“No.” She swallowed again. “My lord.”

There was courage in the answer… and beneath that, despair. As though the enormity of her predicament had finally struck home. Staring at her, Morgan saw her brilliant blue eyes fill with tears.

If I don’t speak up, they’ll slay her. And if I do…

If he didn’t he would find it hard to live with himself.

“Lord Varen, I think perhaps it’s an overstatement to call this a capital crime,” he said, striving to sound indifferent. “I say we bind the insolent child so she cannot bloody anyone else’s nose while contemplating the manifest error of her ways.”

Sallis slewed round in his chair. “Are you addled, Danfey? Binding is for misdemeanours.”

“You’d put her to death, Lord Arkley? For doing no more harm to Hahren than if she’d slapped him across the face?”

“But she didn’t slap him, did she?” Shari said, vicious. “She used an incant. She broke the law.”

“If her intent had been to kill, Lord Hahren would surely be dead. So it’s my contention there was no murderous intent, in which case this is not a capital crime, therefore—”

“Start down that road and we will reach no helpful destination,” said Sallis. “Bend the law for this unruly girl and I tell you, the day will come when we’ll regret our foolish leniency!”

Hating him, Morgan glared. “I prefer to think of it as mercy.”

“Word games!” Sallis snarled. “I’ll not play them. Besides, the end result will be the same, as Lord Varen rightly points out. Chaos. Lawlessness. An overturning of the social order, which has served us for centuries. And I for one will not abide by—”

“Actually?” Venette’s mild voice halted the tirade. “I feel Morgan has a valid point. I’m sorry.” She flicked Varen a look. “But if you mean to sit there, Sallis, and deny all knowledge of magical dust-ups caused by hot-blooded young bucks in any number of First Families, then although it would pain me, I’d have to call you a liar.”

Sallis Arkley drew back as though she’d spat on him. “That’s different, Venette, and you know it!”

“Really?” she said, still mild. “Lord Arkley, just recently your son was involved in an unfortunate situation, and he was given the benefit of the doubt. Are you saying that if the prank had run the contrary way you’d be baying for that other young man’s blood? For no better reason than his family is unranked?”

Morgan held his breath. Of course he would. But how could Arkley admit it and not brand himself unfit for the Council? Unfit for any power at all? He risked a glance at Barl Lindin. She stood before them as though carved from alabaster, her linen-covered breasts scarcely lifting as she breathed. Did she realise her brimming tears had spilled onto her pale cheeks?