Page 59 of The Nymph King

“Less parchment,” she added. A faint twitch appeared at the corner of his mouth before a serious look passed over his face.

She looked back down at the map again. Several routes had been marked away from the border villages, each one leading civilians inland before any military advance had been drawn.

“Why did you mark evacuation routes first?” she asked. “Before the attack routes.”

Ellisar stepped a foot closer. “Armies exist to protect people.”

Her eyes lifted to his.

“If the people die while we save the border, we failed,” he added.

His words stunned her a little, but she crossed her arms and kept on. “Ellisar, why have you called me here?”

He clasped his hands behind his back and cleared his throat. “I will help you reclaim your throne,” he said, voice stripped of any inflection. “Essenheim will be yours.”

His certainty made Imani reel back slightly. If he was offering the kingdom so freely, the price would be exacted just as knowingly, and it wouldn’t be small.

Ellisar didn’t move as the agreement hung between them. Imani crossed her arms, ready for a fight but also willing to hear him out.

“And how are we going about this?” Imani asked. “He’ll have his own Drasil wand and the full might of Stralas behind him.”

Pointing to the map, Ellisar didn’t miss a beat. “We don’t confront him directly. We enter his palace during a distraction, use the force of your wand and magic to overpower him, then insert ourselves in the palace.” His gaze held hers; the plan was clearly fully formed in his mind. “If we isolate him, all he has is the Drasil. You have that plus the might of the Crown of Life and Under magic.”

Imani looked down at her own wand, taking in that unmistakable deep red wood, its grain running in dark lines along the shaft beneath symbols so old no living scholar could read them. Even at rest, a faint magic signature rippled around a Drasil, distorting the air nearest the carvings as if the wand never fully stopped exerting itself on the world.

Esa gave a slight, approving nod.

Imani touched her fingers to the crown again, feeling its branches and thorns as she calculated.

“And we don’t kill him,” Ellisar added. “We take him alive. A dead ruler inspires a kingdom, but a captured one is leverage.”

Esa stepped in. “There’s just one problem,” she warned, pointing to the Nifhelm kingdom. “Kiran is unpredictable yet allied with Tanyl.”

A ghost of a smile touched Ellisar’s lips. “The isolation is the point. We get him alone, and from a distance, even Kiran becomes manageable.”

“Your entry point is what?” Imani pressed, tapping her foot impatiently. “You mentioned a distraction, but what exactly are you referring to?”

“The Yule Ball,” he replied. “It will be chaos, giving us a window to slip in.”

Imani considered it. “Once we’re inside, we’re on his ground.”

“Only until we take the Drasil. After that, it becomes ours.”

She held his stare. “If we can corner him at just the right time.”

“We will.”

“Good. This could work,” she said.

“Then the Drasil will be mine,” Ellisar stated, his tone flat. “Not shared. Not leveraged. Mine.”

The words made her swallow hard, yet she remained rooted to the spot. “How long have you known he possessed it?” she asked, moving closer to the table and taking in the miniature figurines and landscaping details.

He paused, long enough to make it obvious he was debating how much truth to give her.

“Long enough to form this plan,” he said, eventually.

Frustration built up fast, but she forced it down. “Where did he get it?”