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Petra holds up her hands in a quelling gesture. “Lothar Riosemek has lied to you and encouraged your fears to stop you from taking him to task for his own misdeeds. He and his followers are the only ones who’ve been inflicting dangerous magic on you.”
“He’s not riven,” another voice calls out. “He sacrificed his whole arm to the gods. That’s an honest gift.”
“Honest gifts can still be corrupted by?—”
A woman cuts in. “You’re trying to confuse us. We know the riven are fiends. Why would you have anything to do with that kind of magic? The gods would never support that!”
The lead rider from the Order nods. “Very true. This woman has no right to participate in the kingship trials, let alone determine how they should be run. What does she know about worthiness?”
What do the scourge sorcerers know? If they were following their history, they’d never have gone down their dark path of sacrificing the livelihoods of others in the first place.
The rider points toward the platform. “Lothar will conduct the real trials, the way they should be done. All of this ought to be torn apart.”
He isn’t outright telling our audience to do that for him, but several figures surge forward regardless. When the Black Talons move to block them, blades clang together.
More of the onlookers push in as if roused by the apparent aggression, even though their companions were the ones who provoked it.
My stomach sinks. Our soldiers and guards shift on their feet, poised but uncertain.
Casimir was right about one thing: Petra does need the support of the common people. We can’t prove her worthiness for the throne in front of grass stained with the blood of Florian’s citizens.
No one knows how the kingship trials are meant to be, I want to shout. Barely any record of them exists. And the one sure thing is that the gods judged them, not any kind of man or woman.
What good would it do to say that, though? Why would any of these people take my word for it?
They don’t know me. It isn’t as if we can ask the godlen to come down and weigh in?—
As my gaze sweeps over the increasingly tumultuous crowd, it snags on the row of daimon standing near the platform. Their faces are taut with confusion—they know they’re meant to fend off scourge sorcerers, but they wouldn’t have been prepared for this kind of “attack” from ordinary civilians.
An unnatural glow shimmers in their eyes with the inhuman magic they’re prepared to send out.
We don’t have godlen right here among us, but we do have the creatures that are closest to them.
The pieces of a plan crash together in my head so swiftly the breath spills from my lungs.
I don’t have time to study every detail of it, to pick it apart for flaws. Someone has to act now, before the weapons my parents forged for us become our undoing.
I sprint over to where Rheave stands and grasp his arm. “I need your help with the other daimon. When I ask for it, I want you all to show off the unearthly energy you have. If you can bring even more daimon here, ones that aren’t captured, to show their support, that would be even better.”
He gives the briefest sound of acknowledgment, and I heft myself onto the platform. I yank my spine up straight there at the edge next to Casimir.
The courtesan steps back from his lantern as if giving me the stage. The crowd quiets for a moment, peering at me past the figures standing in their way. Waiting to see what’s about to happen.
My face prickles all across my scarred skin, knowing they’ll make note of it before anything else. I shove that thought aside and square my shoulders as if I don’t care.
“I’ve studied the history of Silana all the way back to the times before the Darium empire invaded,” I declare in as forceful a voice as I can summon. “There aren’t many records about the kingship trials, but it’s clear they were put before the godlen to judge who was worthy, not any mortal. It’s time to seek out divine opinions. And we have the representatives of the gods right here with us, the creatures who are far closer to the godlen than any of us humans.”
As I brandish my arm toward the gathered daimon, Rheave takes his cue. He says something to his fellow captured creatures.
In an instant, a glow jitters over their skin. It quivers over their heads and down their arms like lightning in slow motion.
They must have been able to summon other wandering spirits too. A few sparks flit through the air and beam into brighter spots of light above the daimon in human form. More streak across the fields and swarm to join them.
The supernatural glow spreads out in front of the platform, shining over us all. I can feel its warmth glancing off the ridges on my face, and suddenly I don’t care anymore.
These scars show I’m not just some pampered college student. I’ve fucked up. I’ve worked to rectify my mistakes and deserve the life I’ve built.
I’ve been through trials of my own and come out the other side, and I know my chosen godlen smiles down on me.
