The third hour of conversation, Lord Taelthorn entered, filling the room with the force of a storm descending from the peaks. He stopped when he saw Elyra, his eyes narrowing; not with hostility, but with the sharp caution of a hawk sighting its prey. The air seemed to draw back a little, as if it recognised two different centres of gravity pulling at the same room.
Serenya felt her shoulders straighten instinctively. The space between the fire and the door turned, in a single heartbeat, into a field of invisible negotiation. Taelthorn did not usually burst into her chambers unannounced, and the fact that he did so that night, just when Elyra had returned to her life, made her suspect that none of it was accidental.
"So… the queen's instigator has finally arrived?" he asked, in an unusually soft voice.
The title hung in the air, laden with irony and a curious respect. Serenya lifted her gaze toward him, searching his expression for any trace of displeasure. She knew all too well the tiny variations in Taelthorn's tone: the slight shift that separated a dangerous joke from a veiled warning, the way a comment could become a knife by altering only the tilt of his head.
Elyra smiled at the phrase.
"Instigator of queens? That one is new. You say it as if it were a trade."
Her answer fell like a stone into a tense lake. Where someone else might have bowed their head or hurried to deny any influence, Elyra chose the path of light teasing, marking by it the ground she was willing to stand on. She did not challenge him openly, but neither did she entirely accept the role imposed on her. Serenya held her breath, waiting to see how Taelthorn would react.
She rose with elegance, inclining her head in a courteous bow at his presence.
"My lord, I did not know I had a title. Should I charge a fee for it?"
The courtesy of her gesture contrasted with the spark in her eyes. Behind the joke, Elyra was testing the limits of that lord of ice. Serenya sensed it with a mixture of pride and fear: proud of her friend's composure, afraid that Taelthorn might see such boldness as a threat. The Citadel had grown accustomed to solemnity; irony was a language almost no one dared to speak there.
Taelthorn's gaze moved from Serenya to Elyra, and back again.
"Back in the peaks, you persuaded her to join my cause, did you not? That makes you more than a friend; you shaped her destiny."
There was an indecipherable shade in his voice. It was not an open accusation, but neither was it simple acknowledgment. Serenya felt the words spear into her like a memory of that night when, under the golden glow of her native mountains, she had agreed to hear Taelthorn's promises. Elyra had been there, had pushed with jokes and dares, reminding her that her dreams were bigger than the valleys. But the final decision had been hers.
Serenya tensed at his tone.
"Taelthorn—"
The interruption was instinctive, an attempt to deflect the spotlight that had settled too intensely on Elyra. She did not want her friend caught in the webs of Citadel politics, her words picked apart, weighed, and measured by ice-bound counsellors who watched everything without being seen.
Elyra raised a finger, smiling.
"See? Even she admits it. If it was that easy to influence her, it is because she had already chosen the path."
With that answer, Elyra cut the thread before Taelthorn could keep pulling at it. She handed back, with a smile, the idea that Serenya was not a puppet moved by others' hands, but a woman who had made her choices long before any lord of the mountain set foot in her valleys. Serenya felt a mix of relief and vertigo: Elyra was playing with fire, but she was doing so in her defense.
The silence between them stretched, taut. Serenya feared Taelthorn's anger; instead, he barely smiled, a faint curve to his lips.
"A simple nudge, then. We shall see where it leads her… toward glory or somewhere else?"
The phrase hung like a sentence not yet pronounced. Taelthorn spoke as if his interest were purely strategic, but Serenya knew the gleam that had flashed through his eyes: that of someone who had wagered something of himself on that bet. It was not just about a kingdom, but about the project he had built around her, about the Citadel as a forge for a new order.
Elyra smiled mischievously.
"Toward trouble, more likely. That has always been her gift."
The laughter that followed was brief but sincere. For an instant, the hardness that usually surrounded Taelthorn loosened, as if the image of a Serenya getting into trouble were as familiar and inevitable to him as it was to Elyra. Serenya was surprised that Elyra had so easily coaxed that gesture and tacit recognition of her nature from him. It was as though, between the two of them, they were reminding her who she had been before crowns and oaths.
With that, he withdrew with a wide smile, convinced he had not been mistaken in bringing Elyra to the Northern Peaks. Serenya needed her, he told himself. The fire crackled more fiercely in his absence, as if responding to an underground current beginning to move through the Citadel, one that not even Taelthorn fully understood… and that, perhaps, would soon cease to obey his will alone.