“Accepted.” The oath settled on Charity, and only her ironclad control over her own thoughts prevented her from picturing Lindon’s agony from a moment before.
“Oh, and don’t let Mercy remove the restrictions on her Book. One step at a time is the way to walk her Path.”
“Yes, grandmother.”
The scripts and constructs lit up the air over Malice again, and Charity felt the Monarch’s attention shift away from her like a cloud moving from overhead.
This time, Charity levitated Lindon and carried him with dignity until they exited the castle, at which point she transported them both through shadow. Him, she deposited into a guest house, with orders for the staff to care for him. Then she returned to her own home.
Where, once the doors were shut and the seals were activated, she held her head in her hands and trembled.
Charity had trained hard as a child, reaching Archlord relatively young and Sage not long after. Her ambition had come from her belief. Charity believed in the philosophy of the Akura clan. The world was harsh, and they had to be harsher…but all to carry a greater burden, so that humanity could thrive beneath them. If the world was as the beasts wanted it, humans would be returned to isolated tribes, to live or die as fate took them.
She had been satisfied with her position. Others in the clan had advanced to Sage and ascended, their ambitions too grand for this world. Not her. She honed her skill and the powers she had, and never sought Monarch.
There would be a temporary advantage to advancing to Monarch, but then she would be forced to ascend. To keep the balance. A balance that she had always assumed was political in nature.
If one faction had two Monarchs, the others would unite against them, and they’d be two against six. It had always made sense.
All this time, the world she’d believed in had been a lie.
She wished she could talk to her father about it. He had fought with Malice on many occasions—usually verbally, but occasionally with techniques that shook the city. He only rarely told Charity what they were arguing about.
Now, she thought she understood. Leaving the Dreadgods alive when there was a method to defeat them wasn’t like Akura Fury at all. He would have preferred another Dread War.
But she couldn’t hear the explanation from him in person, and she hated that. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she considered ascending.
Her family was gone anyway.
She’d never started a family of her own; she was more concerned about her own sacred arts and the clan as a whole. She hadn’t wanted anything tying her down. Now, for the moment, it felt like there was nothing keeping her here.
The Way was there. An endless blue ribbon behind the darkness of her madra.
The world twisted as she focused and reached out. Space cracked, and she saw a blue light beyond. Her father was past that sapphire wall, as were many other members of her family. By now, there might be more Akura clan members in the heavens than here in Cradle, though of course no one could send word back to confirm that.
Maybe she should go. She would be leaving the city of Moongrave weaker, but so what? Malice and the other Monarchs were the ones who allowed the Dreadgods to exist at all.
Charity reached out…and closed the gap.
She dried tears that she had never felt fall, fixed her makeup, and made sure her hair and clothes were pristine. The Sage of the Silver Heart represented the clan, so she needed to radiate control.
Even now, Charity still believed in the purpose of the Akura clan. There were people here who needed her.
Starting with Mercy.
Mercy had been reduced to flying up to literally random buildings and asking if they’d seen Lindon.
It was a terribly inefficient way to search, but she’d mobilized everyone she could among the clan, so there should be thousands of people searching for him all over Moongrave. She would have turned the entire city upside-down if the Wandering Titan hadn’t been on its way. The city had been flipped already.
But she couldn’t just wait for their reports. They would reach her wherever she was, by courier or messenger construct, so she may as well keep searching.
She threw open the doors to a restaurant and shouted that she had a reward for anyone who had seen the Sage of Twin Stars that night. She projected an image of Lindon into the air.
People tended to remember the hulking young man with the white arm that disturbed their spiritual senses, but no one had seen him in the last night.
If that were all, each of her visits would take only thirty seconds. But there were drawbacks to being the Monarch’s daughter as well as benefits. Whenever she showed up at the door, every single person in the building stood up and saluted at the same time.