Page 88 of The Nymph King

His throat bobbed, color draining from his face. “That was not my intention.”

“Then your intention was poorly expressed.”

He bowed his head. “My apologies, Your Majesty.”

“Accepted,” Imani said, her voice a cool contrast to Ellisar’s heat. “Now, if you intend to remain on my council, learn the difference between questioning my strategy and questioning my capability.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Her chosen mate remained standing, his breathing deep, one hand braced so hard against the table that the tendons in his wrist stood out.

“Ellisar.” Imani motioned for him to sit down.

With a shake of his head, the suffocating pressure of his magic receded. He gave the councilman one last, cutting look. “Do not make me explain it twice.” He sat down.

Imani should have been irritated by his intervention, and indeed, a small part of her was. But she was acutely aware of the distinction in what had just occurred. Ellisar had only shattered his restraint when the disagreement morphed into an attempt to diminish her. Unlike Kiran, whose fury was always rooted in possession, Ellisar had not once called her his.

He had called her their queen.

She’d ruminate on that point later.

Imani turned back to the maps. “As I was saying. Kiran controls the narrative by bringing every High Sentinel and the second monarch into his domain. If his legitimacy is questioned, this is where he forces the realm to acknowledge him.”

“You’re right about the danger,” Ellisar added, his tone level once again. “Going is a risk. But staying home gives Kiran exactly what he wants. It allows him to call you frightened, isolate Essenheim, and spin whatever narrative suits him. If you attend, you gain firsthand insight into his military strength and discover exactly who is willing to stand beside him.”

Imani listened, his counsel washing over her. Avoiding risk doesn’t uphold the rule, Ellisar had told her once before. Tanyl had avoided the hard options. He had stayed in the middle, allowing the edges of the kingdom to rot to protect the center. Imani was still learning the machinery of ruling, but she refused to become Tanyl.

She curled her hand into a fist in her lap, looking at Ellisar and Esa. The council knew only what it needed to know, but the three of them knew the full picture: Meira, the divided crowns, the second king, the unraveling Source. Those secrets made confronting Kiran more vital, but she needed to beat him at his own game.

If another claimant to Niflheim existed, Kiran’s own court might be the best place to find the first evidence of him.

“We will attend the parley,” Imani announced, her voice ringing with absolute finality. “But we go on our terms, and we do not hand him control.”

The room’s frantic energy instantly transformed into determination.

“How do you expect to contain him if this turns violent?” one advisor pressed.

“What are the terms of our arrival? Do we go in with protection?” another asked.

“Our primary objective is intelligence. I want to know why Kiran is gathering power, who answers his call, and what he intends to demand. Our leverage is his desire for my presence. We make him pay for that access.”

Imani ran a finger along the Niflheim border on the map. “The cost is proximity,” she continued. “We go onto Kiran’s ground, reveal some measure of our strength simply by showing him who travels with me, and give him another opportunity to use the heartmate bond against me. I am aware of that risk. I am choosing it because what we learn there is worth more than what we expose.”

She swept her gaze around the table. “We will not enter Niflheim helpless. We take a heavily armed, controlled escort, enough strength to extract us if diplomacy fails. If he refuses to let us leave, the parley is over, and we exit by force. Success means we leave freely, having conceded nothing of our sovereignty, armed with a clear picture of his coalition’s weaknesses.”

Meanwhile, she’d find the leverage she needed against him. Somehow.

Sitting back in her chair, she laced her fingers together, her posture radiating a calm she was finally beginning to feel. “If he wants to bring every piece onto one board, I intend to see them all before he starts moving them.”

CHAPTER 26

Imani no longer needed the parchment for the trust spell. Before burning it in Vathis, she had repeated the sequence until every step was fixed in her memory, including how to form the question, hold the relevant person in mind, press the wand to the sigil, speak the incantation, and let the Divination decide where to go. Destroying the page had only removed the risk of anyone else using it against her. She still held the instruction in her mind, though.

In her rooms, she prepared with a surgical focus she rarely applied to Divination magic. She stripped the incantation to its bare essentials, tracing the familiar pattern she remembered. Unlike her previous casting in Vathis, she knew exactly what to expect. I’m using it the way the elf witch intended, she told herself, taking several deep breaths. Divination magic could go incredibly wrong. Imani knew that more than anyone.

But before the parley, she needed information on Kiran’s state along with his intentions, and no path was more direct than this one. She would observe, extract what was useful, and detach on her terms. Emotion had derailed her once, but it would not do so again.

Sweeping the Drasil through the air, she chanted the incantation until a sphere of raw magic hung suspended before her. With a decisive flick of her wand, she drove the magic into the hearth.