The Parliament building was a cathedral of ambition.

Built from the same star-iron as the Hollow Crown—or so the legends claimed—it rose from the center of Ashenmoor like a dark fist punching the sky. Fifteen stories of black stone, buttressed and towered, with gargoyles that were rumored to actually watch. The great doors, thirty feet tall and carved with the history of every monarch since Aldric, stood open. Waiting.

Sera walked in alone. Maren waited outside—not by choice, but because only the crown-bearer and the lords were permitted in the Parliament chamber during a formal assembly. It was one of a thousand rules Sera was learning on the fly, whispered to her by Thorne in the frantic hours before.

The chamber itself was round, ringed with rising tiers of seats like an amphitheater. At the center, a single stone chair—the Throne of Assembly, not to be confused with the actual throne, which was in the palace and hadn't been sat in for thirteen years. Around the chair, five elevated platforms, one for each house, draped in their respective colors.

And in those platforms, the five most powerful people in Ashenmoor.

Lord Aldric Ravencrest the Seventh: a mountain of a man in his sixties, white-bearded, wearing full ceremonial armor despite the indoor setting. He sat like a man who'd been sitting in judgment his whole life.

General Isolde Thornwall: lean, sharp-featured, iron-gray hair cropped military-short. She wore her uniform without decoration—no medals, no ribbons. She didn't need them. Her reputation was decoration enough. Her eyes tracked Sera the way a hawk tracks a mouse.

Patriarch Oswin Ashford: round, soft, smiling. Dressed in cloth-of-gold that probably cost more than the entire Undercity. He radiated warmth the way a furnace radiates heat—deliberately, strategically, and with the understanding that warmth could be withdrawn at any time.

Lady Vivienne Blackmere: thin as a blade, dressed entirely in black, with eyes the color of wet slate. She didn't sit—she reclined, languid, like a cat watching something that might be prey.

Archon Lysander Goldwyn: oldest of them all, though his age was impossible to guess—mages aged strangely. White hair, white robes, pale blue eyes that seemed to look through rather than at things. He held a staff that hummed faintly with power.

Five wolves. One rabbit.

Sera walked to the stone chair. Her boots—the biggest Maren could find, still slightly too large—echoed in the vast chamber. The crown glowed steadily on her head, casting blue-white light across the dark stone.

She did not sit. Thorne had warned her: sitting in the Throne of Assembly was a declaration of authority. She wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

"My lords," she said. Her voice didn't waver. Years of talking her way out of trouble with city guards had given her an iron throat. "I am Sera. No surname. I am the bearer of the Hollow Crown."

Silence. The kind of silence that has weight.

Lord Ravencrest spoke first, his voice like gravel in a drum. "You are a child. A gutter child, from what my people tell me. The crown's choice is... unprecedented."

"The crown's choice is final," Archon Goldwyn murmured. "That is the law. Regardless of our feelings about it." His pale eyes were fixed on the crown with an intensity that bordered on hunger.

"Final, perhaps," Lady Blackmere said, her voice silk over steel, "but not unconditional. The law states the crown chooses. It does not say the chosen cannot be... guided."

"Controlled, she means," General Thornwall said bluntly. "Let's not dress it up, Vivienne. You want a puppet. We all want a puppet. The question is whose strings."

"General Thornwall, your directness is, as always, refreshing and inappropriate," Patriarch Ashford said, still smiling. "Perhaps we might begin with something simpler. The child—forgive me, the bearer—must be formally recognized. That requires a vote."

"A vote we can delay," Ravencrest rumbled.

"A vote you want to delay," Thornwall corrected. "Because delay gives you time to move troops into position. I've already seen your battalions in the Market District, Aldric. Subtle as a siege hammer."

"My troops are there for public safety."

"Your troops are there because you're afraid a seventeen-year-old girl might be a better ruler than you."

The chamber erupted. Voices overlapping, accusations flying, centuries of barely-contained rivalry boiling over in an instant. Sera stood in the middle of it all, watching five powerful people tear at each other like dogs over a bone.

And something clicked.

Not fear. Not intimidation. Something else entirely—an insight, honed by years of watching people in the Undercity. Reading body language. Understanding who feared whom. Identifying the real power in a room full of pretenders.

Ravencrest was angry—genuinely angry. He'd expected the crown to choose someone from the old bloodlines. Someone he could control through tradition.

Thornwall was calculating. She didn't care about tradition—she cared about competence. She was watching Sera, not arguing. Evaluating.

Ashford was performing. His warmth was as artificial as his cloth-of-gold. He was already calculating how much a puppet queen would cost to maintain.

Blackmere was dangerous. She sat perfectly still while chaos raged around her, those slate eyes missing nothing. She already knew things about Sera that Sera didn't know about herself.

And Goldwyn—Goldwyn terrified her. Because he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the crown. And the hunger in his eyes was ancient.

"ENOUGH."

Sera's voice cut through the noise. Not loud—but sharp, commanding. The voice she used in the Undercity when a deal was going sideways and she needed everyone to shut up and listen.

Five heads turned to her.

"I didn't ask for this crown," she said, each word deliberate. "I don't want it. But it's on my head, and according to your own law, it's staying there. So here's what's going to happen."

She paused. Let the silence work. A trick from the streets—the person who controls the silence controls the conversation.

"You're going to vote. Tonight. To formally recognize me as the crown-bearer, as your law requires. And tomorrow morning, I am going to sit in this chair—" she touched the Throne of Assembly "—and you are going to tell me every single thing about how this kingdom works. Not because I'm your queen. Not yet. But because the crown chose me instead of any of you, and I'd like to understand why."

Silence. A different kind this time. Not weighted with hostility. Weighted with surprise.

General Thornwall was the first to react. She leaned back in her seat and smiled—a thin, razor smile, but genuine.

"Well," she said. "The gutter rat has teeth."

Patriarch Ashford's smile had frozen. Lady Blackmere's eyes narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter. Lord Ravencrest looked like he'd swallowed something alive. And Archon Goldwyn—finally—looked at Sera instead of the crown.

"Vote," Sera said.

They voted. Five ayes—because the law gave them no choice, and because, Sera suspected, each of them thought they could use her. Mold her. Control her.

They were wrong. They just didn't know it yet.

Sera sat in the Throne of Assembly, the Hollow Crown glowing steady on her brow, and looked out at the Parliament of Wolves.

She'd spent seventeen years surviving the Undercity.

This was just a bigger Undercity.