“You earned it.”
“Did I truly? I had a good team behind me and used Danya’s plans.” Grief twisted her features as she mentioned the former commander.
“Not only did you execute them, but you adjusted where needed. You listened to that team and collected the best ideas for the most favorable outcome. And itworked.”
“It could have been better.”
“That’s our father’s voice in your head, and you know it.”
Lyria shrugged, lifting her chin, and, facing the ring, she maintained that illusion of perfection she’d been bred to embody. “I don’t know what my role is now, though.”
“To be truthful, Ria, I think most of us are figuring it out.” Cypherion nailed his opponent with a fast combination, and the crowd roared. “Beyond Ophelia and CK, who have official titles, the rest of us are adjusting. And I think even they’re treading uncertain ground most days.”
That damn Angellight and how it had stolen from Ophelia and attacked Jezzie today flooded my memory. How fearful it had made her. Ophelia was nearly always determined enough to temper her fear, but when someone she loved was threatened, she cracked.
So, I didn’t tell her the Angellight had not only assaulted Jezebel, but it had consumed Ophelia, transformed her. It hadfeltdifferent, pouring from her at an uncontrollable rate when the two sisters tried to enact their unknown power together.
Lyria said, stealing my attention, “It feels empty now.Ido.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything. I put so much energy into the war. And when it was over, I looked over that battlefield. Nothing but death looked back, Tolek,” she said, pensive. “Not survival, not the lives we saved. Only death. And I felt responsible for all of it. That knowledge took something from me that day.”
“What do you want to do next?” I asked. She could dwell in the past, but maybe moving forward would help.
“No idea,” Lyria said. She threw back her drink with alarming ease and flashed me a grin. “But I’m happy I can be here with you while I figure it out.”
I smiled back as Cypherion knocked out his second opponent. “I am, too, Ria.”
“I don’t remember him being quite this brutal,” she said as CK wiped a drop of blood from his lip. The only one he’d earned thus far.
“He’s been forced into it,” I agreed. “He’s still as soft as ever on the inside, though. When he wants to be.”
“Vale is a lucky woman,” she muttered.
I barked a laugh. “That she is.”
Lyria took a fresh drink from a passing servant. “I haven’t seen any of these tasks Ophelia has completed, but they sound extreme.”
“They are,” I gritted out. Again, that nagging feeling returned. My hands tightened on the rope.
“She went into this one with an idea of what to expect, though,” Lyria comforted. “More so than any of the others, at least.”
“That’s what’s bothering me,” I said. “Why was this one so easy to figure out?”
Reluctantly, as if afraid to worry me, Lyria suggested, “Perhaps the Spirits aren’t exactly rising to the occasion as expected.”
“Rising…”
And there it was. The translation adjustment that had been nagging at me for days. A rearranging of words—an imperfect match in the common tongue.
“It doesn’t…” My mind whirled, fear turning as icy as Xenique’s damn soul magic. “Ria, I need you to take over for me.”
“What?” she hissed.
“You can do it. Just be as obnoxious as I would,” I encouraged. “This is your role now.”
Lyria assessed me, and whatever she found forged her stare into steel. “Go,” she instructed.
