Lara shrugs.
“Gods are exhausting.”
Elyssara nods, her face going blank, numb.
Nyrielle has been waiting forher. Has gathered her friends and placed them exactly where she wanted them to go. Like pieces on a chess board.
Maireth’s words flood her.
Power is simply the ability to decide which game everyone else must play—and who is allowed to win.
Suspicion crawls up Elyssara’s spine. “Why tell us all this?”
Lara shrugs with cool indifference. “Silence is bought, too. If Nyrielle wants it, she knows how to get it.”
Elyssara huffs a breath.This woman is fucking cold.
“You’re showing me that honesty and loyalty are worlds apart, High Witch,” Elyssara mutters.
But before Lara can respond, Seren’s temper flares as she slams down her tankard. “And you thought it was a good idea to fucking aid Nyrielle in all this? Do you not care at all for humanity? For the Known Realms?”
Lara’s violet eyes glint with curiosity. Not anger. Not defense. Never that.
Always considered, precise.
“I did not think it was a good idea, no—for I did not think of anything beyond getting paid for an assignment,” Lara responds smoothly. “All assignments are the same to me, no matter who orders it. No matter who loses.”
Daphinia and Caev sit just a fraction behind the High Witch, like sentinels protecting something sacred. But they do not flinch. Do not react at all. Completely unashamed of their stance on this.
“And The Perils are beyond the Known Realms. We are beyond the reaches of your petty wars and politics,” Lara drawls.
Elyssara scoffs. “Right. So far beyond them that you are untouchable but not far enough that you won’t profit off our pain?” Her words are all savagery and sarcasm. “Distance makes cruelty easy to mistake for philosophy.”
Lara shrugs an indifferent shoulder.
Seren throws her arms in the air, and barks a humorless laugh. “You know, Lara, at some point, you’ll have to choose a side. Because right now, you are the High Witch of what? Isolated witches, some sharp rocks, and an ocean with a fucked up attitude?”
She pushes to stand, dusting off her leathers with more force than she needs. She lifts a vicious finger, stabbing it in Lara’s direction. “You made me choose Lara—the past or the future.You made me become more than I thought I was. You told me to belong to myself. And you? It looks like you belong to the highest bidder. I wonder what The Widow would think of you now.” The words come out in a spit of venom, but Seren doesn’t back down—she holds Lara’s gaze, sucking in labored breaths through her teeth.
Seren’s voice breaks. “Paid. Sheltered. Untouched by consequence while the rest of us bleed for the world you helped shape.”
Lara blinks.
Once.
Twice.
She does not move, but her demeanor shifts. Not anger. Not hurt. Gods, no. More like… precision. As if Seren has finally spoken to the part of her that coin could never quite silence.
But Seren isn’t done. “You told me it was men who forgot our power… but you know what I think, Lara? I think it isyouwho has forgotten her own.”
She spins on her heel, boots pounding from the small cavernous room in an angry beat, and the tension thickens in the air.
Elyssara and Lara sit in silence for a long while.
Sipping brask, exchanging too-long glances, waiting the other out. A temporary truce.
So Elyssara breaks it.
