“—and he’s acting only in the interest of his Dragon House.”
“Could that interest overlap with her interests?” Camile mused. The woman was smart. The details of their mission were on a need-to-know basis, and Camile didn’t need to know every fact that Leona was privy to. But she could work well enough around the blanks. “What does Xin want more than anything else?”
“Power, their ‘ends before ideals,’ the throne.”
“But to do that they’d need to overthrow Yveun Dono. And that’s certainly not happening as long as House Tam keeps ‘all things equal’,” Camile said with an arrogant huff.
House Rok had been in power for hundreds of years. It would take an army to stand up against a House with the amount of manpower and resources Rok had amassed in that time. Xin may be able to take them to task if they had the support of House Tam. But Tam and Rok made cozy bedmates, leaving Xin short of the manpower they’d need for a civil war.
And if they couldn’t find an army on Nova… Leona bolted upright.
“I’ve an idea,” Leona said. “But it’s still hazy at the edges.”
“Going to disappear for a chat?” Camile turned her attention back up to the sky. Boring and gray every hour of the day, just like the rest of Loom.
“I’ll be back.” Leona waved the other woman’s inquiry off. She wasn’t in the mood to field any comment on who she was talking to.
She rounded down the quiet stairs into the living quarters—or maybe they were working chambers? Seriously, the Fen had no sense of originality; every room looked the same. Crimson blood still stained the floor from where her and Camile had violently redecorated.
Leona raised a hand to her ear and whispered, “Tarukun.”
The word had no meaning. It was a series of sounds she’d strung together when she’d first learned how to whisper and stuck with ever since. But that was the way it should be to avoid random conversation as a result of saying a common word.
Magic tingled between her fingers and her ear. There was a faint pulse along a thin, invisible tether, a line that connected her all the way back to Nova.
She waited, knowing that it was possible she was waking her King. But as loath as she was to do it, Yveun Dono would want an update. Though waiting for him to activate his end of the whisper nearly killed her.
“Leona,” he very nearly purred her name. “Tell me good news.”
“Regretfully not.” Leona made no excuses. As much as she despised having to admit her shortcomings, hiding them would be far worse. Yveun Dono was silent as she recounted the events of the night prior, and that silence stretched toward infinity after she finished her retelling.
“I know you did not wake me merely to report failure. You are far too savvy to my will to do such a thing.”
Leona’s heart soared. Even in the wake of shame, he put faith in her. Rather than lashing out, he gave her another opportunity for redemption—one she would not squander.
“Yveun Dono, I know what Cvareh—all of House Xin—is after.”
“Do you?”
“They want to make an army of perfect Chimera to stand against you,” she declared boldly, praying her logic was sound. “If they managed to create a working Philosopher’s Box and solve the issue of forsaken Chimera, they would be able to make Fen as strong as Dragons.”
His silence told her everything.
“Dono, my sovereign, I have put this much together on my own… But I cannot decide upon a heading. Would they travel to the Rivets to find an engineer who could solve the riddle of their box? Or would they head to the Alchemists, to put it in the hands of those responsible for splicing Chimera into existence? Has there been word from those loyal to us in the Rivets’ Guild since I left?”
Yveun Dono rightfully preferred his inferiors to be able to reach their own conclusions; he didn’t have time for nor interest in holding their hands through every decision. But this was a risk Leona deemed worth taking. At worst, she would upset him marginally now by asking for guidance, rather than enrage him later with another failure.
“The watchers you appointed in the Rivet guild have been silent. And they would report immediately should Cvareh appear. If he goes there, let him be lulled into a false sense of security until you arrive for his heart.” Yveun Dono’s voice shifted into the cold and calculating tones of a commander—the true and cunning nature he masked under the charm he applied for his Crimson Court. “However, the Alchemists prove… resistant, even still. It has been merely two years since their last petty uprising was squelched, but they remain obstinate in their tiny corner of the world. They hide much behind their veils of secrecy, so much so that even my eyes are blurred. I would not find it surprising if they felt inclined to harbor a Dragon like Cvareh, given his desired ends.”