The title they gave , the one that sat an inch below Wannre’s na on paper and ten leagues above my actual authority in practice, ant nothing.
It looked impressive in a scroll or when you pinned it to a chest like so cheap badge in a tavern ga, but out here it was weightless.
A hollow na.
Worse than that, really. At least a videoga title makes the owner feel proud for a hot minute. This one only made other people itch to humiliate the bearer.
Nobody in Aquis Vanlur wanted to answer to a land dweller, let alone a human. Imagine handing a lion a collar and telling the pride to salute it.
That was my "honour." Even when the edict ca straight from Wannre herself, the reaction was the sa: cold glares, whispered curses behind fins, the sort of ornate politeness that hides knives. So for two days I did what made the least trouble and gave the most info. I walked.
I wandered the palace outskirts. I let the currents push where they wanted, eavesdropping on the muffled, polite animosity of nobles when they thought no human could hear.
I learned the angles they watched from, the corners they avoided. I morised faces. I morised grievances. I morised which guards blinked when their masters spoke.
Wannre told to remain close. Her instruction was wrapped in velvet, counsel, not command.
At first I thought about ignoring her. I am not exactly the type to sit by while soone maps out and calls it "opportunity."
But the longer I stayed, the less likely that sounded like rebellion and the more it sounded like strategy. She had a plan embedded into her offer.
Not necessarily cruel in the imdiate sense, but layered. She liked experints. She liked control. That ant whatever she planned for was not a single-use exploit. It was an investigation.
So I played the obedient pawn. I kept close enough for her to notice, far enough not to beco claustrophobic, and I did all the small things that made invisible until I needed not to be.
On the second morning after my silent reconnaissance, a ssenger arrived. Wannre requested my presence.
The corridor to her chamber felt longer that day. The palace air was cool, the salt and tal of it promising hidden currents and old debts.
The doors to her room opened with that soft hydraulic sigh rfolk architects love. Lanterns of floating bioluminescent algae cast soft halos, and the furniture looked carved from coral older than the families who argued over it.
There she was. Wannre, sprawled across that ludicrously oversized bed like a sovereign who had decided sleep was a political act.
She was curled into herself, fins tucked, and for a blink she looked—ridiculous. A million-year-old empress reduced to a ssy, human-looking heap.
Her hair was a ragged halo. Her face was half-hidden by a blanket of scales and sea silk. She looked exhausted, disheveled, almost pitiful in that peculiar way old predators do when their claws go dull. For a second I let myself feel the absurd amusent of seeing a goddess look like a street urchin.
What did I do? Of course I kicked her. I kicked because the sight begged for a reaction. It was a test. It was also the most honest thing I could do in the room.
Swooosh!
I vanished from the doorway in a single breath, the world blurring around as I cut through the chamber’s still air. My body twisted mid-dash, every muscle snapping tight, and with the montum coiling down into one perfect strike, I lashed out with my right leg.
Crack!
The sharp sound echoed like a whip through the room. But what split was not bone. Not flesh. Not even the slumbering form of Wannre I had so confidently targeted.
No, the splintered ruin before was a wooden table, its legs buckling, its polished surface snapping clean down the middle. Shards scattered across the stone floor like fleeing minnows.
The "Wannre" I had aid for dissolved into nothing more than a mirage.
My lips curved upward. Amusent, not disappointnt, painted my face.
"Interesting," I said, voice low and pleased, the thrill of discovery simring in my chest. "So you have tricks besides water control and a dangerously pretty face."
From the actual bed, the far corner where I had not bothered to look closely enough, the real Wannre sat lounging like a queen at leisure. She smirked, eyes gleaming with delight at my little mistake, at my little display.
"Yes," she purred, tilting her head with deliberate slowness, "surely you didn’t think I only possessed sothing as minor as water control. Did you? Because if you did..." She leaned forward, a sly grin spreading across her lips. "...I would be quite displeased."
Her tone was playful. Disarmingly so. The very opposite of the stern, statuesque tyrant she had been at the gathering, where her every word carried the weight of decree and her silence bore the weight of judgent.
Here, now, that mask had been shed. This was her—her true self, or at least the closest thing she allowed others to glimpse.
I rolled my shoulders in a casual shrug. "Truthfully? With how ridiculous your mastery over water is, you can’t really bla for assuming that was the full asure of your power."
"Hahaha!" She threw her head back, laughing loud and without care, the sound filling the chamber like rippling waves crashing over stone.
"True, true! But even then..." Her gaze sharpened, lips curling in wicked amusent. "How would you explain this charm of mine? Surely you wouldn’t be foolish enough to claim it’s simply a quirk of birth, sothing uniquely mine by chance of bloodline."
I blinked at her, completely serious, and answered with the sa straightforward honesty I always did. "It isn’t?"
Her reaction was priceless. Eyes wide, she gasped as though I had blasphed against the very ocean. "Oh! You really thought so? I didn’t expect you to be that naïve. I thought better of you."
Her tone, her teasing lilt, her casual dismissal, it was starting to gnaw at , tugging at the edges of my patience. But I gave her nothing. No twitch of annoyance, no slip of irritation. Instead, I asked with deliberate calm, "So you trained for it? Like your water control? Is this charm sothing I could learn, sothing I could make my own?"
She tapped her chin in mock thought, fingers drumming lightly, expression far too lazy to be genuine.
I could tell from the start she wasn’t actually considering my question; she was stretching it out, indulging herself, relishing the little performance.
She let the silence draw long, two full minutes of exaggerated contemplation, until finally her lips parted.
"From what I recall," she said, her voice adopting that lecturing air I had co to expect, "only rfolk and our subspecies possess the gift of illusion. It is a birthright, tied into our veins as tightly as scales to skin. Other races... they carry their own peculiar talents. You humans, for instance, wield the innate ability to adapt to any elent. That is your gift, a dangerous, enviable one. One none of us can imitate."
Her smirk widened, proud and sharp. "We, on the other hand, are bound. Every rfolk, from the lowest hatchling to the rarest prodigy, belongs to the dominion of water. Even our exceptions, even those you’d call ’special,’ are still tethered to the ocean. Illusions, charms, songs, currents—all of it stems from water. Always water. That is both our blessing and our shackle."
I tilted my head, studying her words, her posture, the light in her eyes. I was trying to assess her credibility. Which from the looks of it, seed perfect. She seed trustworthy.
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