Page 112 of Sokâr

‘This Nameless asks…is Your Quintessence certain this spell is safe? For Her Radiance?’

Kailorien hesitated. His throat worked around the truth.

“No,” he admitted. “But I’m certain it’s necessary.”

Lu’mabowed, deeper than before. Nearly kneeling. And then, with silent grace, she turned and vanished into the corridor beyond the chamber door.

He remained still for a long breath before returning to the bedside.

Auryn had stirred in his absence, a faint furrow forming between her brows. He knelt beside her. Her vibrant flush had faded to a dusky pink. Her breathing was steady, but she still looked pale, drawn.

“This Flare…this heat…I will find a way to rid you of it,” he vowed.

He exhaled. Not just breath, butmana. A deliberate release. His soul bending to hers. Light swirled from his mouth in a gossamer blue mist. It hovered, searching, then curled into her—through her lips, her nose, her throat.

Her chest lifted.

A tremor ran through her body. Her expression eased. Her color warmed.

She settled again, her lips parting on a soft sigh.

Kailorien leaned close and pressed a kiss to her brow.

“You’ll burn brighter tomorrow,” he whispered. “You always do.”

Then he curled beside her, wrapping his arms around her middle, drawing her against his chest. But sleep did not take him.

Not that night.

Nor for many nights after.

24

The Hands That Guide

The Jade Lattices were still dark when Lu’ma began her sweep. The air coiled thick with Sahtra incense, its serpentine body curling along the mosaicked floors. These were the breaths of the Jade Lattices between Council sessions, rituals, gatherings, and the chaos of the day. Most considered these hours sacred. Or silent. But for Lu’ma, they were duty.

She moved without sound, a flicker of shadow and violet robes. Her bare feet whispered over crystal tile, shoes strapped tight to her waist. She passed beneath the carved archways of the Resh’Agar’s private wing, slipping past warded doorways and draped thresholds, each familiar as breath.

In her hands: a silver comb, a rune-etched cloth, and the iron dagger she kept hidden in her sash.

Her task was simple. Always the same. Check the bedclothes. The bathing pool. The furs and silks near the fluxhearth. Sweep the brushes, even the folded garments in the wardrobe. Anywhere one might have fallen—a strand of Her Radiance's hair.

Reflection: This Nameless has never seen Her Radiance shed a single one. But, every morning and every night, the Hands must search. Her Radiance isn’t like the painted vipers or the bloated Councilors. But with how her health has been, This Nameless cannot take a risk.

Her Radiance did not shed. Her body—small, strange, and sovereign—did not follow the laws of others. Even her threads were sacred. Kept in perfect number. As though her very soul refused to loosen anything the world could steal.

All in Krystopolis guarded their hair with their lives.

Reflection: The Choir Mother demonstrated once what disaster could be wrought with a single strand. The screams. The blood. Death was merciful.

Even now, decades after that example, Lu’ma sometimes dreamed of the horror of it.

All Hands know the story of Theren House. A curl taken from a sleeping bedmate was sufficient to bring ruin to the Selen District.

The resulting curse was so powerful that it forced the Council and the Resh’Agar to reconfigure all the wards within the Prismatum. Had caused an avalanche of laws changing the way all wards were created for Selen Temples.

Hair, to the untrained, was just detritus. But to the learned, it was power.