Frey

Chapter 4

In the center of the Council chamber, I waited for my trail, listening as they called my full name. I had always hated it—to be named for the ancient word for "elf" was bad enough, but the flowery string of words that followed just made me cringe. I had never known my father, but given that they were traditionally responsible for choosing the names of their firstborn, I blamed him for it.

"Elfreda Georgiana Suzetta Glaforia stands before High Council..." The formal tone of the speaker severed my rambling thoughts, dragging me back to a frightening reality. What will they do to me? How bad could the punishment be for sneaking into a library and stealing a book? Maybe it wasn't even about that. Maybe Fannie had told them I broke into the vault. But they were my family's things too, so it couldn't be that bad.

She could lie.

I swallowed hard. Maybe it was about something else entirely. Maybe a dead bird.

A guard approached me. I had been drifting again, lost in thought. What had they said? The council leaders were focused on the pendant at my chest, where it lay exposed against my skin in the V of the low-cut gown. They had ordered the guard to remove it. I didn't understand why they would want my mother's pendant, but I knew better than to ask. I knew what would happen if I spoke before being instructed.

The guard stood facing me, both hands poised to take the leather chain over my head as I stared on insensibly. His touch lingered, and I glanced down, surprised to see that he had a firm grip on the necklace but wasn't lifting it—couldn't lift it. I looked to the council leaders as the guard turned toward the table and decisively stepped away from me.

"The crystal will not be removed," he said. Though he spoke only to the elders, it set into motion a wave of murmurs that filled the room, reverberating up the high ceiling.

A council elder silenced the witnesses then trained his gaze on me. "Who instructed you in fusion?"

I didn't have an answer. I'd never heard of fusion. I wasn't sure what to do, and I looked out of desperation toward the only person in the room who'd ever helped me. Chevelle was watching me, surprise clear on his face. Whatever I'd been accused of, he hadn't expected it.

The council elders mistook the exchange as an answer. "Chevelle Vattier, you have led this fusion?"

His head whipped back toward the council table, and he shot out a forceful "no."

They focused once more on me. "I ask again, Elfreda. Who taught you the magic to seal yourself to the crystal?"

I was at a loss. I stood helplessly as Chevelle spoke up. "Elfreda." He'd used my given name, I hoped simply because we were in a formal setting and not because of whatever horrible thing I had been accused of. "Where did you learn how to fuse the pendant with your blood?" he pleaded.

Fuse the pendant with my blood? What is he talking about? I heard someone behind me: "How did she know to keep it from being removed?" And someone else: "Who even left it with her?"

It came together then, the feeling I'd had when I'd awakened and placed it around my neck, the part of the dream I'd shaken off as I stood before the basin washing up, cleaning the blood from my hands and from the pendant. I wanted to explain, to tell them what I'd seen in the dream, but it was foggy and half-remembered. I was too slow to pull it into thought.

I was too late. They had already passed judgment—harsh judgment—on me. The deep voice boomed with finality: "... convicted of practicing dark magic..."

The elder's staff slammed against its wooden base, echoing into the tumult of discord rising behind me. I reached out my hand to plead for mercy, to beg to be given a chance to explain, and he began to list my lineage for the records. I was flooded with fury at the injustice as I heard my mother's name. My outstretched hand became a fist.