Chapter 299: My Daughter Spoke Of You So Often

"Carrick," said Kaelen.

"Carrick."

"I’d like to put my fist through his face."

"I know," said Draeven. "You will not."

"Not yet."

"You will not at all."

"Spoilsport," said Kaelen.

"Hush," said Thorne.

The great carved doors stood before them.

They were enormous, twice the height of a man and bound in black iron, carved with the long sinuous shapes of three dragons coiled together. She had passed these doors a hundred times, as a maid, with her head down and a tray in her hands. She had never once seen them open.

A pair of guards in the king’s grey stood at either side. They looked straight ahead. One of them, she noticed, was sweating.

"Ready?" Draeven murmured.

She drew a slow breath.

She thought of Agnes’s brush rasping through her hair. She thought of Rowan’s wet face. She thought of Astraea in a pale room, saying you don’t belong to them. You belong to yourself. She thought of a hand curled around hers in a bathwater-warm silence, and a voice saying, you may be afraid and go anyway.

She lifted her chin.

"Yes," she said.

"Then let us begin."

He nodded to the guards.

They hauled on the great iron handles, and the doors swung inward with a deep slow groan. Light spilled out, bright and gold, and a roaring wave of sound met them, the murmur of two hundred voices cut off all at once, like a knife through cloth.

The hall opened before her.

It was vast. A long, high-vaulted chamber of white stone, lined with tall windows and tiers of carved benches, filled with men and women in the rich silks and furs of the old noble houses. Hundreds of faces turned toward the door. Hundreds of eyes found her. She felt them land on her skin like a physical weight.

She did not look down.

It’s my floor, she told herself. It’s my floor. It’s my floor.

She started walking.

Draeven’s arm was steady under her hand. Thorne’s shadow was cool at her back. Kaelen’s shoulder was warm at her side. They moved together through the great doors and down the long central aisle, and the murmurs rose and fell around them like waves on a shore. A woman in violet silk lifted a hand to her mouth. A man in a fur-trimmed coat sat back as though struck. Somewhere in the second row, someone whispered, that’s her, and someone else hissed, hush.

At the far end of the hall, on a low dais of white marble, a man stood waiting.

He was alone.

He stood in the center of the dais with his hands folded before him, as relaxed as a guest at a feast. He was tall, and lean, and handsome in a cold, silvered way, with grey at his temples and a face of perfect, pleasant composure. He wore a dark coat of fine cut, trimmed with silver, and a heavy ring on one finger that caught the light. His eyes were pale grey. They moved over the kings, one by one, with polite and careful interest.

Then they found her.

They lingered.

And Lord Carrick Greythorne smiled.

It was a warm smile. It was a charming smile. It reached his eyes and lit them, and it made him look, for one dizzying moment, like a kind and fatherly man who had been waiting a long time for a dear friend to arrive.

"Lady Morgana," he said.

His voice was smooth and low and carried to every corner of the hall.

"At last. My daughter spoke of you so often, I feel as though I already know you."

Nobody in the hall breathed.

Morgana felt it the way you feel a held note in a cathedral, a vast quiet pressed against her skin from every side. Two hundred nobles sat in their tiers of carved benches with their silks and their furs and their rings, and every one of them was looking at the same small point on the marble floor, the place where she had stopped walking.

Carrick Greythorne’s smile did not waver.

It was a very good smile. She could see why men trusted it. It was warm, and a little rueful, and it carried an invitation, the sort of smile a kind uncle gives a nervous child at a feast. She had seen that same smile once before, on a younger face, across a crowded room, just before a shout of thief.

She did not smile back.

She did not look down, either. It’s my floor, she thought, and let her hand rest lightly on Draeven’s arm.

"My lords," Carrick said.

He turned from her, with a graceful half bow to the three kings, and it was only then that she understood the whole room had been waiting for him to speak. His voice was pitched to carry. It rolled out over the benches, smooth and low and unhurried.

"Your Majesties. Honored lords and ladies. Elder Cedric. I thank you for your patience in assembling on such short notice."

Cedric stood at the foot of the dais, a tall stooped figure in grey, his long silver beard falling to his chest. He inclined his head. His face gave nothing away.

"You have the floor, Lord Carrick," said Draeven.

"I am grateful."

He took a step forward.

"I would like to begin," Carrick said, "with an apology."

A murmur ran through the benches.

"I have wronged this house." He pressed one hand to his chest, over the heart, and lowered his eyes. "My daughter, Isolde, has caused great grief to this court. I will not make excuses. I will not tell you that she is innocent. I am her father, and I know her faults better than any man living." His voice thickened. "She has been unwell. For some time. A sickness of the spirit. I should have seen it. I did not, and a young woman has suffered for it."

He lifted his eyes.

They landed on Morgana. They were pale, and sorrowful, and perfectly clear.

"I beg her pardon," Carrick said. "If she will give it."