The council convened three days later to decide Selene's fate.
It was held in the great hall, formally, with the senior advisors, the border commanders, Elder Moss, Captain Dara, and Rowan seated at the long table. As heir I sat among them now without question, my place at that table settled in a way it had not been even a month before.
Selene was brought in under guard and stood before the assembled council with her hands bound and her posture carefully composed, though I could see the effort it cost her.
Advisor Crane, whose office had unknowingly been the channel through which false information had once passed, read the formal account of her actions. The years of manipulation against Kael. The deliberate cruelty toward me, born from simple ambition rather than any larger design. The
