"I asked what you were doing," Ares said.
Averifa tried to step around the edge of him, in every sense.
"Congratulations on your special day," she said. "Many happy returns."
Ares was not interested in her politeness.
"What are you doing," he repeated, in a tone that left no room whatsoever for argument.
She was fed up. She gestured at the dragon standing patient in the snow behind her.
"Leaving. Which you might have worked out on your own. Has no one ever taught you manners?"
The words only provoked him. He closed the distance in an instant and caught her wrist.
The contact went through her like a shock. Everything she had spent weeks pressing down came straight back up — the hall, the sword, the cold floor, the way her name had sounded in his mouth — and underneath all of it, worse than all of it, something that was not fear at all. She cursed herself silently. That she should still have one single lingering feeling for the man who had caused her so much suffering was intolerable.
She composed her face.
"I would like permission to borrow a dragon," she said coolly, "to go home."
Ares scoffed. "So you were planning to steal one all along."
She turned away from the insult without answering it, and the confrontation was interrupted before it could go further.
"My lady! I've been searching everywhere for you—"
Colonel Finareo came around the corner at a near run and stopped dead, looking completely surprised to find his marshal standing out in the snow.
"Sir. What are you doing out here?"
Ares glared straight past him as though the question had never been asked. Then he turned that icy stare onto his subordinate.
"Is my order ready?"
Stunned by the intensity of it, Finareo drew himself up. "Right away, sir. We'll have it ready right away."
Averifa left with the colonel. Ares watched them go from a distance, and he watched them for a long time, and he came to a conclusion that was entirely wrong: she had finally given up on him, and had decided to pursue his subordinate Leonard instead.
Meanwhile Averifa was climbing into the sky on the back of a golden dragon, and relief was going through her in waves. That was it, then. She had done it. She had walked into that castle and walked out of it unattached, and the rest of her days were her own to spend quietly.
The hope lasted exactly as long as the flight.
The moment she touched down at her estate, Feely came hurrying across the courtyard.
"Forgive the intrusion, my lady. There's news. It concerns the kingdom to the north."
Peace, it turned out, was still a long way off.
The civil war in the neighboring kingdom of Ashroul had ended. The rebels had won, and the victorious rebels had established something new out of the wreckage: the Strald Empire.
It was faster than she had expected. The timing, though, was chillingly familiar. History was repeating itself, and Averifa knew with grim certainty exactly what came next.
The great war of her first life was about to begin.
Two months later she was summoned to Winstein Castle.
The five divine dukes were called to a war council — the five great houses descended from gods, whose blood still carried what the gods had left in it. Averifa took her seat at the long table.
"Last to arrive, as usual," Ares observed.
"A beauty always makes her entrance last," she replied, without looking at him.
The banter was cut short. Prince Mendelt stepped forward at the head of the room.
"His Majesty's health is poor," he announced. "I will be leading this meeting."
The dukes noticed. It was a power grab, executed in a single sentence in front of the five most dangerous families in the empire, and every one of them registered it. Ares looked anything but pleased with the new arrangement.
"You have been summoned," Mendelt went on, "on the matter of the Strald Empire. Their expansion is a clear provocation. It is an act of war against Winstein, and as a royal I cannot ignore it."
"And your plan?" one of the dukes asked.
Mendelt unveiled it, and it was a risky one. They would spread false information that the northern territory — the territory governed by Ares — was poorly defended. The bait was designed to provoke Strald into attacking them first.
The others were immediately skeptical. Would something that simple really work?
"That is only the first half," Mendelt said. "We will also circulate rumors of a war erupting on the opposite border, in the south. A war that does not exist. Their attention will be divided before a single blade is drawn."
Averifa saw the true shape of the thing.
"Is this plan yours," she asked him directly, "or the Emperor's?"
"Mine," Mendelt said, with evident pride. "And I will be commanding the war myself."
That settled it. The implication sat in the middle of the table where everyone could see it: this conflict was a tool, and the hand holding the tool wanted the throne.
But there was more. She could feel it.
"You're holding something back," she said. "What is it?"
The prince's expression turned grim.
"My elder brother," he said. "The first prince. He is ruthless — more than any of you have allowed yourselves to understand. When he eventually takes the throne, there is a very real possibility that he will have all five divine dukes eliminated to secure his own power."
The other dukes were stunned. Ares scoffed.
"An exaggeration."
"He has spent years researching your divine abilities," Mendelt said. "Every house. Every gift. Years of it." He looked around the table. "He was not doing it for fun. He was gathering information to use as a weapon against you."
The tension in the room had nowhere to go. Averifa cut through it.
"When the choice is between survival and destruction," she said calmly, "there is really no choice at all. We back the prince."
Her logic did what argument had not. One by one, the nobles came around.
Prince Mendelt bowed to her, deeply and with genuine gratitude.
"Lady Sheram—"
She was already walking away, and she dismissed his thanks without turning her head.