Nightsister Queen Trials

The depot perimeter began at the next intersection. Chain-link fencing had been woven with iron thread, each knot stamped with the crescent-and-thorn seal of the NightSisters. The symbols glimmered whenever lightning moved behind the clouds. A human security guard stood beside the gate, pale and motionless beneath a clear plastic hood.

He raised a hand as she approached.

“Name.”

“Liora Voss.”

His gaze dropped to her coat. “House?”

“Unsworn.”

That earned her the first real reaction. His mouth tightened.

“Unsworn candidates enter through the east passage.”

“The east passage is closed.”

“It is now open.”

Liora looked past him. The gate stood chained. Beyond it, the depot yard was crowded with old trams stripped to their frames. Their windows had been painted black, and candles burned inside them in tall glass jars.

“Who opened it?”

The guard’s eyes flicked toward the rooftops. “You should hurry.”

A sharp crack split the rain.

The guard jerked backward. A narrow silver bolt protruded from his throat.

Liora seized him before he struck the pavement. His weight dragged at her shoulder, warm blood spilling between her fingers. The iron-threaded fence shrieked as something struck it from the far side.

“Down,” she whispered.

The guard tried to speak. Blood bubbled over his lips.

A second bolt punched through the gate and buried itself in the brick beside Liora’s head.

She dropped the guard and rolled beneath a delivery van. Silver scraped across the concrete inches from her cheek. The metal burned even through her skin, leaving a bright line of pain.

Across the street, a figure moved along the roofline. Long coat. Hood. Crossbow held low.

Another hunter waited near the tram depot’s eastern wall.

They had not come to stop her entering.

They had come to make certain she never reached the rite.

Liora slid one hand beneath the van and found a length of rusted pipe. Her pulse had begun to race, an old human remnant her body kept for emergencies. She hated it when fear made itself audible.

The hunter on the roof lifted the crossbow.

Liora struck the van’s fuel line with the pipe.

Petrol sprayed across the pavement. She flung the pipe beneath the chassis and drove her palm against the ground. The small ignition charm stitched into her glove flared blue.

Fire ran beneath the van.

The explosion was not large, but it was loud enough to rattle every window on the street. Heat rolled over Liora as the vehicle leapt on its tires. The rooftop hunter lost balance. The second hunter ducked behind the fence.

Liora ran.

She vaulted the fallen guard, seized the gate chain, and pulled. The iron thread bit into her palms. For one instant the NightSister seal glowed white, judging her blood.

Then the chain snapped.

She stumbled through.

The depot swallowed her in darkness.

Old tram tracks crossed the yard in parallel lines, slick with rain and oil. The stripped carriages stood like coffins on wheels. Somewhere inside the maze, bells chimed in uneven succession. Each one marked a candidate entering the grounds.

Liora heard footsteps behind her.

Not one set.

Three.

She sprinted between two abandoned trams. Their metal sides pressed close enough to scrape her shoulders. A voice called from the yard.

“Liora Voss! By order of the Black Council, stand and submit to examination.”

She knew that voice. Magistrate Orra Vale, one of the trial judges.

Liora stopped beneath a tram carriage. Rainwater dripped through the rusted undercarriage onto her neck.

“Magistrate,” she called. “If this is an examination, why are your hunters carrying silver?”

“Because your invitation is disputed.”

“By whom?”

Silence answered.

A blade slid beneath the tram, its edge catching the candlelight. Liora sprang backward as it carved through the space where her ankle had been. She kicked the attacker’s wrist. Bone cracked. The hunter hissed and rolled away.

Liora seized the knife.

Silver threaded the blade, but its hilt was wrapped in red cord - the mark of the Black Council’s private executioners.

She held it up. “This is not an examination.”

Magistrate Vale stepped into view at the end of the passage. She wore a severe black coat and a veil pinned with three iron thorns. Behind her stood two judges and four armed NightSisters.

“The opening rite has begun,” Vale said. “You have no right to interrupt it.”

“I am a named candidate.”

“You are a candidate under petition.”

“My petition was accepted.”

“Accepted provisionally.”

Liora looked at the bells hanging above them. Seven had rung. The eighth waited, its bronze mouth dark with old blood.

“If the eighth bell sounds before I’m acknowledged, my petition dies.”

Vale did not deny it.

A hunter came up behind Liora, blade raised.

Liora drove the stolen knife backward without looking. It entered beneath the hunter’s ribs. He collapsed against her, heavy and twitching, his breath hot against her ear.

The judges stared.

Liora let the body slide to the track. “I’m still standing.”

Vale’s gaze moved to the blood on Liora’s hand. “And already proving the Council’s concern.”

“What concern?”

The magistrate came closer. Her eyes were pale and reflective, like coins at the bottom of a well.

“That you were not invited to compete.”

Liora felt the words strike deeper than the silver cut on her cheek. “Then why was my name sealed into the succession ledger?”

“Ask the one who sealed it.”

“I’m asking you.”

Vale’s mouth curved without warmth. “Survive the first rite, and perhaps you’ll earn an answer.”

The eighth bell began to swing.

Liora saw the opening beyond the judges: a broad concrete hall where the depot’s central platform had been transformed into a circular court. Hundreds of candles burned around its edge. NightSisters filled the old passenger balconies, their faces hidden behind veils of lace, bone, or black glass.

At the center stood the Queen’s Empty Chair.

No queen had sat in it for nineteen years.

The bell swung again.

Liora moved.

The guards closed ranks. She threw the silver knife at the nearest lamp instead of the nearest throat. Glass burst. Darkness fell across the passage.

She heard shouts, the scrape of boots, the hiss of a spell breaking against iron. Her body chose a path through them before thought could catch up. She slipped between two judges, struck one in the throat, and reached the court as the eighth bell rang.

Every candle went out.

The old depot became utterly still.

Then a woman’s voice spoke from the balcony.

“Candidate Liora Voss, present yourself to the Empty Chair.”

Liora stepped into the circle.

Candles ignited one by one around her. Their flames burned green, revealing the watching faces above. Some belonged to houses she knew: the ash-pale Veyr, the river-blooded Cindrel, the red-eyed daughters of House Marr. Others watched from behind unfamiliar masks.

Orra Vale stood at the threshold, anger hidden beneath ceremony.

Liora faced the Empty Chair.

“I present myself,” she said.

The words echoed through the depot.

A robed attendant approached carrying a shallow basin. Black water filled it to the rim. Floating on its surface was a thin strip of parchment.

“The first rite is witness,” the attendant announced. “The candidate’s name is entered before the sect. Her blood is offered. Her claim becomes visible.”

Liora extended her hand.

A needle pierced her palm.

One drop fell into the basin.

The black water shuddered.

Letters appeared across the parchment, forming her name in red.

LIORA VOSS.

The crowd murmured. Somewhere above, someone laughed softly.

The attendant lifted the parchment. “The candidate is acknowledged.”

Relief opened inside Liora, sudden and dangerous. She had made it. Her claim existed now in every watching mind. No private order could erase her without exposing itself.

Then the parchment began to burn.

Not with flame. With darkness.

A seal spread beneath her name, ink-black and circular, crossed by a single downward stroke. The sight of it froze the relief in her chest.

The attendant dropped the parchment.

Orra Vale stepped forward. “No.”

The seal flared.

Pain tore across Liora’s skin from wrist to elbow. She staggered, clutching her arm as a black mark surfaced beneath the flesh. It resembled a closed eye stitched shut with a thorn.

The watching NightSisters rose in a rustle of silk and leather.

“What is that?” someone demanded.

Vale reached for the parchment, but it dissolved before her fingers touched it.

The attendant backed away. “A sealed death-mark.”

The words rolled through the court.

Liora stared at the mark. Its edges pulsed in time with her blood.

Vale’s face had gone still. “The rite cannot place a death-mark.”

“Not by itself,” said a voice from the balcony.

A woman stepped into the green candlelight. Her veil was made of white feathers, and a silver crown rested against her brow - not the crown of a queen, but the token of a house with voting power.

“Someone used the witness basin,” she continued, “to declare the candidate forfeit before the trials begin.”

Liora looked at the judges. “Who?”

No one answered.

The mark tightened around her arm.

Across the court, one of the veiled spectators lifted two fingers. A signal.

Hunters emerged from the balconies.

Liora did not wait for the first blade.

She seized the attendant by the collar and dragged him between herself and the nearest attacker. Then she ran toward the rear doors of the depot, the death-mark burning beneath her skin while the bells began ringing again behind her.

Her name had been acknowledged.

Her death had been entered beside it.

And somewhere within the NightSister court, the hand that had written it was still close enough to strike.

End of chapter one. 9 more chapters in the full book.