Chapter 19
1223 Words
The summit had officially begun.
Three human kings out of the seven in their lands entered first, draped in their finest gold and misplaced pride.
Those susceptible to death by aging, sickness or wound always thought they were 'clean'. 'The First ones'.
They've always been ridiculous. Depending on the 'monsters' and allying with them but still despising us for our long lives and strength.
Their crowns glittered under the false starlight of the room, each step heavy with centuries of entitlement.
Behind them the warlocks swept the grounds with their robes—seven of the First Tier.
Their robes trailed smoke, their eyes gleaming with a fading, unnatural brilliance, as if the stars themselves had been caught with their magic and were burning out behind their irises.
Power pressed thick in the air and I shuddered thinking what would happen if we decided to say f**k you diplomacy and start a throwdown in this very room.
We were ushered into a new chamber.
The table alone could have been a battlefieldvas we all seated: carved from a single slab of darkstone, veins of silver threading its surface like frozen lightning. At its head loomed a throne so black it devoured light.
And upon it, the beautiful woman from earlier who I learned was Queen Nymera of Erevar.
She was not one that smiled easily.
Her hair was obsidian, piled in coils that shimmered like stormclouds.
Her skin, pale as bleached pearl, caught the glow of the hovering flames and threw it back sharper, harder. She wore no crown. She didn’t need one.
Authority dripped from her like venom, coiled in every angle of her body. Every tilt of her chin said one thing: kneel.
Her eyes—silver and red, rimmed in kohl—cut across the hall like blades.
Beside her sat Vasska.
Our eyes met and I sneered.
There was a barely noticeable tilt of his lip in response to that.
Broad-shouldered, unflinching, his presence radiated cold discipline. The kind of cold that burned if you touched it too long.
His gaze left me and swept the room once, unhurried, and then stopped entiely on the far off wall—as though nothing here was worth looking at twice.
And yet, despite all that uninterest, someone had managed to drape herself over him like ivy.
A woman.
A very beautiful one.
Beautiful in the way court-bred women were taught to be: porcelain skin, lips tinted like winter berries, hair catching the lamplight as if she’d practiced for hours.
Her eyes were moon-pools, shallow but striking.
She clung to his arm delicately, her laughter light and breathy.
She could give Isolde a run for her money in practiced smiles.
They looked like the perfect pair if not for the boredom marring Vasska’s features. They were probably betrothed.
My stomach soured at another one of her laughs.
Then there was another ray of sunshine just across from me.
Vaeril of the Eighth House Sera.
He pretty much ignored me after a few tension laced stares. Maybe figuring i wasn't of importance. He kept whispering into the ears of a fae man next to him, looking all serious and important.
Sun-gold hair. Emerald eyes. Arrogant like it was in his blood. He had the kind of face bards would write songs about and the kind of smirk that made me want to strangle him with his own harp strings.
Ezekiel, Quinn, Isolde, Elio, and I were arranged in a neat little row.
Quinn to my left, a lesser-princess to my right, fox-blooded if I had to guess. Her eyes shimmered faintly with enchantment, her magic humming like a coiled wire beneath her skin.
The first subject was land. Always land.
Specifically, the land the Fae claimed had been consumed by the Barrier—seventeen cities now under wolf dominion, stained with both our bloods.
The warlocks, ever the charming parasites, threw their lot in with the Fae.
Their words were velvet over daggers, curses laced with diplomacy, every syllable dipped in honey and arsenic.
Vaeril tossed his demands like spears. Elio countered, calm and sharp, Quinn murmuring quiet corrections at his shoulder. Isolde posed like a statue, her stillness deliberate, polished.
Ezekiel jumped in every few sentences saying slander and heresy, the usual hymns about what the Moon had never intended.
And me?
I was fighting the yawning abyss of boredom. I mean I was a little interested in the beginning until I realised I wouldn't be saying a word or needed at all.
It left me time to talk to myself.
《This place has rotted since last I walked this plane.》
I stiffened.
The voice slithered through my mind, low and amused.
Ah. Him again.
《They've been droning on about dirt for an hour.》
I sighed. "Okay, what are you exactly? A hallucination? Psychic damage from years of suppressed trauma? Or maybe I hit my head one too many times from all my fainting spells”~
《Cute deductions. I’m a demon that’s eons old, girl. I was ancient before your kind walked upright.》
“Righhhhht...” I muttered.
Sometimes I spoke in my mind to the thing, sometimes I didn't.
《Don't be dense. You cracked open something in the mines, my seal, and now I’m here. Of course I'm not too pleased it was you either. Poor choice of host if I do say so myself.》
“Wonderful,” I whispered, “I’ve got a squatters' rights spirit living in my head.”
《Demon. Not spirit. You don't know what powers you're entangled with now.》
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Look, If you were all powerful, you wouldn't be in a seventeen year old girl's head."
It had the nerve to chuckle.《I'm actually in your stomach.》
Wait, what?
"I'm going to vomit—"
《On the pretty Elve in front of you, please. He looks smug.》
"It's that darn stone isn't it? Be careful I don't s**t you out." I hiss.
It had to be that glowing monstrosity I stumbled upon in the mines. I did swallow it.
《I don't do well with threats.》
"Just how do I get you out?"
《I don't know but I think maybe I should take control of this useless body.》
Again. What?
It can do that?
"You can do that?"
It went quiet after that.
Elder Ezekiel was right after all. They do need to perform an exorcism on me.
To my right, someone bumped my elbow.
I blinked, dragging myself back to the room.
Now I get to look at her properly.
Fox-shifter, definitely.
Faint gold sheen in her eyes and flicker of magic around her. Soft tan skin, hundreds of little gold bands in her hair, and a grin too wide for formality.
“You looked like you were about to chew your seat,” she whispered, twirling her hair.
She must be as bored as I am.
“I was,” I whispered back.
“I'm Yasha. Kitsu line. You're Cinder, right?”
My brows rose. I had to know how she knew. “Does everyone in this room know who I am?”
She grinned. “Just the interesting ones.”
And just like that—I decided I liked her.
- Writer
