The world was darkening around Lindon. His madra channels hurt worse than they ever had since he’d absorbed the Diamond Veins. His spirit was twisting itself in knots like a wet rag being wrung dry.
Since before he’d advanced to Copper, he had known that oaths had heavier weight the more powerful the souls involved. At the time, he’d never thought he’d grow this powerful.
Now he was paying the price for that power.
His senses were already hazy and dark, but he was pretty certain he was lying face-down on the roof. Would he die?
[Maybe not,] Dross said, and he was calmer now. [There’s no telling. We head forth into the unknown…together.]
Lindon had many regrets. He regretted that he was dragging Dross down with him for his own stupid mistake. He regretted that he hadn’t been able to keep the promises to the others. He wanted to see Yerin one last time.
And he wished Malice had warned him.
He should be at peace, but he was still bitter. He couldn’t help but think this had been a trap.
Mercy’s part of the plan went flawlessly.
She ended up in the library where the Books of Seven Pages were all kept. Akura Constance wasn’t even suspicious; she was honored that Mercy had come to visit at all. Constance was old enough to be Mercy’s mother—not as old as Mercy’s mother, of course, not by centuries—but she held Mercy in awe, and asked question after question about the Uncrowned King tournament.
As well as some nervous questions about the sky turning black, and the approaching Dreadgod, though she assured Mercy that she wasn’t pressing for any family secrets.
Mercy answered and reassured the woman as best she could, and by the time she got around to asking about opening the restricted records, Mercy didn’t even have to invoke her mother’s name. Constance just opened it up and let Mercy take whatever she wanted.
If Mercy had cleaned out the library of all the records and all the Books, she suspected Constance would have asked if she needed a bag to help carry it all.
Mercy only suspected something was wrong when she left the scripts around the library and couldn’t contact Dross.
She knew something was wrong when she flew back to the rooftop and found Lindon gone.
The next place she checked was Windfall, in case he had been forced to flee. It was abandoned, and the guards of the hangar hadn’t seen him all day. She checked her office. Then she put out word in the clan to look for him.
Everyone was preparing to face the Wandering Titan, so a missing Sage was high priority. Charity wasn’t in the city, but a few Archlords remained to join in the search. No one could find him.
Mercy even called her mother’s name, but the Monarch didn’t answer. That, in itself, wasn’t surprising. There was a Dreadgod on its way, after all.
But all throughout the night, Mercy never stopped searching.
Charity felt Malice all alone in a cloud fortress, like a miniature model of Moongrave floating on a dark purple cloud. It was one of the many fortresses made in that style Malice preferred, the aesthetic of foreboding purple-and-black that had become the banner of the Akura clan the world over.
“Grandmother!” the Sage shouted, and her voice shook the fortress.
Charity hadn’t been this furious in decades.
Malice was ignoring her, but she’d had enough of being ignored. She marched up to the doors and blew them off their hinges with aura. She shot up the stairs and found Malice exactly where she had expected.
Lounging in the highest tower, in a room with no windows. The Monarch didn’t need them. She was monitoring the Dreadgod and the surrounding tower with her spiritual sense.
Malice wore a black dress and had draped herself over a couch while constructs and scripts shone in the air over her. At a glance, Charity suspected she was in contact with other Monarchs all over the world, as well as coordinating the city defense and watching what appeared to be some kind of melodrama.
The Monarch looked up at her granddaughter through her own cloud of drifting black hair. “That was quite rude, Charity.”
There was another plush couch in the room, and Charity dumped her burden onto it. She had carried the dead weight all the way here, and it was about time she put it down.
Lindon fell onto the couch and convulsed. He weighed two and a half times what she did, but such weight was negligible to an Archlady’s body. Though his size had been an inconvenience.
“What is this?” Charity demanded.
She meant…everything. Obviously Lindon had violated his oath to Malice, which had involved not revealing the connection between the Monarchs and the Dreadgods.