Lillian returned to her rooms after her morning walk with Glory a few days later to find Dorian and Chaol waiting for her in the sitting room with grim faces. Dorian wore the same white clothes he had to the first garden party she'd gone to, and Chaol wore his usual uniform.
"Why do you do this to me?" Lillian asked.
Dorian managed a small smile. "The king requires the presence of all the nobles. Elaine's getting your dress ready, we have to be quick this morning. It's never good when he wants us to assemble this early."
"I'm not a noble," Lillian reminded him as she walked into her bedroom. Elaine had her Samhuinn dress laid out - she'd added white lace to it across the shoulders, not quite enough to be a cape.
"Tell him that," Dorian said, following her in. Chaol leaned against the door frame, arms crossed.
"It's not just nobles," Elaine told them as she helped Lillian step out of the pale green morning dress and Dorian lifted the grey dress for Lillian to step into. She didn't have to worry about changing shifts thanks to the high neck.
She glanced into the mirror to judge the effect: the white looked good against her dark skin, healthy and no longer ashen as it had been in the mines. Really she and Nehemia looked so much better in white than any of the Adarlanian royals.
Dorian started doing up the buttons on the back as Elaine finished hanging the green dress and set a wig on the vanity stand. It was the one with the pearls from the royal audience.
"I thought we were done with those," Lillian said.
"Not today," Elaine replied through a sudden mouthful of hairpins. Dorian ducked so she could reach over him to pin Lillian's hair ruthlessly to her scalp.
Lillian hadn't realized how long her hair had gotten, though she should have when she stopped wearing wigs. Chaol came over to hold more pins for Elaine so she could keep talking.
"Everyone's been told to come to the judgment hall, servants included," Elaine continued. "Philippa says Lord Rickard's family and all of their personal servants were arrested."
"His guard and his assassin would have been his closest," Lillian began, though his assassin was dead, wasn't he.
Elaine cut her off. "Not just two. All of them. His wife and mistress and children, too."
"How do you arrest an infant?" Lillian asked, trying to look at Chaol, but Elaine stilled her head.
"Easily," Chaol said grimly. "Infants don't fight as hard as shopkeepers' daughters."
"Give me the glass shoes," Lillian ordered Chaol as Elaine went for the wig.
"You don't like them," Chaol complained even as he obeyed.
"Liking them or not is immaterial, and they go with the outfit," Lillian replied, forestalling Elaine and the wig. "Do we have one with silver or mirrors?"
"This is not the time to shine like a beacon," Dorian snapped, though he finished fastening the buttons up the back of her neck gently still. "You don't want his attention during this sort of thing, Lillian."
"You're scared," she said.
"Sane people are," he retorted.
"I don't want him looking at you, and I don't want him looking at Nehemia or Kaltain either," Lillian explained, thinking, when did I start collecting heirs to thrones? One was enough. "He's not going to do anything to me right now."
"He likes her," Elaine said, which made all three of them look at her where she was swapping wigs. "The servants talk about it. He thinks she's amusing."
"That's even more terrifying," Dorian told Elaine. "Lillian -"
Lillian took the glass slippers from Chaol and slipped into them. "Wig, Elaine."
"Promise you won't do anything stupid," Dorian said helplessly. "This is not the time to be a hero. He will punish you if you try anything."
"Better idea," Chaol said, when Lillian failed utterly to promise anything. "If you do something stupid, Lillian, remember that we probably will too."
"Don't you dare," Lillian snapped.
"See how it feels?"
"I'm not the heir to the throne," Lillian said, and made for the door without taking the gloves Elaine reached for.
The throne room was packed when they arrived, and Elaine split off to join the servants. Amerie managed to secure Lillian a place next to her, though Dorian had to stand next to his father with his brother and stepmother, and Chaol followed him. Nehemia stood near the dais this time, Kaltain beside her and Erick beside Kaltain.
The place Amerie saved was not, to Lillian's surprise, at the front.
"You don't want to be at the front for one of these," Amerie said grimly. "We make the new people stand there."
Lillian frowned and looked around again. Only nobles and people in palace livery were in attendance. "What is this?"
Amerie leaned in close and said quietly in her carefully formal schoolroom Eyllwean, "A trial, I am told. The king makes an example of someone."
"Someone being Rickard?"
Amerie shook her head. "He is dead already. Philippa did not say?"
Lillian wasn't proud that her first thought was, Just Hollin now. "Then why all of this?"
"Everything has to be paid for," Amerie replied, and switched back to Adarlanian. "If we're lucky it will be over quickly and you can go back to whatever you were doing."
"Lady Lillian, did the prince say anything?" asked a noble Lillian recognized as the man in the yellow tunic from the garden party. He was more somberly dressed now, as were the rest of them.
"Just because the prince tells Lillian things doesn't mean she can tell you, Lord Mullison," Amerie said, sounding conciliatory. "There's a reason he trusts her."
"Of course," Mullison said, backing away.
Lillian shot him a smile before looking back at Amerie and saying in Eyllwean, "Does Dorian know?"
"Let us hope," Amerie said in the same language.
The king stepped to the edge of the dais, and Lillian noted that this time it was a light from a different high-set window that bathed him in early morning light and made him glow. As she had suspected earlier, no one off the dais could make out his face.
Just because she knew what was happening didn't mean it didn't work.
"There are few things worse than losing family," the king began. Lillian heard a side door open and some murmuring, but her attention was locked on the king, exactly as the entire set up was meant to ensure.
"I can only think of one," he continued, and Lillian was jostled by the people in the front trying to back up. Amerie grabbed her sleeve to stay next to her as she dug in her heels and held her ground.
On the floor of the throne room, where two guards had tossed it, lay a headless body. One of the guards toed the head next to it so it rolled, allowing Lillian to see who it had been.
Beheaded is about as dead as dead can be, Lillian thought, looking at Rickard's gaping mouth and frozen face.
"Only an attempt on my children," the king finished.
That the king wanted his children to try to kill each other being immaterial, apparently. Or did he think Dorian and Hollin would talk out their problems politely?
Lillian looked at the dais to see if Cain stood with Hollin as Chaol stood with Dorian, and saw Nesryn to one side, holding Gwyneth's face against her neck to keep the princess from looking.
The sight made her remember that Rickard's children had been arrested too, and she whipped around to stare at Amerie. Amerie looked away, towards another little cleared area, where a larger group of guards surrounded a huddled group of servants and two pale-complexioned well-dressed women, one dark haired and one blonde, both of whom clutched at four children, apparently regardless of which child went with which woman.
"You see?" Amerie whispered, in Adarlanian but directly into Lillian's ear. Lillian might not have heard her even then, she spoke so softly, but no one else moved at all. "Roland could never compete, and he is not my only family."
Lillian looked back at the king.
"Lady Rosamund, step forward," the king said.
The blonde well dressed woman let out a shuddering breath, passing the two children clinging to her skirts to the dark haired one. She was one of Georgina's companions from her rides, Lillian realized. Her pale blonde hair nearly matched her dress, and it was much more flattering than the blue Lillian had noted all those mornings past.
At least she'll look good when she dies, Lillian thought, and told herself to shut up.
Lady Rosamund stepped through the ring of guards and approached the king, skirting her husband's body and dropping into an exceedingly proper curtsy for the requisite ten seconds.
"Majesty," she said, rising and clasping her hands in front of her.
"What did you know about your husband's activities?" the king asked.
"I knew - forgive me, Majesty, I knew he believed he could be chosen heir."
"How strange, since I have two sons."
So people knew about the heir contest, Lillian thought, but they didn't know. How long did the king plan to make people keep it some sort of polite secret?
"It wasn't for me to question him, Majesty," she murmured, looking down at her hands. "Had I known he would try to-"
"Of course," he said.
"I should have stopped him."
"Undoubtedly."
"But Majesty," she said, "The children knew nothing. Lysandra knew nothing. How would they? The children are too young, and Lysandra - she isn't -"
"Wasn't," the king said lightly.
"Wasn't," Rosamund repeated obediently. "She wasn't his wife."
Lillian looked at the dark-haired Lysandra - mistress, apparently - to see her duck her head not quite quickly enough for Lillian to miss the glare she shot at the king. One hand smoothed a little redheaded girl's hair, and the other arm held an infant. The other two children clung as fiercely to her as they had to Rosamund.
"So you take responsibility? You swear to me that the mistress and the children knew nothing? That they would never act against me?"
"We are loyal Adarlanians," Rosamund said, voice shaking.
"That wasn't what I asked, Rosamund," the king said.
"Lysandra and the children knew nothing," Rosamund said. She was clearly trying to be firm, but her voice continued to shake. "I was the only one Rickard spoke to of his delusions. I should have dissuaded him. It's my fault, Majesty."
"I'm so glad we've come to an understanding," he said, and gestured.
One of the guards that had held Rickard's corpse drew his sword, kicked Rosamund's knees out from under her, and beheaded her.
Nehemia leapt back, clapping a hand over her mouth, and Kaltain caught her, looking dispassionately on.
It was as fast as Celaena might have moved, Lillian thought. A muffled cry brought her attention back to Lysandra and the children, where the woman hadn't been able to hide their eyes.
"The children are your responsibility now," the king told Lysandra, who tried desperately to hush the crying little boy. The baby woke up and added their voice. "I hope you have the means to care for them without your patron. Remove her."
Another guard escorted Lysandra, the shrieking infant, and the older children from the room.
Congratulations, Lillian, Lillian thought. You've successfully stood in one place and watched someone be murdered. Is it better or worse than doing it yourself?
"And the household," King Roland mused. "I think we all know how difficult it is to hide things from bodyservants."
This time Lillian jerked,and Amerie yanked her sleeve with no regard for Elaine's fine needlework in the shoulder seams.
"I can only conclude they knew," he finished. "Kill them."
Lillian didn't know if she was shaking because she was angry or afraid. She couldn't sort it out. You didn't care about that man, she thought, but hadn't that been horrible? Dorian had told her not to be a hero today, but she wasn't sure she ever had been, and anyway now she wasn't: all she knew was that she couldn't live with herself if she let this happen.
She stepped out of the crowd.
"Your Majesty," she said. Nehemia and Kaltain, at the foot of the steps, shook their heads at her, but these weren't their people, were they? They had Eyllwe and Terrasen to think about. Lillian had Adarlan.
He will punish you if you try anything, Dorian had said. Now he stood behind his father, shaking his head just as Nehemia and Kaltain did. Erick watched her, head cocked, from Kaltain's side. Chaol moved as if to take a step forward and stopped when Dorian grabbed his hand.
"Lillian," the king said, raising an eyebrow. Georgina's face went whiter, which Lillian hadn't thought possible: she had looked ready to faint at the king's pronouncement.
"These are loyal Adarlanians," Lillian said. She heard the quaver in voice and firmed it. "They had nothing to do with Rickard's plans."
"But they knew about them, Lillian," the king said. "Knowledge of treason without reporting is still treason."
"How do you know they knew?" Lillian demanded, refusing to react to her poor word choice. "How could they, when you yourself acknowledged that Lady Rosamund -"
"Lillian," the king said softly. "You begin to bore me."
You think these people are disposable, Lillian thought. You can't punish Rickard anymore, so someone else has to be punished, and it wouldn't look good to kill a noblewoman and her child, and it does look good to save the mistress and her child.
The servants? Who cared about the servants?
Lillian decided she would.
The king liked to be a hero, she knew. Strict but fair, a father to his people. He didn't like to look weak, but he didn't like to look bad either.
She didn't care much about looking weak, and she could offer him a chance to look good. Lillian dropped to her knees, hopefully out of the spread of Rosamund's blood.
"Your Majesty," she said, hands clasped under her chin. "Please, Majesty. I beg you in your infinite mercy - the citizens who serve you must also serve their liege lords. If they do not look too far into what their lords are doing - sire, who among them should have?"
The king stared at her for a long moment, and Lillian looked at the floor. She had not missed the blood. Her skirts were going to be stained. She was so wrapped up in the thought that it wasn't until she felt a skirt brush against her she realized someone had come to join her.
"Your Majesty," Amerie said. Her dark red skirts were too narrow to perform a deep curtsy, but she managed a reasonable one and kept it for ten seconds. "You know the helplessness of servants, and our duties towards them. The strong must protect the weak, Majesty."
She looked at the ground, let out a breath through her nose, and knelt slowly beside Lillian. "They have been misled, Majesty."
"Please, Majesty," another noblewoman said from Lillian's other side: Desmond's pretty dinner companion. Today she wore grey - darker than Lillian, which would be easier to clean now that she was kneeling next to Lillian on the floor. She had a bit of black lace sewn about the collar.
Lillian didn't look behind her, but she could hear the rustle of clothes as more nobles moved from the crowd, and the quiet murmur of their echoed 'please's. Dorian closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and dropped Chaol's hand to walk down the steps and join them. He didn't kneel, but he stood beside Amerie.
It's her the older courtiers look to, Philippa had said of Amerie. How many of the younger ones? Enough, maybe?
Lillian peeked up at the king through her lashes and realized he was looking at her ungloved hands, the scars and the crooked fingers.
He smiled.
"You know so well how to convince me, Lillian," he said. "Against your pleading, what is a bit of light treason?"
"Very well," the king continued. "I am not without mercy. I will spare the servants by your word." He looked out past her, at the servants corralled by the guards nearer the gate. "Thank the Lady Lillian for your deliverance."
Lillian closed her eyes and stayed kneeling so she wouldn't have to acknowledge the chorus of breathless thanks, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"But there must still be some punishment," he said. "If only so that you choose better masters in the future."
Lillian did not like the pause that followed. She could feel the king watching her.
"I think a few years in Endovier will drive the lesson home for them," he said lightly.
Lillian felt the soles of the glass shoes slip as her weight pitched forward onto her hands, but nothing else: her ears filled with the same roaring sound of before. She could see the stone under her hands but she couldn't feel it. She did feel someone trying to pull her away some interminable time later.
Nononononononononononono - they couldn't take her back. She lashed out, not with her knives or any sort of coordinated attack but her nails, clawing desperately. She thought she might have connected, but someone grabbed her from behind, trapping her arms at her side. Buzzing - voices, maybe - tried to cut through the roar, but she was having none of it. She writhed, kicking, and fell, though whoever held her didn't let go. They landed on top of her, trying to pin her down.
"Lillian Elentiya Gordaina," her mother snapped.
Her mother? Her mother wasn't here, if she had been Lillian wouldn't be on the ground, her mother would have -
"Lillian, please! Please, stop , you're going to hurt yourself!"
That was Nehemia, in Eyllwean. Nobody who spoke Eyllwean would take her back to Endovier, but they wouldn't be calling her by her full name either, that was rude .
She said so as she relaxed, and slowly realized she was on the ground of one of the servants' halls off the throne room. Her mother wasn't there, but Nehemia and Kaltain and Dorian were, and even Erick and Amerie. Nehemia's arms were spread wide, keeping her guards and Amerie back, and Erick kept Kaltain away. Dorian crouched nearby, bloody scratches down one side of his face.
Lillian looked at her hands. One of them had blood and skin under the nails.
"Oh no," she said.
Chaol, the one holding her down, huffed and relaxed rolling off her to prop himself up against the wall.
"I shouldn't have grabbed you," Dorian said immediately, holding a hand out but not touching her. "I'm sorry, Chaol only-"
"Tried to keep me from mauling you any more," she croaked. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."
"I shouldn't have grabbed you," Dorian said again. "I was just trying to get you out of there, you just stayed on the ground…"
Lillian rolled onto her back, taking stock. Her left foot hurt, so she sat up to look at it.
One of the slippers had broken. The foot was bleeding. "Unfortunate," she said, and looked at Chaol. His face was more drawn than she thought the event would account for, which was when she realized his knee did not look right at all, and that she remembered kicking something.
"Oh no, " she said again, starting to get up.
"Stay," Chaol said, pointing sternly though his voice was strained. "Do not walk on that foot until somebody gets the glass out."
"I've had worse," she began as Dorian looked over and swore.
"So have I," Chaol retorted. "Stay there. I don't want to tell you again because I do not want to talk until this is back in place."
Dorian threw himself to the ground next to Chaol. His hands hovered over the dislocated knee, afraid to touch but obviously wanting to do something.
"A healer," Chaol prompted, but Kaltain sighed as if heavily put upon and went to examine the injury. Erick followed her, looking amused.
"It didn't look like she hit this hard," Kaltain said, sounding judgy.
"It's happened before," Dorian said.
"So he knows he needs to get to a healer," Nehemia said. "You and Lillian too, just to make sure. We can rig a stretcher-"
"If you put me on a stretcher, Princess, I will roll off of it," Chaol said through gritted teeth.
"So tough," Erick murmured just loud enough for everyone to hear and just a shade too admiring to be sincere. Dorian glared.
"You can't protect anyone if you can't put any weight on the knee," Amerie told Chaol sternly.
"That's what I'm for," Lillian said, moving to stand again.
"Lillian, I swear by that godsdamned fae queen Dorian is always on about, if you try to walk on that foot I will-"
"What?" Kaltain asked curiously when Chaol cut himself off. "Yell some more?"
Nehemia sighed. "Abidan, could you please assist Lillian?"
One of her guards picked Lillian up without apparent effort.
Lillian glared at the side of his head since she couldn't make herself glare at Nehemia. "I can walk."
"You have glass in your feet," Nehemia said. "Let Abidan carry you."
She subsided, mostly to watch Dorian help Chaol get up. Chaol leaned heavily on him, face drawn and grey.
When Abidan caught up with Dorian and Chaol and slowed, she looked them over.
Chaol winced when he moved, even though Dorian supported his weight and moved slowly. The left side of Dorian's face was a mask of blood, though the cuts themselves probably weren't deep.
"I'm sorry," she said miserably.
Dorian caught her eye and managed a tiny smile. "If they scar they'll make me look formidable."
"Oh shut up," Chaol said. "You're going to make her feel worse. We aren't angry with you, Lillian, but we are going to talk later."
He sounded angry, but he hadn't ever lied to her, so she followed Dorian's lead and shut up.
