Dawn broke gray and still, the particular quiet before a storm that hadn't decided yet whether it would arrive as rain or something worse. I stood in the same preparation chamber where I'd donned white robes for the Rite two weeks earlier, except this time the robes were ceremonial gold, marking not judgment but confirmed authority — a bitter irony, given how uncertain that authority still felt.
"You're steady," Darius observed, watching me from the doorway as an attendant fastened the final clasps of my ceremonial dress. "More steady than I expected, given everything."
"I've had eleven days to practice being steady while terrified," I said. "It gets easier to fake, if nothing else."
"It's not faking if you actually walk out there and do what needs doing regardless of the fear," he said. "That's just courage wearing a calmer face."
