CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The safest path is seldom brave
For silence, too, becomes a grave
Laraof the Evening Star had long ago learned that the easiest way to survive the hungers of kings, queens, and gods was never to belong to any of them.
That lesson has served her well.
It has made her difficult to persuade, impossible to own, and rich enough that she never has to bow unless it amuses her. It has also made her useful to the powerful, which is a far more profitable thing than being loved by them. Kings came and went. Dynasties rose, distorted truth, and turned themselves to ash. The clever survived by staying just outside the reach of all of it. Close enough to profit. Far enough to escape the collapse when it came.
Lara has done more than survive.
She has endured.
She has watched realms devour themselves with the same old appetites dressed in different silks: greed masquerading asvision, conquest masquerading as order, cruelty masquerading as necessity. Men, especially, were fond of insisting their violence meant something grand. Queens were not so different. Gods, when they were allowed too close to mortal affairs, were often the worst of all.
That is why she prefers transaction to loyalty. Coin is honest. Coin does not claim to love you while tightening a noose around your throat. A coin is a coin, and no one can dispute that.
Elarion Castle rises before her in sheets of pale limestone and impossible light, each tower catching the dying gold of dusk and reflecting it back in blinding brilliance. It’s beautiful in the way venom is beautiful—gleaming, precise, and designed to kill long before its victim understands the danger. Nymeris has always excelled at that particular kind of elegance. At least, since Nyrielle claimed its throne.
Lara passes through its gates without slowing. Guards step aside immediately. No one is foolish enough to challenge a guest personally summoned by the Queen of Nymeris.
A queen who used to be a goddess.
Used to be.
Irritation flickers, then she buries it.
Because the truth of Nyrielle unsettles the natural order in ways Lara does not care to examine too closely. Gods are one thing when banished, distant, fragmented into story and prayer. Gods sitting on mortal thrones, cloaked in silk and governance and the language of empire, are something else entirely.
More dangerous. More entitled. More unpredictable.
Mortals worship power too easily, and gods were never meant to discover how useful that made them.
A servant opens the doors to the courtyard before Lara reaches them. She enters without announcement, because titles have always interested other people more than they interest her.
Nyrielle—Queen Ilyra, as the realms know her now—sits at the quaint dining table, the bubbling rush of a waterfall cascading behind her. Soft moonlight spills across the marble floor in silver ribbons, catching in the pale gold of her hair and turning her into something almost holy at first glance.Almost.
Lara knows better than most what holiness looks like. Andthiswas notthat. This was a woman who understood the power ofappearingholy.
“I hope the information you’ve gathered warrants the delay in your return,” Ilyra says without turning, the whimsical lilt to her voice that has always grated on Lara thick on her tongue.
Lara’s mouth tilts. “They know who you are. What you’ve done. What you’re planning. The dragons remain bound. King Kael of Zerynthia has been taken by Maireth as planned.” Lara’s words are monotone. Bored, almost.
That earns her a glance over a bare shoulder, one touched with faint amusement and no warmth at all.
“Lovely.”
Nyrielle does not ask about the threvenar. Does not ask if there is an antidote. Either she’s certain they don’t have one, or she no longer cares.
So, Lara does not offer anything on the topic. Omission or intention, she’s not yet sure.
“Though, it’s a shame. I did enjoy having them here,” Nyrielle comments, looking away wistfully. “Especially the General. So pretty to look at.”
Lara grunts a response, stepping closer to the table where Nyrielle picks at fruit on a platter. “And your plans for my next assignment?”
Nyrielle turns fully then, her face smooth and luminous and wrong in the way all stolen things were wrong. Her beauty is not the sort that invites affection. It compels attention. It demands witness. The air itself seems to bend around her, light catchingwhere it should not, shadow yielding where it ought to linger. Too much power sits beneath her skin. It is not natural or balanced or deserved or earned.It is stolen from the pantheon.
