Within an hour, the academy had summoned my parents, Oliver's parents, Professor Deyric, and a collection of other school mentors to the headmaster's study, while I remained detained like a common criminal. The mentors arrived in varying states of dishevelment that spoke to the urgency of their midnight summons: Professor Cornelius from Advanced Rhetoric stumbled in with his usually pristine beard askew and his scholarly robes hastily thrown over sleeping clothes; Professor Verlaine from Etiquette and Deportment appeared with her severe gray dress hastily donned over what was clearly a white sleeping gown, its lace trim peeking beneath her collar; even old Master Thorne, the academy's weathered leader, had been roused from his chambers, leaning heavily upon his polished walking stick and blinking owlishly through wire-rimmed spectacles that caught the lamplight with each confused flutter of his eyes.
As for myself, I found my circumstances considerably less dignified than those disheveled professors. Two Braxmond Runners flanked me in the academy's cramped holding chamber—burly men whose brass-buttoned uniforms bore the industrial seal of our city, their weathered faces grim beneath peaked caps that cast shadows over suspicious eyes. They stood like sentinels, hands resting on the leather clubs at their belts, watching my every movement as though I might vanish into smoke at any moment.
"No questions about whether I'm hurt," I muttered under my breath, staring at the heavy oak door through which my parents would eventually enter. "No asking if I'm well after finding Oliver's body sprawled in his own blood. Just the immediate assumption that I'm the one who killed him."
The irony wasn't lost on me—I'd spent years being ignored by my classmates, dismissed as the strange dreamer with sand in his eyes, and now suddenly I was important enough to be their prime suspect.
"Lord Rhylorin," Master Thorne declared with the stern authority of a man who'd spent decades disciplining aristocratic children, "we shall listen to your account once everyone has assembled—do stay silent until that moment arrives."
I nodded curtly, understanding the unspoken warning that hung in his words like smoke from the academy's chimneys. The headmaster's chamber reeked of coaldust and lamp oil, its towering shelves crammed with remnants of botched alchemical experiments and charred volumes whose titles had long since been burned away. Brass instruments gleamed dully in the flickering light, their purposes as mysterious as the circumstances that had brought me here. The very walls appeared to bow inward under the weight of centuries, bearing down upon me as though they too weighed my guilt and found it wanting. I remained seated in absolute stillness, palms pressed flat beneath my legs to stop their trembling, eyes fixed on the door that would soon admit my fate.
The door exploded inward with the force of a battering ram.
Lord Gregor entered first, his heavy boots pounding the worn floorboards like sledgehammer strikes against anvil. His features were hewn from iron itself, each deep crease rigid with barely contained rage, his formal Parliament jacket still dusted with the ash and soot of the evening's interrupted proceedings. The brass buttons of his coat caught the lamplight like tiny suns, and his steely gray eyes swept the room with the precision of a man accustomed to commanding both men and machines.
"I'll have your heads for this outrage!" he raged, his voice filling every corner of the study like the roar of his factory furnaces. "You will release my son to me at once—I am Lord Gregor of the noble House Kuznetsov, and I demand you free him this very moment, or the lot of you will hang from the city's highest gallows before dawn breaks!"
Swiftly trailing in his wake came a contingent of no fewer than half a dozen soldiers, their heavy plate armor glinting ominously in the dim, oil-soaked light of the chamber. As they moved with practiced precision, the metallic clinking of their equipment—sword hilts, mail links, and brass fittings—mirrored the electric tension crackling through the air like static before a thunderstorm. Each soldier stood rigid as a steam pipe, eyes fixed unwaveringly on Lord Gregor's broad shoulders, awaiting his commands with the fierce, unquestioning loyalty that embodied the very essence of military discipline that The House of Lords demanded from the armed forces of our brass-choked city.
"Lord Gregor," Master Thorne answered with surprising boldness, his reedy voice somehow cutting through the industrial titan's rage, "I understand that emotions are running dangerously high in this matter; however, you possess no legal authority over these proceedings, and we shall wait until all who were properly summoned have arrived before continuing."
Lord Bastien Veynar entered before the headmaster could finish his instruction, cutting off the thin man's words like a blade through silk. The corpulent coal magnate was accompanied by a couple of prominent members of his house—stern-faced men whose clothes reeked of furnace smoke—along with several leaders of the Merchant's Guild in their fine but practical attire, and one member of the Mortal Instruments Order who was grinning from ear to ear, practically beside himself with barely concealed glee at this tragic turn of events. The fanatic's gray coat and blood-red armband bore the skull and bones crossed over a broken gear sigil that made my stomach churn with hatred for all the poisonous propaganda their revolutionary group had been spreading through the city's taverns and factory floors.
"Parliament has been thrown into absolute turmoil, Lord Gregor!" Lord Bastien bellowed, his voice echoing off the stone walls as he pounded his brass-headed cane against the floor with each emphatic word. "Do you even begin to comprehend what you and your cursed son have undone this evening? A crucial trade measure was on the very verge of being passed—one that would have guaranteed our vital trading agreements with the Gypsy settlements of Tundrathan for the next decade. And I was forced to abandon my post, to leave my fellow Lords scrambling in the chamber like headless chickens, because my son—my heir, the future successor of House Veynar, my own blood—lies murdered, and all evidence points to your boy's guilty hands!"
"How dare you speak such vile accusations, sir!" Father became completely undone, his massive frame trembling with industrial fury. "These slights against my family constitute nothing short of treason—you forget yourself entirely, Lord Bastien, and your place in the natural order!"
My father's massive frame shifted forward like a steam engine building pressure, his broad shoulders expanding as he squared up to face the plump, coal-dusted brute that was Lord Bastien. The air in the cramped room grew thick and suffocating with tension, like the dangerous moments before a boiler explodes from excessive pressure and tears a factory apart. At the doorway, my mother entered the study with the fluid grace of flowing water, neither asking permission nor offering explanation as she moved directly to my side. All the arguing voices in the dusty chamber fell silent as she approached me, her presence commanding attention through sheer dignity rather than volume.
"Are you alright, my dear?" she asked softly, her voice like silk against the harsh brass of the men's shouting. Her golden blonde hair was woven into an intricate braided crown that caught the lamplight like spun metal, and as she embraced me, I felt her familiar warmth almost break me into tears of relief. She stood gracefully to face the room, and I noticed how my father's rage seemed to cool and solidify into something more controlled with her calming presence beside him. "We are all of noble blood and breeding, and we shall conduct ourselves with the proper dignity such station demands—will we not, gentlemen? Now, what exactly are these grave summons concerning?"
"Lady Elenya," Master Thorne said with the careful respect due her rank, "young Lord Rhylorin was discovered in close proximity to the deceased body of Lord Oliver Veynar. By all accounts available to us at this time, he appears to be the only classmate who was present in the area during the estimated time of this terrible discovery, and it is therefore presumed that Oliver met his unfortunate end at your son's hand."
"Murderer!" the Mortal Instruments member shouted with fanatic fervor, spittle flying from his thin lips. "The cursed heir has finally shown his true nature!"
"I'll have your lying tongue ripped from your skull for that slander, you revolutionary bastard!" Lord Gregor erupted like a volcano, his face flushing red beneath the coating of factory dust. "You fanatics have been peddling poisonous lies about my boy for far too long, spreading your propaganda through every gutter and tavern, and by God's brass gears, it will not stand another moment!"
"Then there shall be a formal hearing convened by Parliament to properly weigh all available evidence before any charges are brought," Lady Elenya spoke with calm authority that cut through the chaos like a blade through smoke. "That is my son's legal right under the old laws, is it not, Master Thorne? Until such a time as that hearing can be arranged and conducted with proper ceremony, we will be departing now with our son. Husband, would you please request that our personal guards escort Rhylorin and myself to our carriage?"
"He was caught red-handed at the scene of the crime!" Lord Bastien protested, his corpulent frame shaking with indignation. "A son for a son is the only justice that will satisfy House Veynar's honor!"
"And if my son is found guilty of such a heinous action after proper legal proceedings, then such justice will be administered according to law," she replied with steel beneath her silk tones. "Lord Gregor, if you would be so kind as to give the necessary order to your men."
Father's steely gaze swept the crowded room like searchlights across a factory floor, his jaw clenched with barely contained fury as he weighed the satisfaction of striking Master Thorne's pompous face or hurling the grinning fanatic bodily through the nearest window. But something fundamental shifted in his granite expression—a recognition of my mother's quiet but absolute authority in matters of family and honor—and his white-knuckled fists slowly uncurled at his sides. The industrial titan who commanded thousands of workers and bent the very metal of the earth to his will found himself yielding completely to the soft-spoken woman who rarely raised her voice above a whisper.
"Guards!" he barked with the voice that had echoed through countless factory floors, the sound reverberating off the oak-paneled walls like cannon fire. "Form escort for Lady Elenya and my son to our carriage immediately! Clear the path and brook no interference!"
Heavy footsteps thundered through the academy's corridors as our family's personal guards approached with military precision. Lord Bastien's corpulent frame trembled with sputtered protests while Master Thorne's thin lips pressed into tight, disapproving lines, but even the pompous headmaster understood that challenging a direct order from Lord Gregor Kuznetsov would be tantamount to professional suicide. The Mortal Instrument fanatic opened his mouth to voice another poisonous accusation, but one look from Father's iron gaze silenced him completely—not a single soul in that cramped, smoke-filled study possessed either the will or the authority to prevent us from walking out that door with our heads held high.