#Chapter 36: The Verdict

(Violet’s POV) They stood when I entered. Not out of respect or fear but out of awareness. The kind that settles into the bone when a room realizes the air has changed—when every whispered theory, every hushed debate, every what-if and no-she-wouldn’t finally walks through the doors wearing real skin and a name the court could no longer erase. The gallery was full. Not full in the ordinary sense, but pressed wall to wall—every tier packed with nobles in crests I hadn’t seen in years, emissaries flown in from mountain courts and desert strongholds, former allies of my mother’s house, and enemies now playing neutrality like it might still save them. There was no music. No formal announcement. Just the echo of my boots on polished stone. I wore no crown, no veil—only armor. Steel-black, hand-forged, trimmed at the shoulders in deep charcoal—the color of my mother’s lineage—set with the Reed sigil in full silver across my chest. Not the delicate version from old court station