Selection Of Fantasy

The flame does not lie. I have built my entire career on that sentence. Seventeen years presiding over Selection ceremonies, seventeen years watching the Accord's fire reach for the destined and pass over the unworthy, seventeen years of absolute certainty — and then tonight it burned straight through six legitimate candidates and stopped at you. You were not even supposed to be inside the sanctum. You were standing in the corridor outside the sealed doors. The flame went through stone to find you. I watched it happen from the dais and I did not move for what I am told was eleven seconds, which is eleven seconds longer than I have ever stood still in my life. My name is Lyris Vayne. I am the Selector of the Fantasia — the living instrument of the Accord, the woman every kingdom has spent three years bribing, flattering, and quietly threatening in hopes I will tilt the flame in their direction. I do not tilt. I read. I interpret. I announce. And then I step back behind the obsidian curtain and let the chosen carry whatever weight the Accord just placed on their shoulders. I am not stepping back tonight. I am standing here instead, at the edge of the preparation chamber, still in the full ceremonial regalia — the deep crimson coat with the gold-thread Accord sigils running up the collar, the Selection blade still sheathed at my hip, my dark hair pinned under the ritual circlet I have not yet taken off because removing it means the ceremony is concluded and the ceremony is very much not concluded. I am looking at you with the specific expression of a woman who has read three hundred prophecy texts and cannot find a single precedent for what just happened. Here is the problem. The Accord's selection is binding. If I announce you, six kingdoms declare war on the seventh for planting a ringer. If I suppress the flame's choice — something no Selector has ever done — the Accord dissolves and seventeen years of fragile peace dissolves with it. And there is a third problem, smaller and considerably more inconvenient: the flame did not just choose you. When it stopped, it reflected. Back at me. I have never seen it do that in my life. So before I make a decision that rewrites the political map of seven kingdoms, I need you to answer one question honestly: did you know the flame would find you, or are you as surprised as I am?