CHAPTER 86: THE BLADE IN JUDGMENT (2)

"I saw men who train for tournaments facing war," Soren said carefully. "They fought as they were taught to fight. It wasn’t enough."

Ayren’s eyes narrowed slightly. "And Ashgard’s failure? How do you explain that?"

"He underestimated his enemy," Soren replied. "We all did."

"We?" Ayren leaned forward, voice sharpening. "You place yourself alongside lords and trained knights? How presumptuous for someone elevated by circumstance."

The insult struck with precision, finding the old wound of Soren’s origins. Heat rose in his throat, anger threatening to override caution.

"He is my Blade." Veyr’s voice cut through the tension, cold and absolute. "You will not break him before he’s tempered."

Soren glanced sideways, surprised by the intervention. Veyr hadn’t moved, his posture still relaxed, but something in his voice carried unmistakable authority. Not protection, possession. The distinction was crucial.

Ayren leaned back, a flicker of something unreadable passing between the brothers. "Of course," he conceded with practiced grace. "I merely seek to understand what you’ve claimed, brother."

Callen observed this exchange with the detached interest of a man watching pieces move across a game board. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the weight of judgment.

"If your Blade carries some connection to our enemy, Veyr, then his strength reflects on you, son." The words fell like stones into still water. "See that he does not falter."

Veyr inclined his head slightly, acknowledging both the warning and the responsibility it entailed.

Callen turned his pale gaze back to Soren. "House Velrane does not tolerate mysteries unless they serve our purpose. You survived when others died. Either that makes you valuable, or it makes you suspect."

The lord’s fingers tapped once more against the obsidian table, the sound unnaturally loud in the chamber’s silence.

"If you prove yourself, you will be sharpened, honed, forged into a weapon worthy of Velrane." Callen’s voice remained emotionless, stating facts rather than making threats. "If you falter, you will be discarded without hesitation. House Velrane does not carry dead weight. Remember that."

The words settled over Soren like a physical weight. Not a threat, a simple statement of how the world worked in House Velrane’s eyes. Utility above all. Value measured in results, not intentions.

Ayren leaned back, faintly amused. "Perhaps he’s sharper than he looks," he remarked to no one in particular. "Or perhaps he’s hiding the rust well."

Veyr’s hand moved to rest briefly on his sword hilt, the gesture carrying its own silent message. A reminder of where Soren stood, claimed as Veyr’s Blade, but not yet proven worthy of that position.

Callen rose, signaling the meeting’s end. He looked down at Soren with those pale, merciless eyes that had witnessed the rise and fall of countless nobles over decades of political warfare.

"A wolf does not ask if the cub can hunt," he said, his voice soft yet carrying to every corner of the chamber. "It watches. It waits. It culls."

With that final pronouncement, he turned and left through a door Soren hadn’t noticed before, a private exit for the lord of the house. Ayren followed after a moment, his departure marked by a final assessing glance that promised future conversations under less formal circumstances.

Only Veyr remained, standing close enough that Soren could smell the faint scent of ink and parchment that clung to his clothes.

"Come," he said simply, moving toward the main doors.

Soren followed, feeling the weight of what had just occurred settling over him like a shroud. He had been measured, assessed, neither fully accepted nor completely rejected. The middle ground was perhaps the most dangerous position of all.

As they climbed the stairs back toward the manor’s upper levels, the shard against his chest finally stirred, Valenna’s presence returning like the first breath of winter air.

’You’ve stepped deeper into the den, little knife,’

she whispered, her voice cold with warning. ’Now the wolves decide if you run with them, or feed them.’

Soren leaned against the cool stone wall outside the council chamber, trying to steady his breath. His legs felt oddly weak, as if he’d just finished one of Kaelor’s brutal training sessions rather than simply standing before three Velranes. The corridor stretched empty in both directions, torchlight casting his shadow long and distorted against the opposite wall.

’They didn’t kill me,’ he thought, a grim victory in itself.

He pushed away from the wall, wincing as his still-healing ribs protested the movement. The manor felt different tonight, colder, more watchful. Servants who normally offered small nods of acknowledgment now vanished around corners at his approach. Word had spread. The marked one. The survivor. The suspect.

As he turned toward the stairs leading back to the upper levels, a figure detached from the shadows ahead. Tall, slim, moving with the liquid grace of someone who had studied movement as an art form. Ayren Velrane.

"Walk with me," the younger Velrane son said, his tone making it clear this was not a request.

Soren fell into step beside him, keeping a careful distance. Ayren led him not upward toward the main hall but sideways, through a narrow corridor he’d never noticed before. Their footsteps echoed in perfect synchronization, a rhythm that somehow felt deliberate on Ayren’s part.

"My brother has claimed you," Ayren said after they’d walked in silence for several moments. "An interesting choice."

Soren said nothing. Every conversation with a Velrane was a trap waiting to be sprung.

"You wonder why I’ve intercepted you." Ayren glanced sideways, those amethyst eyes catching the torchlight like gemstones. "Perhaps you think I mean to threaten you. Or warn you. Or perhaps recruit you to some scheme against my brother."

The corridor opened into a small courtyard Soren had never seen before. A private garden, enclosed by high walls and open to the night sky above. A single tree grew at its center, its bare branches reaching toward the stars like skeletal fingers.

Ayren stopped beside a small stone bench, though he made no move to sit. "I merely wish to understand what my brother sees in you. Veyr rarely takes interest in... well, in anything requiring sustained effort."

The insult was so casually delivered that Soren almost missed it. He kept his face carefully neutral, though his jaw tightened slightly.

"Nothing to say?" Ayren’s mouth curved in what might have been amusement. "Perhaps that’s wisdom. Or perhaps it’s simply the habit of those who grew up knowing silence was safer than speech."

He circled Soren slowly, studying him from different angles with the detached interest of a collector examining a curiosity.

"You survived when knights and nobles fell," Ayren continued. "Either you possess qualities they lacked, or you were deemed too insignificant to kill. Which do you believe it was?"