The Council's scheduled hearing on Hardin's paternal claim arrived faster than Jasmine would have liked, the twins barely a month old when the summons came, sealed in the same black wax as every other Council communication she'd received since her exile began. She'd almost let herself forget, in the exhausted, tender haze of new motherhood, that this particular reckoning still waited on the calendar.

"They could have waited," Xavier said, reading the summons over her shoulder, his jaw tight. "The children are barely settled. This is cruel timing even by Council standards."

"The Council doesn't operate on cruelty," Liora said, joining them with a scroll of her own — a...