Lady Maire Vale arrived in the Court at dusk wearing black lace, pale blue stones, and enough rings to purchase a minor province.
Sera returned from the training field to find the old woman seated beneath the Vale banner as if the chair had been built around her bones. She was small, silver-haired, and upright in the way knives were upright when placed point-first into wood. Every finger bore a ring. Moonstone, sapphire, iron, old silver, black glass, bone. Her eyes were the same gray as Silas’s, but where his carried gentleness even when he lied, hers had none of that softness. Lady Maire Vale looked like a woman who had outlived several moralities and found each one impractical.
Silas stood beside her.
He looked deeply unhappy.
That improved Sera’s first impression of the old woman.
