21. A TOUCH OF DARKNESS

Tyentso’s story

The Soaring Halls, the Upper Circle of the Capital City of Quur

One hour later

Of all the wizards who might once have been reliably expected to open a magical gate and keep it open while an army poured through, less than a half-dozen people remained. Two of those people were Varik and Lessoral D’Talus, worth dozens of wizards all on their own.

Tyentso was the last one on the staging grounds. Everyone else waited on her.

She looked out over the assembled troops and felt a profound sense of disbelief. What the hell was she even doing there? Defending the empire? Saving it? If Kihrin had told her four months previously that she’d end up as Emperor of Quur, she’d have laughed and then told him to go fuck himself. It was a ridiculous notion.

Since when had she ever given a damn about Quur?

More worrying still was the fanatical gleam she saw in every eye. She wasn’t half so naïve as to think it had anything to do with her own personal charm. She had no personal charm. She never had. This was something else.

She didn’t waste time on speeches. Tyentso suspected they wouldn’t have mattered, in any event. These people were already operating on a level of fervent devotion that she neither understood nor deserved.

But as Tyentso looked over the assembled soldiers and began to give the order to start opening gates, a flash of movement from a palace window caught her attention. A corner-of-the-eye glimpse, quick enough that exactly what she’d seen sank in only after her gaze had already slid past.

Gadrith had been watching her from the window.

She blinked and snapped her attention back to that position. The window was empty.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Qoran and teleported.

She appeared again in the hallway that led to that same window. Nothing. There was no one there. No footsteps echoed as someone retreated. The corridor was deserted.

Tyentso felt a chill.

Gadrith was dead. She knew Gadrith was dead. So she was seeing things. Certainly possible. No one could argue that she hadn’t been under more than a little stress.

Tyentso glanced back down the hallway. Under normal circumstances, she might not have been certain of her location. The Crown and Scepter gave her a perfect knowledge of the entire palace layout; not only did Tyentso know exactly where she was, but she knew that only three doors and two flights of stairs separated the hallways she stood from her private chambers.

She bent down and picked up a single black hair.

It meant nothing. Lots of people had black hair. Most people had black hair.

She held the hair up to the light and cast a minor spell—one known in the inner circles of the Royal Houses. One that she knew because she had, after all, been a lord heir’s wife.

The hair caught fire and flared black before fading.

She stared. Whoever had owned this hair was a blood relative of the D’Lorus line As far as she knew, there was only one living person who qualified: herself. She didn’t have black hair.

Tyentso lowered a shaking hand. So it hadn’t been her imagination: she’d seen something. But had she seen her father?

Unlikely. But perhaps there was an Ogenra out there who’d escaped Gadrith’s attention, who’d avoided being claimed. Someone that High Lord Cedric had sequestered away, perhaps.

It couldn’t be Gadrith D’Lorus.

It just couldn’t.

She teleported back to the staging ground and began the process of transferring troops down to Khorvesh.