Chapter 674: The Queen Says Checkmate

"Six counts?" He laughed. "You’re underselling me. I’ve moved more product through this continent than half your supply chains. You think this is my first time in chains? I’ve been in rooms like this before. Different throne. Different woman pretending she has the stomach for what comes next. I always walk out. You are sitting on a borrowed chair, sweetheart."

"Answer the question," Beta Griffin ordered.

"Not guilty. I’m a businessman. The parents sold them. The villages looked the other way. The border guards took their cut. Everyone had clean hands until someone got caught, and now I’m the villain?" He spat. "I’m the only honest man in this room."

"The court will now hear sentencing from the acting regent of Shadowclaw," the herald stated.

Serena looked at the man with zero emotion. Then she spoke a proverb in Cimmerian, known as the warrior’s tongue. One she wasn’t entirely sure if Shadowclaw still practiced, but she found it fitting so she used it.

"Stand behind your words or fall beneath them. For silence would have cost you nothing."

She switched back to the common tongue.

"One who trades the defenseless has forfeited the mercy of the just."

The proverb settled into the throne room the way verdicts settle into courtrooms: with finality, with weight, and with the specific atmospheric pressure that tells every person in the room that what comes next has already been decided and the deciding happened before the words were spoken.

"The accused has entered a plea of not guilty," Serena began. "Let the record reflect that plea. Let it also reflect that the accused confessed in open court to trafficking persons across this continent and acknowledged prior imprisonment for the same conduct."

She stood from the throne.

"On the charges of trafficking, abduction, unlawful sedation, aggravated imprisonment, criminal conspiracy, and forgery of sovereign documents, Alistair Creed, also known as Ronan Blackwell, also known as the Black Crown. This court sentences you to death. The sentence is final. There is no appeal."

Her voice carried zero tremor. Zero hesitation. Zero of the uncertainty that the elders had been searching for since she sat down and had failed to find.

The throne room erupted.

Elder Voss was on his feet. "The Luna lacks the authority to issue a capital sentence. This requires the Alpha’s approval and—"

"Elder Voss." Serena’s voice cut through his objection with a calm that was worse than volume.

WHOOSH.

The torches on the walls blazed gold and tripled in height.

Everyone went still.

Serena turned her head slowly to look at Elder Voss. "I respect the elders and your voice matters. But this is a direct order. The consequences of this decision fall squarely on my shoulders, not yours."

"Princess—" The color drained from Elder Voss’s face. "Luna. I must insist. Shadowclaw law requires the Alpha’s seal on any capital sentence. You are asking an officer in the room to commit an unsanctioned killing and every officer involved answers for it."

Serena turned to look at the room. "That is where you are incorrect, Elder Voss. I wasn’t asking anyone to carry it out."

The man in chains laughed. "You’re going to kill me? YOU? The bony little cunt who used to cry when they—"

A gold sword fabricated in Serena’s hands.

Nobody moved.

Serena walked down the steps of the throne platform.

Her boots hit stone with a rhythm that was measured, unhurried, carrying zero of the urgency that the situation demanded and all of the certainty that the situation required.

She carried it to the man in chains.

There was a phrase Serena had heard once, spoken by a king whose kingdom was built on the bones of slaves and whose crown was purchased with their blood. King Viremont had said it at a sentencing she had witnessed from behind iron bars, delivered with the casual certainty of a man dispensing wisdom he had earned through cruelty.

Kill one man the right way in front of the right people and you will never have to kill again. Reputation is a whore who works for free once you have paid the first night.

The phrase was vile. The man who said it was vile. The kingdom that produced him was vile.

The phrase was also correct.

This man deserved to die. She knew that with a certainty that bypassed her conscience and arrived at her hands, and her hands were holding a sword, and the sword was heavy, and the heaviness was appropriate because what she was about to do should never feel light.

She did not enjoy this. The absence of enjoyment was the thing that separated her from the man whose words she was borrowing. Reginald Viremont killed because the killing served his appetite. Serena Frostborne was killing because women and children were in an infirmary and the man who put them there was grinning at her and the grinning was a preview of every woman he would hurt if the grinning was permitted to continue.

The man’s grin faded. Something in his eyes recalculated. The recalculation arrived too late.

"Wait. Hold on. You can’t be serious. I have rights under—"

Serena swung.

The blade was heavy and her arms were recovering from everything her body had been through in the last week, and the swing was powered by something that lived deeper than muscle. The cut was clean. The head separated from the body with a sound that the throne room absorbed and would never release.

The body fell.

Serena stood over it. The sword was at her side. Blood on the blade. Blood on the stone. The gold light from the torches was still burning high, still filling the room, still carrying the specific, ancient frequency of a woman whose power had opinions about what had just happened and whose opinions were approval.

"Remove him."

Two words. Cold. Delivered to a room that had gone so silent the blood dripping from the blade onto the stone was the loudest sound in the building.

The guards moved. The body was dragged. The head was collected. The chains were gathered with the administrative efficiency of men whose training had finally caught up to the moment and whose moment was over.

She dropped the fabricated sword. It dissolved mid-air before it hit the ground. Hyran would have been proud of that level of control.

She turned.

Elder Voss was standing with his mouth open, still processing the fact that his objection was just rendered irrelevant. Griffin’s hand had dropped from his blade. His expression was of recalibration. Knox’s jaw kept going down like he was trying to say something but then would go back up.

Serena did not react to any of it. She walked back up the steps to the throne and sat down.

The room was staring at her.

"Next petitioner," Serena ordered, her voice steady, as if she had just given a ruling about a land dispute.