Chapter Forty #2
Terrifyingly beautiful, that’s what she is.
“I detest politics, Elyssara,” Lara begins, her voice a bored drawl. “Witches are not puppets for kings and queens. We do not simply swing where you point. We are cunning. And we are loyal to only two things.”
But before Elyssara can ask, Seren exhales the words. “Coin and coven.”
Lara nods.
Seren leans in. “Whose coin were you earning the night you exiled the gods?”
The perfect question.
Lara, Daphinia, and Caev share a glance.
Lara’s expression does not falter. “Not Thalmyr’s.”
Fuck.
Elyssara slams her tankard down, tin scraping against the cave’s floor.
But Daphinia doesn’t balk—she leans in, face twisted in a flare of rage.
“If you think Thalmyr won that night, you’re wrong,” Daphinia snaps, her voice haughty and arrogant, like the thought of her failing is ridiculous. “He didn’t even understand the spell he was casting,” she scoffs.
Frustration builds in Elyssara’s veins. She wants fucking answers!
“Daphinia didn’t fail him. She did exactly what she was paid to do,” Lara explains.
Seren sucks in a sharp breath, like she’s remembered something.
“Nymeris,” she realizes. “You said Nymeris pays you.”
Lara nods.
“Explain!” Elyssara snaps, rage burning in her veins.
“First, Thalmyr paid us to exile the gods, and take Nyrielle’s power. He wanted to rule. Not just Aevryn—the Known Realms, just like his lineage,” Lara says.
But none of it makes sense.
Elyssara’s memory becomes more vivid, recalling more and more of the vision.
Nyrielle.
Golden. Radiant. Devoted.
Kneeling. Offering her blood. Pleading.
She screamed when the spell took form—but it never reached her eyes. A performance.
Elyssara’s breath stutters.
“Nyrielle wasn’t really trapped,” she whispers, pieces coming together.
Silence.
“She wasn’t. She was waiting. Because we were also paid to keep Nyrielle in this plane,” Lara confirms.
And that’s when Elyssara realizes—she never saw the end of the vision. Never saw Nyrielle’s fate confirmed before the memory splintered apart and the next began. The last thing Elyssara had witnessed was blinding light detonating across the chamber, and Nyrielle bleeding on the stone floor.
A ragged breath snags in Seren’s throat, her mind working hard to make sense of it.
“So I set up the spell,” Daphinia admits, “but I didn’t complete it. Just exiled the gods, and kept Nyrielle here. Told Thalmyr she needed to stay if he wanted her power. Convincing him wasn’t hard.”
“Why?” Seren asks no one in particular.
Elyssara’s mind pulls at the loose threads, drawing more of the memory to the surface, desperate for it to make sense.
“To make coin from them both, obviously,” Caev snaps, dragging an irritated hand through her cropped white hair.
“Not why did you do it, Caev, but why did Nymeris want only Nyrielle here?” Seren snaps, shaking her head.
Caev scoffs, but her face stays an unreadable mask.
Elyssara’s gaze snaps up, something wild and horrified and certain taking root. “Because she is Nymeris. Nyrielle walked out of that chamber.”
A beat.
“And she never stopped.”
The thought lands with the force of a blade sliding between her ribs—clean, precise, impossible to ignore.
Seren stills, mind still catching up.
“Hold on—” she says, but Elyssara raises a hand.
Memories crystalize now.
Fair skin kissed with sunlight.
Cascading hair like soft golden threads.
And eyes that hold the sorrow of Stars.
Holy fucking Stars.
The air is ripped from Elyssara’s chest.
She had seen Nyrielle before. In the vision. In a single memory. And as time went, in fragments. But she’s seen her here, too. In the realms. In Nymeris. On the godsdamned throne. She had never been looking for a goddess in a queen. Never imagined they could be the same woman.
She chokes on the realization.
Lara’s voice is steady through the riot of emotions that flood Elyssara’s veins.
“Nyrielle died that night,” Lara says softly.
“But Ilyra?”
Her gaze sharpens.
“She was born.”
The room spins. Elyssara’s mind whips and thrashes.
Nyrielle and Ilyra are one and the same. Elyssara suddenly understands why entire civilizations once feared gods enough to worship them.
Nyrielle, Goddess of Light and Wonder, is Ilyra, Queen of Nymeris.
The Goddess that exiled her own brothers and sisters—the pantheon of the Known Realms. She left them godless. Lawless. Forsaken.
“How? How did she just take over a kingdom?” Elyssara grits out.
Lara shrugs. “You think Dravara is the only kingdom under the effects of threvenar, Lightborne?” She asks the question like the answer is obvious.
And it is.
“No… I don’t,” Elyssara admits. “I think Ilyra has rewritten history so it tells the exact story she needs it to.”
Her gut twists, bile rises in her throat.
“Kingdoms are easy things for gods to inherit when they rewrite history to their liking and possess power that cannot be rivaled, Lightborne.” Lara says the words like they’re obvious.
Like she knows Elyssara is facing odds she cannot possibly beat.
“Something made her choose this. I just don’t care what it is,” Lara adds.
But then the question that Elyssara should’ve been asking all along lands with the finality of a guillotine.
“What does she want?” Elyssara chokes out.
Lara huffs a laugh. “I don’t know. I don’t care. Understanding the motivations of gods, kings, and queens is laborious, and not particularly useful.”
Elyssara rolls her eyes, and huffs in frustration. “Then why now? Why make a move now?”
Lara stares at her with bored exasperation. “I’d wager she’s been waiting.”
“For what?” Elyssara snaps.
“Not what. Who.”
Elyssara swallows the words like shards of glass.
“The Lightborne. The prophecy.”
Lara shrugs.
“Gods are exhausting.”
Elyssara nods, her face going blank, numb.
Nyrielle has been waiting for her. Has gathered her friends and placed them exactly where she wanted them to go. Like pieces on a chess board.
Maireth’s words flood her.
Power is simply the ability to decide which game everyone else must play—and who is allowed to win.
Suspicion crawls up Elyssara’s spine. “Why tell us all this?”
Lara shrugs with cool indifference. “Silence is bought, too. If Nyrielle wants it, she knows how to get it.”
Elyssara huffs a breath. This woman is fucking cold.
“You’re showing me that honesty and loyalty are worlds apart, High Witch,” Elyssara mutters.
But before Lara can respond, Seren’s temper flares as she slams down her tankard. “And you thought it was a good idea to fucking aid Nyrielle in all this? Do you not care at all for humanity? For the Known Realms?”
Lara’s violet eyes glint with curiosity. Not anger. Not defense. Never that.
Always considered, precise.