Chapter 9
Chapter 9: The Problem with Standing (Which Is That Eventually Someone Tries to Make You Stop) — The Problem with Light (Which Is That It Shows Everything) — The Problem with Truth (Which Is That Nobody Actually Wants It, They Just Want to
With Vespera's forces approaching, Anya and her allies prepare for a confrontation that may not be a battle but something stranger. Seraphina, the First Vampire, manifests fully within the Academy for the first time in centuries, drawn by the reactivation of the Covenant energy in the wards. Korvus, still hidden within the Academy, makes his attempt on Lyrael's life but is intercepted not by a guard but by Jena, whose mixed blood triggers an unexpected reaction in his daggers — the weapons that never miss, miss. Selena discovers that the blood-sickness affecting both vampires and hybrids is not a disease but a symptom of the broken Covenant — the two species are literally dying from the separation, and the cure is not a medicine but a reunification. Vespera arrives not with an army but with a proposition: a formal Council hearing, held at the Academy, with all parties present, to determine the truth of the Covenant and Anya's role in it. It is not peace. It is not war. It is something more dangerous than either — a trial where the truth is both the evidence and the crime, and where Anya must stand not against weapons but against words, which are, as anyone who has ever attended a Council meeting can tell you, far more lethal.
The thing about standing is that it sounds noble until you've been doing it for six hours, and then it sounds like a lower back problem.
Anya had been standing in the courtyard since dawn. The sun — which, despite what certain romantic novels about vampires would have you believe, did not actually incinerate them but did make everything feel irritatingly bright — was now at the angle where it hit the rebuilt wall and reflected off the crystallized blood in the mortar, throwing prismatic light across the courtyard like a disco designed by someone who thought death was a vibe. The wall she'd rebuilt with her own blood was still humming faintly, a vibration she could feel through the soles of her boots, through the bones of her feet, through the marrow of her legs, up into the place where her magic sat coiled and restless and very much awake.
The magic was the problem. No — the magic was a problem. The standing was the problem. No — the standing was a choice. The approaching army was the problem. Vespera was the problem. The fact that Anya had not slept in what felt like a geological epoch was, if not the problem, then at least a contributing factor to the general quality of her decision-making, which, to be fair, had not started from a high baseline.
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