At that, Nyrielle turns.
For a moment the air itself seems to recoil, as though the stolen power in her shifts closer to the surface. It is not a threat exactly. Not overtly. Gods do not need overt threats. Their certainty has always done the work for them.
“You will,” Nyrielle sings. “You have too much sense not to.”
She makes it sound like a compliment. A condescending one.
Lara’s lip fights the urge to lift into a sneer.
You have too much sense not to.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Lara holds her gaze, unblinking. Then, because curiosity has always been stronger in her thanobedience, she asks, “Tell me something, Nyrielle. When all of this is done, when the realms are quiet and kneeling and arranged to your liking, what then?”
Nyrielle’s expression changes. It is not triumph that moves across her face. It is hunger.
“Then,” she says, “I will never be powerless again.”
And there it is.The wound beneath the empire. She is not looking for justice or restoration. Not even something as basic as greed.She is looking for fear.Fear sharpened into dominion, dressed in prophecy and strategy and inevitability until even its bearer mistakes it for something sacred.
Lara says nothing after that. Because there are moments when words do not clarify a person. They only waste time after truth has already arrived.
Nyrielle turns back to the sky, dismissing Lara without the courtesy of making it formal.
Lara inclines her head just enough to mock etiquette, then turns on her heel.
Something that feels very close to doubt follows her in silence until the doors close behind her and the corridor swallows the moon’s light.
The Marrow would have opinions about this.
Caev would tell her this is fucking stupid. An assignment from a madwoman is akin to walking willingly into the pyre. She can practically imagine the bored drawl of her voice.
Daphinia would listen to the conviction in Nyrielle’s words. She’d hear them completely, and believe the strength of them rather than the merit. “She sounds certain,” she’d say.
Lara’s stride does not falter.
She drags a hand through her hair, and mutters under her breath, “So do lambs on their way to the slaughter.”
Fucking Stars.
As Lara crosses through the Castle, one sentence from Nyrielle’s speech keeps needling at her, refusing to settle.
Then I will never be powerless again.
It is not the ambition that twists her gut. Not even the arrogance. It’s the fear. And, as if the realms delight in timing their cruelty, another voice rises beside it in her mind. Younger. Sharper. Furious in a way that only the wounded ever truly are.
You made me choose, Lara… and it looks like you belong to the highest bidder.
Seren.
Lara’s jaw tightens. Annoying girl. Stupid girl. Dangerous girl. Her fingers curl once at her sides. She had dismissed the words when they were spoken, because that was easier than examining why they struck home with such irritating precision. But now, walking through a palace built on stolen order and listening to the echoes of a goddess too frightened to live without control, Lara finds that she cannot set them aside so easily.
Children. That was the truly inconvenient part of all this.
Lara has spent years avoiding attachments precisely because they invite weakness, and weakness in women is always the first thing men—or queens, or gods—reach to exploit. She has never wanted daughters. Never wanted the ache of caring what sort of world they inherited.
And yet Seren arrived in her life with all the elegance of a blade to the ribs and lodged there with deeply unwelcome persistence.
If Nyrielle wins, the world will become the kind of place Lara has always endured and never believed could be altered. If Nyrielle wins, girls like Seren will not survive it whole. That thought irritates her more than it should. Which, of course, makes it real.
