The council chamber held the cold, formal weight of a room built for people to lose things in gracefully. Valerica had spent six years being told what an elder council chamber looked like, and now that she stood inside one, she found her mother's descriptions had been accurate about the architecture and had said nothing at all about the actual weight of the silence.
Her father did not stand when she entered. That was the first test, and she had known it was coming since the letter.
She did not wait to be invited to speak, which was the first answer.
"You wrote that you would attend," Alistair Sol said. "And that what you bring is yours."
"Yes."
