Chapter 15 · Trial of the Wife

They didn't give me time to sleep.

The council summoned me three hours after Kane and I climbed out of that basement. Three hours after my mother's voice had whispered through the dark, after Kane sealed the door again without explaining what the hell we'd just heard. My arm was still bandaged. Nora's stitches pulled every time I moved.

Kane tried to come with me. The enforcer at my door said no.

"Mrs. Rook," the woman said, and I hated how the name sounded in her mouth. "You're summoned alone."

Kane's jaw tightened. The black marks on his neck hadn't faded completely. "She's injured."

"The council is aware."

I touched his wrist before he could do something stupid. "I'll be fine."

Liar. We both knew it.

The council chamber sat in the oldest part of Vesper City, where the buildings still had iron bars on the windows and bloodstains the rain never washed away. They made me wait in a glass box in the center of the room. Literally. Four walls of enchanted glass, a single chair, and a light overhead that buzzed like a dying fly.

I counted seven council members on the raised platform in front of me.