Chapter 121: The Serpent's Coil
The dawn that followed our pact with the Dragon Queen did not bring clarity; it brought a silence heavier and more suffocating than any spoken threat. The grand halls of the Aeridor mansion, once a sanctuary of quiet, dignified sorrow, now felt like a gilded cage where every shadow held a secret and every whisper could be a lie. The air itself was brittle with unspoken anxieties.
We sat at the long, polished obsidian table for breakfast, a perfect, painful tableau of a family that never was. Christina's father, Lord Aeridor, stared into his cup of untouched tea, his face a roadmap of sleepless turmoil. Her mother moved with a practiced, fragile grace, arranging silverware that was already perfectly placed, her hands trembling almost imperceptibly. They were ghosts at their own table, haunted by the royal decree that had saved them from one fire only to thrust them into another.
