Nazaira Eldwright stood before the obsidian window of her high tower, the moonlight bleeding silver across the glass and stone like spilled judgment. The duchy sprawled beneath her—a lattice of steepled rooftops, sentry lights, ordered streets, and patrolling guards dressed in silence. All so perfectly still. So obedient.
And yet her gaze did not soften.
It burned—sharp and cold, the way fire turned in on itself when deprived of air.
Her fingers, long and ringed with sapphire-cored sigils, curled into a fist so tight the joints clicked. Her nails bit into her palm.
"How," she said, voice like silk pulled taut over a blade, "do you lose a half-dead boy in a cage on wheels?"
The man kneeling at her feet trembled visibly. His breath came shallow, misting against the polished marble floor of her private hall. Captain Irlen of the Bronze Pike Mercenaries—battle-tested, grizzled, scarred—looked now like a beaten dog, waiting for the lash.
As he should.
"M-My Lady Nazaira, we did not anticipate—"
"You did not anticipate incompetence?" Her voice cracked like glass beneath pressure. "Or did you not anticipate me noticing?"
The air shifted. Her aura, normally subdued for courtly civility, swept outward—a cool violet pressure, invisible but heavy as drowned stone. It licked the hall's columns, pressed against the carved ceiling, tightened lungs. Even the sconces flickered, flames bowing.
"I assigned you a single task," she said. "Transport the disgrace quietly—Seren Eldwright. A mistake of a child. One whose existence insults the family name."
The last word tasted like poison on her tongue.
"And yet, here I am, receiving news that he vanished—vanished—from your 'secured' custody like a puff of perfume in the wind."
She allowed the silence to stretch. Let it suffocate him. Let him drown in her restraint.
Irlen bowed lower, forehead pressed so hard to the stone it would leave a mark. "We believe an unknown factor interfered, my lady. There were… signs. A surge of power. Something ancient."
Nazaira's lip twitched.
Ancient.
Her thoughts flickered—brief and surgical—back to the divination mirror. That ripple. The spike in arcane frequency she had dismissed as noise in the weave. She'd felt something alien. Not foreign like another mage's aura. But wrong. Like a relic clawing its way back into a world that had already entombed it.
She had dismissed it.
She never made the same mistake twice.
She turned sharply. The trailing back of her robe—a thousand-thread weave of shadowlace and antler-silk—brushed the floor behind her, whispering in tongues no one dared translate.
"My husband has been in seclusion for nine years," she said, half to herself. "And he is about to awaken. With him comes the Trials."
Her voice dropped. Colder now. Measured.
She pivoted, facing the full room.
"Since Seren is already crippled, I intended nothing more than a quiet exclusion. A quiet rot. I had no intention of killing him outright and inviting my husband's wrath. My goal was only to eliminate him from the line of succession—softly, cleanly. We'd handle the rest when the time was right."
Her eyes swept the kneeling men. One flinched. She memorized his face.
"But now? Now every faction is watching me. Waiting for me to slip. Miravelle and her ilk are salivating at the thought. Kaelen will move pieces. Elyon…"
She trailed off. That one was always harder to read.
A sharp inhale. She hadn't meant it to be audible. Her control, finely polished as obsidian, had cracked for just a second.
"If I could, I would've killed him with my own hands long ago."
But she couldn't.
Not yet.
The Duchess—mother of the First Heir, Iron Tactician of the Northern Court, Mistress of Strategy in Nine Realms of Influence—was still bound. By scrutiny. By courtiers and laws and knives she could not see. By rumors she could not trace to the source.
One misstep and Miravelle's faction would rip into her like sharks.
She exhaled through her nose. A cooling breath. A reignition of control.
"Summon the Shadow Talon Envoys," she said at last, her tone regaining edge. "Deploy them under the pretense of a northern scouting initiative. Their orders are to locate Seren Eldwright."
Her words turned steel-edged.
"I want to know how he escaped. Who helped him. Was it one of my enemies? A foreign agent? Or…" Her voice darkened, curling inward like smoke. "…a mistake of mine?"
She turned back to the window, violet eyes hard as carved amethyst. The moon's reflection flickered in the obsidian pane, fractured by warding runes laced deep within the glass.
"Nothing happens in this duchy without my permission."
She walked with sharp precision to her throne of blacksteel and antlerwood. Not a seat—a command structure, forged to dominate. Her robe settled around her like a stormcloud, coils of fabric falling with practiced weight.
"And if anyone—anyone—is bold enough to interfere in my affairs…"
She let the sentence hang. Then lifted her hand and tapped the armrest once.
A single echo.
"…then they're not just defying a woman."
The words landed with a finality that turned stomachs.
"They are defying Eldwright."
She paused. The room held its breath.
Then, as quiet as a curse, she whispered:
"And I do not forgive."
---
Elsewhere in the Duchy…
---
Second Prince's Circle – Miravelle's Garden
Lady Miravelle, ageless and coiled in satins of green and ivory, poured her tea with elegance sharpened by centuries of watching empires fall.
The petals around her stirred faintly—warded blossoms that bloomed only in lies.
She tilted her cup, eyes gleaming like polished jade.
"Oh dear," she murmured to her son, Prince Alren, "it seems Nazaira's leash is slipping."
Alren grinned, teeth white and wolfish. "Shall we pull on it, Mother?"
"Not yet," she said, calm as drifting poison. "But prepare the Verdant Serpents. The boy may be worthless… or he may become quite useful."
---
Third Prince's Tower – Barracks of the Stormhorn Order
Prince Kaelen stood over a map table, lean and armored in leather reinforced with sigil-bronze. He read the report from the Bronze Pikes, fingers tightening as he reached the end.
"Shadow Talons?" he muttered. "Nazaira's moving under pressure."
Commander Ryv, always stoic, raised a brow. "Should we follow?"
"Not yet," Kaelen said. "Double the patrols in the north. Contact the Sable Watch. If that boy turns out to be more than bones and bruises…"
He rolled the parchment. "…I want him."
---
Fifth Prince's Vault – The Arcane Hall of Duskwind
Prince Elyon, cloaked in silence, stood before a mirror of darkwater. His eyes shimmered with the reflection of moving patterns—runed fire, shifting constellations, the echo of fate itself.
His faction, the Whispered Flame, worked in folds of secrecy. Whispers, not wars.
He watched.
He waited.
Then he whispered:
"The pattern is shifting…"
No smile. No fear. Just curiosity.
---
[ END OF CHAPTER ]
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