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I offer no private evidence of devotion. The Council has already used enough of it.

"The edict calls her influence contamination because it cannot imagine a human strengthening a demon house. That failure belongs to the law, not to her."

A murmur travels through the lower galleries.

The iron-grey guard she treated sits with the arena patrols near the western gate. Beside him, a bone-white Volvath folds his arms over his chest. Neither speaks, but both look toward the Matrons rather than Korgath.

"Honor requires loyalty that survives command. The Crown stripped House Obsidius from me yesterday. Grolm still carried my challenge, and guards who lost my seal protected the apothecary. That loyalty survived because value is stronger than ownership."

The word members draws another reaction.

I allow it.

"Royal Edict Seventeen protects fear. It punishes a demon who values a human and bonds the Council cannot reassign. Fear is not purity. It is weakness wearing an old seal."

One of the Matrons rises.

Her black horns curve over a crimson mane, and her scaled hands close around the arms of her throne.

"You speak as if attachment makes blood fertile," she says.

"I speak as if stable alliances make houses survive long enough for blood to matter."

"Humans breed under assignment. Affection is unnecessary."

"Then why are assignments failing?"

Anger moves through her posture.

I press the attack.

"How many breeders concealed illness from owners who saw them as replaceable? How many children were lost because healers ignored human knowledge?"

House Grolnok is not named. It occupies the question regardless.

"A law that makes cruelty proof of loyalty selects for poor judgment. Our survival cannot afford it."

Zira watches from the central throne.

Her face remains composed. Red eyes hold mine while lightning reflects along the carvings in her horns.

"What remedy do you demand?" she asks.

"Repeal the edict. Judge a house by the strength it produces, not the distance its lord maintains from a human partner. Permit loyalty to prove itself by result."

"And your sentence?"

"Falls when the law beneath it is exposed as dishonorable."

I request neither title nor lands. The challenge must change the measure that condemned us.

Korgath laughs from the gallery.

"Us," he says. "The exile still speaks as if the human stands with him. She is absent from the arena and wise enough to remain so."

The contestant's gate opens.

Iron chains pull through the wall. The heavy black panels separate beneath the western gallery, revealing the passage beyond.