Chapter 283
Daphne descendant.
My name is Daphne Nyxclaw, named after the Daphne Nyxclaw, my great-great-great—well, many greats ancestor.
She changed the course of history. The first female Duke of Nyxclaw. The architect of the Consortage Laws that legalized same-sex marriage across the continent. One of the strongest warriors and strategists ever recorded. A figure shrouded in legend so thick it's hard to see the woman beneath.
I stand in front of her tomb. It's not in a cemetery, but atop the highest peak in the Nyxclaw range, a place of swirling mist and utter silence. Guarding the entrance is a statue carved from obsidian: a majestic, reclining panther, and curled trustingly against its forepaws, a small, detailed longear rabbit.
She also, they say, single-handedly changed the treatment of Longears. I'm told they were once at the very bottom of noble society, considered weak, fertile property. I can't imagine that.
