Chapter 22 · Blood on Certification Day

The certification hall smelled like rust and old sweat. Kai kept his right wrist angled away from the light, the fresh heir seal still burning under the wrapped linen Vera had tied on him an hour ago. She'd done it fast, her fingers cold and steady, not looking at his face the whole time.

"Don't let them see it," she'd said. "Not till we know what your father put in you."

Now Kai stood in a line of twenty candidates, all of them younger than him, most of them bored. The Certification wasn't supposed to be hard. You showed your sponsor seal, you broke a practice lock with whatever gate-touch you had in you, and the family vault opened its guest log. Easy. Except Kai's seal wasn't from a sponsor. It was from a man still bleeding on the other side of a door Kai shouldn't have opened.

Vera leaned against the back wall, arms crossed, her red coat gone. She'd swapped it for something gray and plain, the kind of thing a low-rank retainer would wear. But her eyes hadn't left him.