Chapter 345: Radical
"Your Highness, other than killing Ruby Vaiva, I am in agreement with your plan. While I act accordingly."
She smiled.
"But know that ’accordingly’ means I do what I want."
And from behind her, spreading wide and white against the grey winter sky, a pair of pure dragon wings unfurled.
They caught the light like fresh snow, like moonstone, like something that had no business existing in this frozen wood beside this indifferent river.
The membranes gleamed with an iridescence that shifted as they stretched, pearl to silver to pearl. They were vast. They were magnificent. They were the wings of something that had never been human and had only briefly pretended otherwise.
Ivy Cassia’s jaw went slack.
Roarke forgot how to breathe.
Lady Sees, the Dragon Physician, the veiled enigma, the woman who had just manifested pure white dragon wings in the middle of a frozen wood for no apparent reason other than that she could, smiled beneath her veil.
"Do not touch Ruby Vaiva."
She said gently.
"That is my bitch to discipline."
Ruby Vaiva belonged to her. The Saintess’s fate, whatever it might be, was hers to decide. No one else’s. Not the Cassian Twins’. Not Roarke’s blade. Not anyone’s.
This—
Ivy’s mind, which had been racing through possibilities and finding none that made sense, slammed into a wall of revelation so profound that everything else simply stopped.
Sees. Luna of the Black Wolf King.
Yes, she was rumored to be a dragon. But rumors were rumors. Whispers were whispers. Ivy had heard a thousand impossible things about a thousand impossible people, and most of them had turned out to be lies wrapped in wishful thinking.
But for it to be true?!
And white—
White was the color of the divine Dragon Lord bloodli—
Ivy’s knees buckled. She did not decide to kneel, but her body simply... did it. You do not stand before gods. You kneel. You make yourself small in the presence of something so much larger than you.
Beside her, Roarke hit the ground at the same moment. His knees struck the frost-crusted riverbank with a muted thud, his head bowing, his eyes fixed on the frozen earth.
He had spent a century surviving by knowing when to fight and when to submit, and every instinct he possessed was screaming submit submit submit.
"Your Maj—"
"No, no, no, no, no." Lady Sees’s hands were on them. Gripping their arms. Hauling them back to their feet with a strength that belied her slender frame.
"Up. Up, up, up. Don’t kneel on me."
Ivy and Roarke found themselves standing again, their knees aching and their minds reeling. They kept their eyes downcast, but when they finally, hesitantly, raised their gazes...
The wings were gone.
Vanished. The grey winter sky was empty behind Lady Sees’s veiled figure.
[Cecilia: Oathran, what have you done?! You are scaring them shitless! I want them both on our side!]
The telepathic transmission crackled, and she sounded exasperated. It was the mental equivalent of a wife hissing at her husband across a crowded room while maintaining a pleasant smile for the guests.
Oathran had been passing by, genuinely, coincidentally, innocently passing by on his way to Iondora Capital. After all, he missed her.
He had been flying over the outskirt sky when he sensed her. A bright spark of Cecilia in the grey winter dimness, hidden but not from him. Never from him.
He had flipped his track in the sky, banking hard, curiosity and longing pulling him toward her like a hook in his chest. Then, he listened to their conversation from above, the princess and the assassin, and he had decided he knew exactly how to solve it.
Coincidentally also, he wore a copy of Cecilia’s Presence Concealing Ring. She had given it to him for examination and study since he had been curious about its construction and enchantments. He had asked to borrow it, and she had agreed, and now he wore it on his.
He had descended silently and invisibly, completely undetectable. Then, he positioned himself directly behind Cecilia, and with precise control he had used his mana to reveal only his wings.
Not his body and presence. Just the vast, white, span of his dragon wings, unfurling behind his mate.
The effect... was as intended.
[Oathran: Why not? See? It will eliminate their hesitation to join our side. It saves time.]
He said calmly and reasonably. He was confused about why anyone was upset.
[Cecilia: Hush. Shoo! Shooooooo!]
The transmission was accompanied by a mental image of Cecilia physically waving him away, both hands flapping in the universal gesture of go away immediately.
Oathran shrunk like a scolded cat, and his presence disappeared completely now.
[Oathran: ...ahem.]
The mental sound was sheepish.
[Oathran: Okay, my Lady. I am... I am leaving. Uh... sorry.]
The Presence Concealing Ring hummed on his finger as he banked away, climbing into the grey winter sky.
He would make it up to her later.
Somehow.
Probably with food. Cecilia responded well to food.
"Your Majesty." Ivy began. "I am sorry for not recognizing you. I—"
Her words stumbled, tripped over themselves.
"I am not..." Cecilia paused, considering. "Well. Perhaps I can be called one, hm? ’Her Majesty’?"
The title felt strange in her mouth. Foreign. She had married three kings, yes, Arkai Dawnoro, the Black Wolf King of the North. Eastiel, the Golden Lion King of the South. Oathran, the Dragon Lord, the Owner of the Sky. By any reasonable metric, she was a queen three times over. The title should fit.
Meanwhile, Ivy tilted her head, her pale eyes flicking to Roarke.
The assassin stood frozen, his dark eyes wide, sweat covering every visible inch of his skin. His face had gone the color of old parchment, and his hands trembled at his sides with a fine, uncontrollable vibration.
So even this assassin did not know what he was dealing with?!
That was almost comforting, in a terrible way. If Roarke had not known that Lady Sees was a divine dragon, then perhaps Ivy’s own ignorance was not a personal failure but a universal condition.
Well.
If a dragon wanted to live among mortals, nothing could stop her. That was simply a fact. The divine did as the divine pleased, and mortals coped.
It was also her right to mate with any being she chose. Interspecies marriage was uncommon but not unheard of, and dragons lived so long that taking a shorter-lived partner was practically expected.
A wolf, at least, had longevity that approached something respectable. And Arkai Dawnoro already had an heir, so the succession was secure.
It made sense.
"So." Cecilia said, and both Ivy and Roarke snapped to attention. "My point is—"
She needed to improvise, after all.
"Do not touch Ruby Vaiva."
"Y-yes, Your Majesty." Ivy’s voice was steadier now, though her eyes still held the glassy quality of someone who had seen too much too quickly. "A-about who will take the blame for the Emperor’s death, I will—"
"Do not admit it yourself." Cecilia sighed.
"Your plan is good for that part. You may go and post that announcement to the assassination guilds, ’Master’ Roarke." she instructed. "Let Damon Iondora choose who to blame afterward. He has opinions. He will enjoy the task."
"Y-yes." Roarke’s voice cracked on the single syllable. He cleared his throat, tried again. "As you wish, Your Majesty."
His heart had vacated his chest entirely and lodged itself somewhere in his throat, beating a desperate rhythm against his windpipe.
Arkai, you absolute madman. You actually scored a dragon. A divine white dragon. You—
What a man.
What an absolute legend of a man you are!
Cecilia, beneath her veil, was having her own crisis.
She had initially intended to expose herself to Ivy. To discard the veil and show her face, to say it is me, Cecilia, I am alive, I am here, and I need you to trust me.
She had wanted to convince her in a genuine way, woman to woman, sister’s friend to almost-sister-in-law, two people who had both been wronged by the same systems and had chosen to fight back in their own ways.
But this—
This changed everything.
If she revealed herself now, lifting the veil and showed Ivy Cassia the face of the woman she had believed dead, the woman whose replacement had prompted her to kill an emperor out of sheer annoyance, it would become a huge thing.
Ivy would have questions, hundreds of them, sharp and entirely reasonable, mind you. And Cecilia would have to answer. She would have to explain everything.
The Meleth Flower. Her survival. Her three husbands. The future Ruby Vaiva had come from, and the future Cecilia was trying to find out and prevent.
She would have to expose the real reason she wanted Ruby to stay alive.
And Ivy Cassia, though she was a good person, genuinely, in her strange, unhinged, regicidal way, was not fully on their side yet.
Not truly.
If Damon managed to marry her, it would be a different story. But Damon had failed to marry her. Their paths had diverged years ago, and now Ivy was a foreign princess with her own agenda, her own loyalties, her own reasons for doing what she did.
Magnus Karas, what a lucky man you were.
Well.
It was not that she would never tell Ivy everything. One day, perhaps. When the board was more stable. When she understood the Cassian Twins better, or heck, maybe after she found out one or two more from Ruby’s future.
But not today.
Today, Ivy Cassia and her sister were still too unpredictable. They were still too capable of taking information and spinning it into schemes that Cecilia had not authorized and could not control.
She could not fully include them in her board yet. They were wild cards, and wild cards were only useful if you knew exactly how they would land.
"Wait!"
Ivy’s hand shot out and grasped Cecilia’s.
"But the reason I want Ruby Vaiva dead—" She paused, gathered herself and pressed on. "It is to replace her with a new Saintess. One who is more reliable. More accurate. More morally kind."
Ivy’s eyes bore into hers behind the veil, begging.
"Your Majesty, Ruby Vaiva is corrupt."