Chapter 26: Lily Of The Abyss
"I know," Azeron replied simply, the familiar smile returning to his face. "But with this, he has earned it on his own."
"How is the Youngest Master faring, Primarch?" Zarek inquired. Unlike Azeron, he couldn’t afford the luxury of spending his days observing Asher’s training.
His responsibilities were many, duties that rightfully belonged to the Primarch, but which Azeron routinely neglected out of sheer indifference. Unless it involved a blade or concerned his family, it rarely made its way onto Azeron’s to-do list.
"What can I say? He is a Wargrave, after all," Azeron said, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "And he’s inherited his mother’s innate gift with the rapier. If only she were here to witness it, to see her long-held wish finally fulfilled: a child of hers wielding her weapon with pride."
There was a subtle shift in his voice, something softer, more wistful. Beneath his composed exterior, a deep sense of longing lingered.
Lily, Azeron’s late wife, had been a master of the rapier. Countless foes, men, monsters, even the dreaded Emovirae, had fallen to the precision of her blade. As the Primarch’s consort, she had been formidable in her own right, an indomitable force whose strength had once commanded fear and respect in equal measure.
To become the wife of a Wargrave Primarch, a bloodline born for the art of war, one had to be extraordinary. But to stand beside Azeron, a man who existed beyond the bounds of conventional standards, she had to be something more: truly exceptional.
And Lily was exactly that.
A woman so formidable that the Empire itself had dubbed her ’Lily Of The Abyss’, a name whispered with both reverence and fear. Her strength was the stuff of legend; few dared challenge her, and fewer still lived to speak of it.
Azeron had fallen for Lily the moment he laid eyes on her. Her striking violet hair, the piercing amethyst of her gaze, the flawless porcelain of her skin, the elegant curve of her waist, even her scent, it was all seared into his memory from that first encounter.
But at the time, he had not yet ascended to the title of Primarch, and love was a luxury far removed from his path.