Chapter 944: No Rest for the Wicked
The pale silver light of the moon shone beautifully through the cold chill of the night, enveloping the cliff mansion and its entire surroundings, draping the estate beneath a quiet glow that made the world feel softer without making it the least bit less dangerous.
From where Phei stood, the mansion behind him looked less like a home and more like something ancient wealth had carved directly into the mountainside; the towering structure half-hidden beneath shadow and pale light, warm illumination spilling from enormous windows to fight a quiet, losing argument against the endless cold outside.
Beyond it stretched the cliff itself.
Its edges vanished downward into darkness before eventually meeting the enormous lake resting far below, the moon’s reflection laid generously across the water where waves large and small kept disturbing the silver mirror nature had set there.
They rolled toward one another in quiet collisions, shattering the moon into a thousand shimmering fragments before patiently allowing it to rebuild itself moments later.
The whole world below looked strangely peaceful.
Too peaceful, perhaps.
Peace around places like this, Phei had learned, usually meant nature was simply resting between reminders of how insignificant people truly were. He’d met enough genuinely powerful things by now to recognize the particular stillness of something that did not need to prove anything to anyone. The lake had it. So did he, most days.
They understood each other, he and the water — two quiet things that the wise did not mistake for harmless.
Cold winds drifted up from the lake carrying moisture and winter in equal measure, brushing against the cliffside vegetation, setting the tall trees swaying gently beneath the night sky. Their shadows stretched long across the stone paths, twisting together under the moonlight until the forest looked less like trees and more like sleeping giants standing guard around the property.
Even the air smelled different here.
Phei breathed slowly, leaning against the stone railing that overlooked the drop, his eyes tracing the endless ripples below. The moonlight touched everything generously tonight — silver laid across rooftops, stone, water and trees with the quiet confidence of something that had performed this exact ritual for billions of years and never once grown bored of its own act.
’Beautiful.’
He sighed, took one last look, and finally pushed himself off the railing — leaving behind the pale light, the endless lake, and the quiet arrogance of nature pretending it wasn’t showing off.
’Takes one to know one,’ he thought, and almost smiled.
The staircase leading down waited in silence beneath soft recessed lighting set into dark stone walls — wide enough for several people to walk abreast, yet somehow still carrying the lonely air of spaces too expensive to be used often.
Phei’s footsteps were naturally light. Graceful, even and each step echoed strangely, bouncing off polished stone was quite exaggerated as if he was a titan now — every footfall carrying farther than it had any right to, almost metallic in how sharply it cut the silence.
Perhaps silence simply exaggerated presence.
’Or perhaps,’ he mused, ’giants only sounded like giants because the world around them had gone too quiet to drown them out.’
He’d been a quiet thing in loud rooms for most of his life — overlooked, talked over, stepped past. Funny, how thoroughly that had reversed; these days rooms went quiet around him, and the quiet did his announcing for him. He wasn’t certain he’d decided whether he preferred it.
The thought amused him enough that a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he descended.
By the time he reached the lower path toward the gardens, he took a single step forward and then stopped almost at once—
The gardens stretched endlessly before him beneath the moon, running so far that the carefully controlled landscape eventually surrendered itself to stone pathways leading toward the cliff’s edge. Vast greenery rolled across the grounds in gentle layers, pale silver resting over trimmed hedge.
The green below shone beneath the night sky, every blade cut to a uniform height, every pathway curved with intent, every arrangement positioned so precisely that even the randomness looked rehearsed.
Perhaps too rehearsed.
Tall, slender trees rose throughout the grounds, scattered just carefully enough to appear natural while being obviously nothing of the kind. Their long grey trunks vanished into oceans of greenery before rising impossibly high into the night, their crowns spreading elegantly outward at the top.
Palm-like. Though grander.
Their upper leaves stretched shamelessly into the cold air where the stronger winds waited, and yet — despite the height, despite the chill rolling endlessly off the cliffs and the lake — they stood proud and barely bent at all.
’Titanic things rarely apologized for existing.’
He knew the feeling.
Moonlight gathered across the leaves above before filtering down in soft silver layers, painting moving shadows onto the gardens. The trees almost looked greedy beneath the glow, their leaves catching the pale light and swallowing it whole as though starved after long hours without the sun.
For several quiet moments, Phei simply stood and watched the gardens breathe.
Then reality returned, the way it always did, without knocking.
The grounds weren’t empty. Far from it.
Crew members moved throughout the massive space hauling equipment cases, rolling wire, folding structures, and shouting questions nobody seemed in any hurry to answer. What ought to have been a still midnight garden instead operated as its own ecosystem — loneliness evicted, organized chaos moved in.
Metal clanged softly.
Voices overlapped.
Somebody cursed about missing cables...
...Somebody else yelled that they were exactly where they’d been left — which apparently meant nowhere useful.
People moved between lighting rigs carrying enough equipment to start small wars, while others adjusted cameras with the grim focus of surgeons mid-operation.
Phei watched it all with the detached fondness like observing an anthill he had personally kicked over by simply agreeing to show up.
The gardens had become alive.
Apart from the commercial crew packing away the bones of today’s shoot, the television staff looked offensively energetic for the hour.
Final adjustments happened everywhere at once — assistants sprinting with clipboards and headsets, producers arguing in tense undertones over camera positions, technicians testing the same lighting angle for the ninth time as though it might confess something new.
Apparently, for them, the day was only beginning.
There truly was no rest for the wicked.
’Or for media personnel.’
And then one section of the garden caught his attention.
The television crew had transformed part of the grounds into a small outdoor stage, raised slightly above the landscape around it. Elegant side structures framed two ends of the platform while the remaining sides opened toward rows of audience seating that had already begun, slowly, to fill.
The setup looked expensive.
Large cameras were being assembled directly in front of the stage with a degree of preparation that made Phei’s eyes narrow on instinct.
This looked considerably less like something prerecorded.
And dangerously closer to something live.
’Interesting,’ he thought. ’Also mildly irritating, considering not one soul thought to mention it to me.’
Given the last morning’s Marcus Heavenchild ambush, the timing, given his entire luck, he’d lay money it wasn’t carelessness.
Someone, somewhere, was hoping the dragon would stumble in front of a few million people.
The thought didn’t worry him. If anything, it warmed him up. He did so enjoy disappointing people who’d gone to effort.
His gaze drifted to the seating.
The Ashford Madam occupied one of the front seats among the others, and — as ever — her mere presence somehow made the expensive surroundings feel a little cheaper by comparison, the way a genuine thing always shamed the props arranged around it.
Near her sat several familiar faces, his women scattered through the front rows like a quiet and very beautiful threat.
And one man already sat in one of the two chairs positioned on the stage beneath carefully adjusted lights.
Phei didn’t have to strain himself.
That had to be the anchor; the unfortunate soul charged with steering this entire circus, who almost certainly did not yet understand whose evening he’d been scheduled into.
’Hopefully this ends quickly,’ Phei thought, starting toward the light.
Everyone would be pleased. The cameras would get their show. And then — most importantly — he could go back to doing absolutely nothing, which had lately become a talent he was developing to a frankly disturbing degree of mastery, for the simple reason that the world kept refusing to let him practice it.
The lights ahead brightened as he approached, swallowing the moonlight whole.
The dragon went to sit for his interview.
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