Chapter 106: The Meeting of the Vampire Lords (2)
The names began to fall, one by one, carried by measured, cautious voices — sometimes laced with barely veiled pride, often weighed with the care of a chess move where each word meant more than just a name.
Some spoke with military clarity, others with feigned detachment, but all knew that behind the nomination lay more than a tournament — it was a maneuver, a gamble, a message cast across the entire table.
Then came Anarael’s turn. She did not rise. She looked at no one. She didn’t even need to breathe differently.
In a calm, even, implacable voice, she pronounced her choice like a sentence, something decided long before the meeting began, as if the words merely formalized a truth sealed in another age.
— I choose Lukaris.
A shiver ran through the assembly. Not a sound, but a dull ripple, a discreet shock, almost physical, that seemed to spread through the air like a restrained vibration.
Eyes froze, some widened ever so slightly, and for a second... everything seemed suspended.
Only Cassandre didn’t react. She remained still, her gaze lost in a distant thought, detached from the silent tumult her name had just stirred.
And Yaris, slumped in his chair, barely blinked — halfway between sleep and a detachment so deep it bordered on cruelty.
The confirmation that Noctis had spoken to her about me, in one way or another, became more and more obvious. It was no longer a hypothesis. He had done it. Definitely. He had whispered something to her. Enough for her to know. To see beyond appearances, beyond even what I was beginning to understand about myself.
She knew. She knew I was the thirteenth.