poise looked like nature instead of labor. Still, she wore the morning better than I did. Her gown was ember-gold and royal crimson, clean lines, high waist, long mantle, Firebrand clasp at her throat. Her crown was a princess’s circlet, bright and controlled, not Mother’s but close enough to make the absence behind it ache. She looked perfect, except for the tiny tension in her fingers before she folded her hands.
“You look like you know what you’re doing,” I said.
Selene looked at me, and the corner of her mouth softened. “So do you.”
“Lying is unbecoming before a trial.”
“I did not say you felt like you knew what you were doing.”
“That distinction is rude.”
“It is accurate.”
The attendants finished around us with the silent desperation of people hoping to escape before the royal family started having emotions. Selene noticed, because of course she did, and dismissed them with a small nod. They bowed and left quickly. The door closed. The wards shifted with a low hum, soft enough that my skin prickled instead of flinching.
For a moment, there were only five of us. That should have made it easier. It did not. Without the attendants, there was no one left to perform for. I could feel my own pulse beating too fast beneath the gown, the crown against my hair, the baby’s tiny warmth low in my body, Cassie’s hand hovering near my back because she was trying to let me decide whether I wanted touch. I wanted it. I also wanted to crawl out of my skin and hide under a lab bench until everyone forgot fae courts existed. Both things were true, which felt inefficient.
Selene crossed the room and stopped in front of me. “Mira.”
“No big sister voice,” I said, staring somewhere near her shoulder. “I am being held together by spite, tailoring, and whatever Cassie did to my breakfast tea.”
“I added honey,” Cassie said.
“Suspicious.”
“You were nauseous.”
“I remain suspicious.”
Selene’s hand touched the edge of my mantle, barely smoothing a fold. It was such a sister thing to do that my throat tightened before I could brace for it. Not princess. Not heir. Not the woman who could smile through a roomful of vipers. My sister, fixing fabric because her hands needed somewhere to put the fear.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted, and hated how small it sounded.
Selene’s face did not change much, but her fingers stilled. “Neither do I.”
I looked at her then. “That is supposed to make me feel better?”
“No,” she said. “It is supposed to be true.”
The awful thing was that it did help. A little. Selene always looked like certainty from a distance. Up close, I could see the cracks she kept polished over: the faint tightness around her eyes, the way she held her shoulders, the way Mother’s absence sat between us like another piece of furniture no one wanted to acknowledge because acknowledging it might make it real enough to break.
“She should be here,” I said.
Selene’s gaze dropped for half a breath. “Yes.”
There were too many feelings in that one word: anger, fear, love, old obedience, new grief. Mine matched hers badly enough that I had to press my palm to my stomach to remind myself there was at least one thing inside me that did not belong to Mother, Summer, or the Solar. Cassie’s hand settled over mine, warm and steady, and I let it.
“I don’t want to execute him,” I said.
“I know,” Selene answered.
“And I don’t want mercy twisted into forgiveness.”
“Then we will not leave room for that.”
I let out a breath that shook more than I wanted it to. “You say that like law is a knife and you know exactly where to put it.”
Selene’s smile was small and tired. “Some lessons were useful.”
I hated that too. I hated how much Mother had given us that could still be used to survive her. I hated that Selene knew how to make judgment sound clean while I was still trying to make my stomach stop turning at the thought of Cassian in chains. I hated Cassian for making that complicated. I hated that even after everything he had done, even after Mira-at-sixteen and Mira-at-seventeen and Mira-now all had different reasons to despise him, some stupid part of me still saw cousin before criminal if I let myself look too long.
Vaeris spoke from behind Selene, her voice low and even. “The Solar will test you both.”
Aurora leaned back against the door with a humorless little smile. “That would be unwise.”
“It usually is,” Vaeris said. “They will do it anyway.”
I almost laughed. It came out more like a breath with edges.
Selene’s chin lifted. “Then they will learn.”
The floor warmed beneath my feet, not much, just enough that my body noticed before my mind could make excuses. Emberhall’s old heat rolled softly through the stone, up through the soles of my shoes, into my legs. My hand tightened under Cassie’s. The lamps did not flare. The windows did not rattle. Nothing dramatic happened, which somehow made it worse. Selene saw my face. “You felt that.”
“I felt something.”
Cassie’s fingers tightened around mine. “Mira?”
“I’m fine.” She gave me the look. “I am physically fine.”
“That qualifier continues to be terrible.”
“It continues to be accurate.”
Selene looked toward the floor, then back at me. She did not say what we were both thinking immediately, and I loved her a little for that. Then she said it anyway, because apparently we were doing honesty as a group punishment. “Emberhall answers Mother that way.”
My mouth went dry. “Great. Wonderful. Absolutely what I wanted before walking into a room full of people who think facial expressions are legal arguments.”
Aurora looked down at the floor as if considering whether she could challenge a palace to single combat. “Can it not?”
“Ask it,” Cassie said.
Aurora frowned. “I do not negotiate with architecture.”
“That seems wise,” Vaeris said.
Selene’s mouth twitched, and for one second I could almost pretend we were just getting dressed for some awful court dinner instead of a trial that would decide whether Cassian spent the rest of his life inside the Solglass Vault. The almost broke something in me. I inhaled carefully through my nose and tasted incense, gold polish, Cassie’s chilled vanilla musk beneath the court scents, and the faint rain-and-stargazer thread of my own magic. My body wanted to run. My magic wanted to answer whatever old thing had brushed the floor. My baby, apparently, wanted Cassie’s hand closer. Fantastic. Very democratic.
“We should go,” Selene said.
“Rude of time to keep happening.”
“It does that.”
Cassie adjusted one fold of my mantle, then leaned close enough that her breath brushed my ear. “You do not have to want the throne to sit on it.”
“That belongs embroidered on a pillow in hell.”
“I’ll commission one.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
No. I didn’t.
The corridor outside Selene’s wing had been cleared, which meant everyone had decided today needed pageantry and security in equal measure. Guards lined the walls in formal armor, faces forward, weapons still enough to look ceremonial and sharp enough to correct that assumption quickly. Emberhall smelled stronger beyond the chamber: hot stone, old flame, parchment, too many bodies waiting behind too many doors. I kept my hand in Cassie’s because I did not trust myself not to stim with the edge of my cuff until someone mistook it for royal nerves. Which it was. But nobles did not deserve the satisfaction of being right.
Ryven and Tharion waited near the corridor’s end. Ryven’s eyes went to Selene first, and the look on his face was so careful it almost hurt to witness. He wore dark formal court garb with silver-black accents, elegant and severe, every line of him restrained around whatever he wanted to say to her before she walked into that room. Selene’s hand twitched once at her side. He saw it but did not reach for her, and somehow that made it worse.
Tharion stood beside him in full military dress, black and ember-red, Ashfall and Summer command worked into the mantle over one shoulder. He looked over Selene, then me, then Cassie, Aurora, Vaeris, Ryven. Counting. Assessing. Making sure the pieces he cared about were still breathing.
“You are almost late,” he said.
I stared at him. “Good morning to you too.”
“It is a preventable condition.”
“I’m pregnant and wearing a government.”
Tharion blinked once. Ryven looked away. Selene pressed her lips together. Cassie, traitor that she was, said, “She is.”
Tharion sighed in a way that suggested the entire history of Summer military discipline had not prepared him for me specifically. “You look appropriate.”
“That is the worst compliment anyone has ever given me.”
“It was not a compliment.”
“Better. Hate it more.”
He stepped closer, and the humor thinned out of the air before he even spoke. “No one touches either of you today. No one approaches the dais without Ashen’s approval or mine. If the room shifts wrong, Aurora takes you and Cassandra through the east passage. Vaeris takes Selene through the inner archive corridor. Ryven and I hold the Solar.”
My fingers tightened around Cassie’s. “That sounds dramatic.”
“That is because successful attacks on princesses and High Ladies tend to destabilize courts.”
“Right. Love a family event with evacuation routes.”
His expression softened by the smallest possible amount. For Tharion, that was basically an emotional speech. “You are not alone on that dais.”
I looked at Selene. She looked back, steady and pale and perfect and terrified in the only ways I knew how to see.
“I know,” I said.
The herald waited near the carved doors to the Solar with a scroll in his hand and the expression of a man who had practiced the announcements enough times to distrust them. Behind the doors, the court murmured in that expensive way nobles had, all controlled sound and silk-draped speculation. My skin prickled. I could feel the room before I saw it. Too many eyes. Too many houses. Sunspire with its exposed rot. Thornspire waiting to turn any weakness into lace-trimmed poison. Pyrestone ready for judgment. Ashfall watching Tharion stand guard instead of prosecute. Stormvale present because Aurora was impossible to separate from them no matter where she stood. Moonwell and Starlight Vale somewhere beyond those doors, and Starveil moving under my skin like a second pulse.
The herald bowed. “Your Grace. Your Highnesses. My lords. My ladies.”
Tharion gave one sharp nod.
The doors opened, and heat rolled out.
The Solar rose beyond the threshold in tiers of emberstone and gold-veined marble, packed with nobles who had already taken their seats because only the royal party got announced. The high throne stood empty at the back of the dais beneath the great flame crest of House Firebrand. Mother’s throne. No one had covered it. No one had softened the absence. Before it, lower but still raised, two thrones waited side by side.
My steps almost forgot themselves. Cassie’s thumb brushed the side of my hand, just once. Enough.
The herald’s voice rang through the chamber. “His Grace, Duke Tharion Firebrand of Ashfall, General of the Summer Forces and Captain of the High Lady’s Guard.”
Tharion entered alone, each step measured, and crossed to the dais without bowing to the assembled houses. He took his place behind the twin thrones like a wall that had learned to breathe. The court quieted further.
The herald drew breath again. “Her Highness Mira Quinveil Firebrand of Eternal Summer, Duchess of Starveil—”
Every torch in the Solar went out.
Darkness dropped hard and immediate, broken only by daylight from the high windows and the starlit thread in my gown. The court forgot itself for one deliciously horrifying second. Someone inhaled too sharply. Someone else whispered a prayer. The crown against my hair warmed.
Silver light seeped through the emberstone.
I stopped moving.
Starveil was not in the room. It could not be. Except it was, somehow, not as walls or towers or black glass halls, but as a pressure through my bones, a cool old hand clamped over Summer’s mouth before the wrong title could finish leaving it. My stomach flipped so violently I almost missed Cassie going still beside me.
Oh. Fuck.
The herald had frozen with his scroll half-lifted.
I leaned toward him because apparently I was now the person responsible for correcting magical architecture during official proceedings. “Starveil would like to inform everyone, including me apparently,” I whispered, “that I am its High Lady.”
His eyes widened.
I nodded once, tiny and desperate.
He swallowed, looked at the dead torches, and lifted his voice again. “Her Majesty, High Lady Mira Quinveil Firebrand of Starveil, Princess of Eternal Summer, Queen of the Small Folk.” He paused, then added with admirable terror, “Are there any other titles you hold, Your Majesty?”
I closed my eyes for half a second and shook my head. Absolutely not. If the universe had another revelation planned, it could choke on it until after lunch.
Silver flame bloomed over the torches.
The sound that moved through the Solar was not loud. Summer had too much training for loud. But it was real. Silk shifted. Breath caught. Rings clicked faintly against chair arms. Cassie stepped beside me as the herald continued, “Accompanied by Queen’s Consort Cassandra Fairborn Firebrand, and Lady Aurora Ashvane Dawnbreak of Starveil, bloodsworn guard to Her Majesty.”
Cassie’s chin lifted at Queen’s Consort, and I felt the room take that blow too. Not human wife. Not embarrassing attachment. Not decorative consort. Mine, recognized by something older than the people trying to decide whether they approved of her. Aurora followed half a step behind and to my left, her face locked into guard stillness. I did not look at the Stormvale section. I could feel them noticing her anyway.
The floor warmed again. This time it was not cool Starveil silver. This was Summer. Heat moved through the aisle toward me, under the stone, beneath the rows of nobles, up through the air scented with flame and perfume and too much old blood. The torches burned gold red around silver cores. The crest above Mother’s empty throne brightened.
I wanted to turn around. I wanted the University of Dominveil, my cramped dorm room, a lecture hall full of students pretending not to panic before exams, Cassie stealing my notes and insisting she was improving them. I wanted to be late to a seminar, not early to judgment. I wanted a body that did not contain a child and a crown and whatever the hell Starveil had just announced to the entire court.
Instead, I walked.
The court watched me. Of course it did. But the watching changed as I moved down the aisle. It was not softer. Summer did not do soft. It was heavier, like the room had shifted its weight toward me before anyone inside it could decide whether that was politically convenient. My fingers wanted to twitch. I kept them still. Cassie stayed at my side. Aurora’s steps held behind mine. My heartbeat tried to climb out through my throat.
The throne on the right waited for me.
It should have looked temporary. It didn’t. I hated that most of all.
Cassie leaned close as we reached the dais. “Sit before they realize you’re thinking about arguing with the chair.”
“I hate that you know me.”
“I love that I know you.”
“Terrible timing.”
“Always.”
I sat.
Heat rose through the throne and into my spine, not burning, not even unpleasant, which was so much worse. The flames around the room lifted. No one screamed. Very impressive. Gold and red light washed over the tiers, and the silver threaded through it like Starveil had left fingerprints in Summer fire. I crossed one leg over the other because I needed to move before my body betrayed me. The court saw confidence. I knew that because the room reacted to it. Inside, I was counting my breaths and trying not to throw up on history.
The herald announced Selene. “Her Highness, Princess Selene Firebrand of Eternal Summer, Duchess of Emberhall.”
Selene entered with Ryven at her side and Vaeris behind her, and Emberhall knew her in a way that made something ache under my breastbone. The torches steadied as she crossed the Solar. She did not hurry. She did not look at Mother’s empty throne. She came to the dais and looked at me first.
I held her gaze.
Then she sat beside me, and the heat under the floor spread between the two thrones like the palace exhaling. The flames did not choose between us. I felt Selene’s presence settle at my side, calm on the surface and iron underneath, and for the first time since the attendants had fastened the mantle around my shoulders, I thought maybe I could survive the next hour without splitting open in front of every major house of Summer.
Ryven took his place beside Selene. Vaeris stood behind her. Cassie remained at my right, close enough that her shadow brushed my skirt. Aurora stood behind my left shoulder. Tharion stood behind us all.
The herald stepped forward again. “By authority of the Firebrand line, in the absence of High Lady Seara Firebrand, and under the lawful witness of the Solar, Her Majesty High Lady Mira Quinveil Firebrand of Starveil and Her Highness Princess Selene Firebrand of Eternal Summer shall preside over today’s proceedings. They shall hear charges, receive testimony, rule on matters of sentencing, and render final judgment on pressing matters of the Unseelie Summer Court.”
Final judgment landed heavier than the crown.
Below us, Summer waited. Sunspire sat rigid in sea-blue and gold, Maelion with his face carved into something too controlled to read, Lira near him pale and still, Darian and Nerissa seated where everyone could see they had chosen to be present. Nerissa’s chin was up. Darian’s hands were folded too neatly in his lap. Thornspire glittered around Zyrella like a poisonous garden. Pyrestone watched in black severity. Ashen Thorne stood below the dais, already apart from his house, High Enforcer in every brutal line of him. Ashfall held military stillness. Stormvale’s attention kept snagging behind me, no matter how politely they tried to hide it. Moonwell and Starlight Vale watched quietly, and that was somehow worse than open calculation.
I looked for Mother before I could stop myself.
Her throne was empty.
For one heartbeat, I hated her for not being there. Then I hated myself for the hatred. Cassie’s shadow touched my wrist, a small dark curl against my skin where no one else would see, and I breathed.
Ashen stepped forward and bowed first to Selene, then to me, equal depth, equal duration. The court noticed. Of course it did.
“Your Majesty,” he said. “Your Highness. With your leave, the Crown brings forward the matter of Cassian Firebrand of Sunspire.”
My stomach tightened.
Selene’s voice was smooth. “Proceed, Duke Thorne.”
The side doors opened. Cassian entered in embersteel and pale glass restraints, flanked by Pyrestone enforcers. He looked thinner than the last time I had seen him, but pride still held him upright. Hatred still kept his eyes bright. His gaze found me almost immediately, slid over the crown, the throne, Cassie at my side, Aurora behind me, the altered flames burning silver at their hearts.
His mouth curled. Cassie’s shadows sharpened. I kept my hand on the arm of the throne so no one would see it shake. Summer waited for me to speak, and the worst part was not that I felt it waiting. The worst part was that some old, terrified part of me knew it would listen.