ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Chapter 788: Matters Beyond My Borders

Lucy reached for the reports concerning the other kingdoms and began with Crescent.

The Crescent Kingdom’s report was as polished and controlled as Crescent itself liked to appear. Lucy read through the expected details with a calm face. Trade movement remained steady. Military exercises had resumed in several northern facilities. Noble activity showed no serious signs of open conflict. The royal family had made limited public appearances, all carefully arranged and heavily protected.

Nothing in the first few sections surprised her. Crescent remained Crescent, proud, orderly, powerful, and eternally convinced that the rest of the continent would benefit from sitting up straighter.

Then Lucy’s eyes caught on a line near the latter portion of the report, and her hand stilled.

Mystica noticed immediately but did not speak.

Lucy read the section once, then again, her expression becoming more thoughtful than alarmed. "Percy Granger has returned to the Crescent Kingdom," she said. "He has resumed royal duties and is serving in a division that our sources have not yet confirmed."

Mystica’s brows rose with mild interest. "Has he now?"

Lucy leaned back slightly in her chair, still holding the report. "His graduating class left the academy months ago. It is only now that he has returned to Celestria. That boy spent three years in Dark Knight Academy and, as far as my information ever confirmed, never once stepped foot in his homeland during that time. Not publicly. Not formally. Not in any manner that suggested loyalty to Crescent’s court."

"That was part of what made him interesting," Mystica said.

"It was part of what made him useful," Lucy corrected, though her voice remained calm. "A prince of Crescent choosing to remain in Tempest’s academy was not a small thing. Even if he never openly opposed his family, his distance from them was a quiet statement. Now he has returned, and that means I have lost a piece of leverage."

Mystica took another sip of coffee, her purple eyes glinting over the rim of the cup. "Leverage does have a terrible habit of developing legs and walking back home."

Lucy lowered the report slightly. "What changed his mind after this long?"

Mystica did not answer immediately. She turned the cup once in her hand, as though considering how much enjoyment she could take from the moment before becoming useful.

"Percy and Sheila began repairing things before he left the academy."

Lucy looked at her now, the first true sign of surprise touching her face. "Percy and Sheila?"

"Mhm," Mystica said. "Not perfectly, of course. Those two still carry enough old damage between them to fill a chapel with awkward silence. But they bonded again, in their own stiff royal way. There was a change. A real one."

Lucy absorbed that quietly. The information landed heavier than the sentence itself.

Just as she currently had eyes on Liam Hunter, she had once kept careful attention on Percy Granger. It would have been foolish not to. A royal heir choosing another nation’s academy over his own kingdom’s institutions was not merely a family matter. It was political weather. It signaled strain inside Crescent’s royal structure, and Lucy had watched that strain with the patience of someone who knew pressure could crack even the finest stone.

"Sheila," Lucy said thoughtfully. "That may explain part of it. If she became a reason for him to return, then Crescent gained more than a prince. They gained a repaired thread."

"A fragile thread," Mystica said. "But yes. Fragile things can still pull people where they never intended to go."

Lucy looked down at the report again, but she did not dwell on it for too long. Percy’s return mattered, but it was not yet a crisis. It was a shift on the board, nothing more. She set the Crescent report aside and reached for Solara’s.

The moment she began reading, the air around her changed.

It was not dramatic. Lucy did not gasp, did not frown deeply, did not strike the desk with her palm. She simply went very still, and Mystica’s amusement thinned into something more observant.

"This is absurd," Lucy said quietly after a while.

Mystica’s gaze sharpened. "Solara?"

Lucy continued reading. "Reported deaths of commoners and nobles alike. Isolated at first, then increasingly frequent. The report claims that many of the culprits are nobles, or at least connected to noble households. That suggests internal disputes between Solara citizens escalating beyond normal limits. Retaliations, private grudges, power contests being settled violently."

"That sounds like Solara with the perfume removed," Mystica said, though her voice had lost some of its playfulness.

"It is more than that," Lucy said. She turned another page. "Their crime rate has increased more sharply than ours, and across more sensitive districts. Theft, disappearances, assaults, unlawful detentions, suspected assassinations disguised as accidents. Either Solara’s institutions are failing to respond properly, or someone is taking advantage of the fact that they suffered the most from the recent Demon War."

Mystica’s cup lowered to her lap. "A mysterious group, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," Lucy said. "Or a dozen smaller groups moving at once because the crown’s grip weakened enough for them to risk it. Either way, it is not clean."

She read a little more, then closed the report with a controlled motion and placed it beside Crescent’s.

For a few seconds, she said nothing. Her eyes moved toward the window, where Tynoon continued shining beneath the morning light, alive and ordered and busy. Beyond Tempest’s borders, Solara was bleeding in a way that sounded less like one wound and more like many hands tearing at the same body.

"I wish Solara the best in dealing with their problems," Lucy said at last.

Mystica studied her. "That sounded almost sincere."

"It was sincere," Lucy said. "It was also realistic. Even if I were willing to lend a helping hand, I doubt King Tharion would accept it. Not after everything that happened during the latter part of the Gaia War."

"No," Mystica said softly. "He would sooner pretend the palace was not burning than accept water from Tempest."

"And that is his choice," Lucy replied. "My responsibility is not to save a king too proud to recognize the difference between help and humiliation. My responsibility is to make certain Tempest is prepared if Solara’s instability begins spilling outward."

That settled the matter in Lucy’s mind, at least for now. Crescent and Solara were concerns, but they were not immediate commands. She placed those reports aside with the kind of finality that came from knowing the difference between what mattered and what could be acted upon.

Then her gaze shifted to the final report in that private stack, and something in her expression changed.

It was subtle, but Mystica caught it.

Lucy reached for the report she had been waiting on for months, even before her vacation had begun.

Mabel’s report on Liam Hunter.

The seal had already been broken for preliminary review, but Lucy opened the folder herself and began reading with far more interest than she had shown the noble disputes or even Crescent’s movements.

The first section covered general condition, academy placement, training habits, improvements observed after recent events, and behavioral notes. As Lucy moved through it, satisfaction slowly gathered in her eyes. She had invested no small amount of money, attention, and quiet influence into Liam Hunter, and the pages in front of her made one thing very clear: that investment was beginning to show returns.

"He is improving quickly," Lucy said, though the words seemed mostly meant for herself. "Not just in raw power. Control. Judgment under pressure. Adaptation. Resource management. Combat application. His growth is becoming more structured."

Mystica watched her over the rim of her cup. "You sound pleased."

"I am pleased," Lucy said. "A queen should be pleased when evidence proves her judgment correct."

"That is a beautiful way to say you enjoy being right."

"I enjoy being right when it prevents me from wasting royal funds," Lucy replied, turning another page.

Mystica smiled. "And when it gives you a dangerous young asset with dark magic, fire magic, a private guard, and enough unresolved emotional weight to make every political chamber nervous?"

Lucy’s eyes remained on the report. "That too."

As she continued, one section caught her attention enough to make her pause. Her brows lifted slightly, then a small smile touched the corner of her mouth. Mystica, sensing the shift, leaned back as though preparing to enjoy whatever had amused her.

"Well," Lucy said, "this is interesting."

"Dangerous interesting or entertaining interesting?" Mystica asked.

"With Liam, the two seem determined to become the same thing." Lucy tapped the report lightly with one finger. "According to Mabel, Liam was the one who pushed Percy and Sheila toward repairing their bond, at least partly for the sake of positioning Sheila as a bridge between himself and the Crescent Kingdom."

Mystica laughed softly. "Ah. There it is."

Lucy read the line again, then leaned back. "So Percy returns to Crescent after reconnecting with Sheila, and Liam was involved in creating the conditions for that reconciliation. He did not merely survive his circumstances. He adjusted the political terrain around himself."

"He would probably deny it if you phrased it so grandly," Mystica said. "He would call it practical."

"Of course he would," Lucy said. "That is what makes it worse. A child who knowingly schemes is dangerous. A child who does it because it seems practical is worse. It means he does not see it as ambition. He sees it as problem-solving."

Mystica’s smile became sharper. "You are realizing he may become more troublesome than his uncle."

"I realized that before," Lucy said, though there was amusement in her voice now. "I am simply receiving supporting evidence. Galen is a problem because he is powerful, impossible to command, and has the good manners to pretend authority is a distant weather pattern. Liam may become a problem because he thinks in layers and does not seem to care whether people approve of the arrangement."

"Galen is a storm that walks into the room," Mystica said. "Liam is the shadow under the door wondering why anyone bothered locking it."

Lucy gave her a brief look. "That was unnecessarily poetic."

"I am a woman of many gifts."