Vassin dismissed them all.
Not with hostility. Just with the patient thoroughness of someone who'd heard every possible legal maneuver and wasn't impressed by any of them anymore.
By the time he finished, the lineage claim was established beyond dispute.
Eve was who she said she was.
"We move to the Reckoning," Vassin said.
The room shifted. Everyone leaning forward slightly.
"Lord Malachai," Vassin said. "Present your case."
Malachai stood.
He didn't have notes. Didn't need them.
He spoke for twenty minutes.
Calm, measured, grandfatherly. Presenting the facts as he saw them...Eve's unauthorized entry into his territory, her extraction of a civilian without proper channels, her disregard for established protocol. He characterized it as reckless, destabilizing, the actions of someone who placed personal attachments above Court law.
He was good.
