Chapter 38 · The Monster on Trial

The bells of Riftport began before dawn.

Not the alarm bells. Those had a cracked, desperate rhythm, three strikes and a pause, meant for fire, invasion, or a breach in the wall. These bells rang in a slow procession, one bronze note rolling after another until the sound crawled beneath Xia Lan’s skin.

A judgment bell.

She stood in the iron cage bolted to the back of a military wagon, wrists bound in black restraint wire, blood dried beneath her left wing. Every jolt of the wheels pulled at the scorched feathers. The pain was clean. Manageable. Easier than the silence inside her head.

Nolan sat across from her.

He had been chained to the opposite wall, one shoulder pressed against the wagon’s splintered boards. His uniform was stiff with dust and blood. The artillery blast had torn through his coat and left a dark, swollen line beneath his ribs, but he had refused the field surgeon’s sedative.