“Finish what you started, Kael.”
The voice fell from the gallery like something dropped into a well. Its echo rolled through the courtyard and into the palace halls, brief and terrible. For a beat nobody moved; the air tightened so that breath itself seemed an act of treason. The rope looped over the railing swung slowly as if testing the patience of the world. Faces upturned—guards, servants, courtiers—caught in a frozen chorus. Rowan’s jaw flexed so hard the vein stood out; the queen’s hand tightened on her ledger; even the surgeon, Mara, who had seen a hundred men die and a hundred more made whole, looked as though she had been struck.
“Who speaks?” someone shouted, more bravado than belief. The voice came small and weak in the swell of sound.
“Who asked for a play?” a harsher tone a
