Pulling off the domes, I snuck a glance at Lyra as she surveyed the meal. I’d asked for something worthy of an honored guest, and to bring wine instead of mead.
“I’m impressed,” she said as I poured two mulled Sylverwines.
“Spiced venison stew and root vegetables,” I said, surveying the trenchers. “Hearth-baked bread with herbed oil and roasted stonefruit glazed in honey and thyme.”
“You speak,” she said, tasting the wine, “as if you prepared the meal.”
I sat across from her, wondering what it might be like to be partnered with Lyra.
An absurd notion which I dismissed immediately.
“One of the palace cooks was orphaned in the Battle of Narn, and he was raised by my mother. We’re still good friends, and I’ve spent many days learning from him.”
After chewing a piece of venison, she said, “That was kind of your mother, to take him in.”
“I could regale you with many similar instances.”
“As I’ve heard. Your story does not surprise me, given her reputation. She must have been extraordinary… to be mourned with such fury.”
I took a bite of bread, considering her words. I said nothing to refute the latter part. Fury was an appropriate word for the decades-long campaign my father waged against humans.
“She was.”
The silence that followed as we ate by the fire should have been awkward.
“Tonight,” I said, sitting back, wine in hand, “I will take the Stone.”
“You’ve located it for certain?”
“Nay, but I know my father well. Or so I believed,” I amended, realizing that wasn’t entirely true. “If it’s not in the Throne Vault, I will live the remainder of my days in Aetheria. He’s posted an extra guard there, which alone should have raised suspicions… if anyone had known to be suspicious.”
“The Throne Vault?”
Was I mad to take her along? I told myself it was a strategy, that she knew more than she let on, that I could control the risk, exposing her true plans. But maybe, also, I just didn’t want to let her go.
“Few know of its existence. To the guards and all others, it’s nothing more than a hidden spiral staircase built into the mountain that leads to storage and little else. But in that chamber, disguised as a part of the stone wall, the entrance to a long corridor is revealed to those who… can pass through.”
The Vault was also guarded against magical interference, but I kept that bit of knowledge to myself.
“What is the plan?”
“There is an entrance near the throne room through which none would expect visitors. There are two guards to contend with, still, but I have a plan for both. It is not getting into the Vault, or retrieving the Stone, I worry about, though.”
“Nay?” she asked, picking up a piece of honeyed fruit. “It would seem perhaps you should be.”
I watched her place the berry delicately between her lips.
“I’m concerned more with the guards waking. And my father discovering the Stone missing.”
She licked a bit of honey from her fingertip. If only I could do the same, though I’d not stop there…
“Wake? What, precisely, is your plan to get by them?”
“To knock them out, of course.”
There it was. The “Aetherian Stare.” All knew of it. Hated it. A reminder that the first Elydorians lived in, and established, what was now Aetheria. The keepers of our history. And with a full knowledge of the past came insights no other clan could claim.
“That is one of the many reasons we hate Aetherians,” I blurted.
