Candlelight jittered like moth wings, washing everyone’s faces with a faint ember-red. Medith laced her fingers tight, her gaze heavy as storm-clouds over the room. Most here were middle-aged; a few looked young, their feelings leaking like water from a cracked jar.
Yet in those steely pale-blue eyes burned a resolve others lacked, hard as winter ice. “How much do you know?” Medith watched them with a not-quite-smile, a cold edge of killing intent glinting like frost on a blade.
“General, no need to test us. Everyone here was vetted tight as a drum; no outsiders in this circle.” The speaker was a stocky, bearded middle-aged noble, his voice gravelly as a millstone. “There are plenty of rats. Paris is far tougher than we thought.”
Hearing that, the gleam of murder ebbed from Medith’s eyes like tide slipping off black rock. “My apologies, lords of the Blood Alliance. The hour’s a drawn bow; forgive my discourtesy.”
“Don’t stand on ceremony. If you trusted us at first word, you wouldn’t be someone we could entrust,” said a young, handsome man, his tone sharp as a reed flute.
“Hm?” Medith followed the voice. A youth not yet past twenty stared back, his anger coiled like a whip. His eyes cut toward her with winter chill, holding endless yearning and a hint of release, like a swollen river seeking a breach.
A collective sigh rippled through the room like wind through reeds. “Don’t fault him, General. He’s Lawson. His father, Lucas, was the Blood Alliance’s spiritual standard-bearer. He doubted Paris and denounced him in court and street. In the ensuing Purge, he was ambushed and killed in the dark...”
Medith sucked in a sharp breath; it hissed like a blade drawn. She swept the room; helpless fury shadowed every face like soot after a fire. In the Royal Capital, Paris likely already blotted out the sun. With the royal armory and treasury in his fist, he monopolized force, pulling whole swathes of nobles into his net.
His reach and methods far outran her expectations, like roots threading deep under stone. “Then I’ll cut to the bone. What power does Paris truly command? When did this seed sprout? Why seize the crown with such haste and blood? What does he seek?
“And the crux: on what bedrock can you assert the truth of that day? Don’t forget, the country’s rains and winds are fair. For common folk, a change of throne barely stirs the pot. In their eyes, Paris is royal blood made legitimate. The tale’s been steered like cattle into ‘natural disaster.’ Even the curious won’t step out to investigate; the road’s been snowed over.
“Because Paris stands as a virtuous ruler—at least for now. To the people, that mask fits like a second skin. So, what do you plan to do? What can I even put on the scale? Or say it plain: whoever holds the Eastern Nation, what loss is it to me?”
Medith’s words were half truth, half smoke, the taste of someone unwilling to wade into muddy waters. Faces dimmed with disappointment like lamps turned low. She was making a point by example: Paris gripped the key levers—the noble blocs and the royal corps—like a smith’s tongs. So long as those gears meshed, no one cared what truth lay under the floorboards.
“All the more reason to dig up the truth,” someone insisted, voice like a pick striking rock. “The people are just deceived by Paris. I heard Captain Haidra say you’d already seen the face behind his veil.
“You know better than anyone what follows if he keeps the reins. Will you truly abandon Ostos? Will you let Lord Draela and Emperor Aelius lie wronged in their graves, cold as sealed tombs?”
Grief twisted their faces like gnarled roots. They’d thought Medith would throw in fully; yet here she stood, wavering like a flame in a draft.
A sigh unfurled in her like smoke. She folded her arms and sank into the chair, thoughts circling like crows at dusk. Calmly, she weighed it: did it truly matter who ruled the Eastern Nation to her, a traveler outside the storm? She wasn’t of the East, nor bound by any blood oath to it, no red thread tied to her wrist. At most, they were allies—and allies are reeds in the wind. Her ties to Ostos and Elyu weren’t deep; even for Talant, kin-close, did she dare move a piece on this knife-edged board?
If she stepped in, rivers of blood would be inevitable, and the Elf Clan’s lives would be hitched to her belt like dangling knives. That would be reckless toward the unknown and unfair to Sprites who didn’t even know her, like throwing dice in fog.
“Let me... think this through,” she said, the words bitter as old tea. “For now, move carefully. The palace floors are all thorns; one misstep and there’s no grave to be found.”
With that, she sprang up and streaked into the vast night like a swallow vanishing into mist.
