Page 16 of On Broken Bonds

To Valtor’s left sits Soryn, her white hair flashing silver beneath the torchlight. She turns toward the crowd and offers a small wave. It’s not much, but it’s more acknowledgment than the others have offered.

“She lit the northern sky for seven nights when her youngest daughter was born,” someone murmurs.

Another lets out a dreamy sigh. “And they say she once held the sun still in the heavens to save an entire harvest.”

That sounds like her.

If any of them could be bothered to concern themselves with mortal suffering for longer than an afternoon, it would be Soryn.

There is an unnervingly deliberate quality to her beauty. Her midnight-colored gown shimmers like a living piece of the celestial dome, and every movement carries the sort of measured precision only centuries can teach.

Beside her sprawls Terranis in his chair like he could not give less of a shit about any of this. The nearest cluster of worshippers noticeably quiets.

Smart.

“My father swears he saw Terranis crack an entire mountain in half when poachers burned one of his sacred groves,” someone mutters.

A woman beside him shudders. “My grandmother always said he sent the Blackroot blight because men cut too deeply into the eastern forests.”

That, unfortunately, sounds entirely plausible.

Terranis has never hidden his opinion that humanity is little more than an infestation. His long dark hair hangs wild around his shoulders, and vines coil over his bare torso as though the earth itself cannot bear to release him fully into civilization.

He looks exactly like what he is, a predator barely tolerating his metaphorical cage.

To Valtor’s right lounges Aqualis.

“She drowned an entire pirate fleet for insulting one of her daughters,” a young woman says, sounding almost awed.

Another nods. “But she guided my uncle’s fishing vessel home through a storm three winters ago.”

That is Aqualis. The sea has never cared for consistency.

Her opalescent gown gleams like moonlight across restless water, every movement shifting between softness and danger. There is a beauty to her that feels impossible to trust.

One never knows whether the tide means to carry you safely to shore or drag you under.

And finally there is Eryndor. No one speaks of him at first. Typical.

Then, quietly, an older man near the back says, “My grandfather used to say Eryndor gave us the wheel.”

A younger voice scoffs. “That is only a story.”

“Perhaps,” the man says. “But someone taught men to shape the world.”

At that, I allow myself the faintest curl of amusement. At least one person in this room possesses a functioning mind.

Eryndor sits bent over his tablet, blond curls brushing his shoulders, looking more scholar than divine. There is nothing spectacular about him at first glance. No gleaming theatrics. No cultivated grandeur.

And yet mortal civilization owes him more than all the others combined.

Fire harnessed to hearths. Ships strong enough to cross Aqualis’s moods. Steel shaped to purpose. Medicine. Progress itself.

The world was built on knowledge he passed down.

Naturally, louder gods have spent centuries taking credit for it.

Human women hang from Valtor’s throne like so many bugs fluttering around a flame, unaware of the pain and death to come if they get too close. In fact, the women surrounding him are so beautiful and entranced by him that he hardly pays any attention to the new man prostrated before him on the expansive marbled gold floor.