Chapter 279: Chapter 279
Athea’s workspace held its usual cool stillness when the door read someone approaching and slid open without her permission.
There was only one person in the palace who arrived without notification and without bothering to send word ahead, and Athea did not look up from the letter she was reading.
"Calyra."
"Sister."
Calyra strolled in with her usual effortless, sweeping elegance. She did not wait for an invitation, drifting across the room to drape herself elegantly across the chaise near the window. On her way past the sideboard she paused, lifted the silver lid off a service tray that had been set out hours ago for visitors who had not come, considered the cold tea underneath it, and replaced the lid without comment.
"Athena summoned me a few days ago," Calyra said, settling back against the cushions. "She told me she’s officially stepping down. I completely forgot to tell you, but I assume she’s broken the news to you by now?"
Athea didn’t look up from her correspondence, the edge of her thumb breaking the next seal in a sharp, exact line. "The Queen told me herself."
Calyra let out a soft, theatrical sigh, shifting her weight against the plush cushions. "You are always working, Athea. You need to learn how to be less busy. The world won’t collapse if you close your terminal for an hour."
"Idleness is a luxury for the stagnant," Athea replied coldly. "Anything that does not directly yield progress or strength is a waste of time. I have no interest in spending my hours chasing meaningless comfort."
"You sound exactly like our grandmother," Calyra countered, her eyes glittering with a mix of affection and mockery.
Athea kept reading.
"Grandmother Vesperia," Calyra continued, undeterred, "who ran this Queendom for over a hundred and twenty years and who was just as convinced as you are that nobody else could do it. Who slept in her workspace more nights of the week than her own bed, who scheduled her meals between sessions, who treated the very idea of a vacation as an offensive suggestion."
Calyra stood from the chaise mid-sentence and crossed to the wall, looking up at one of the slowly turning star charts as though she might actually know what it showed. She did not. She tilted her head at it anyway."You know what she said to me, the last time I saw her before she walked out of this palace and stopped answering letters."
Athea looked up at that. Briefly. Not long.
"She said: Calyra, I gave them all of it, and at the end of it there was nothing left in my own hands. Don’t do that. So she didn’t, after the very end. She handed the throne over to Mother, and the next morning she was simply gone."
"Where," Athea asked.
Calyra glanced over her shoulder. It was a small question, and Athea had not asked one in some time.
"I don’t know where. Someone sent me a card from a coast I’ve never heard of two months later, with three words on it. I am happy. That was all. No return address. She’s somewhere out there right now, alive and breathing and doing whatever it is she would have liked to do for the last sixty years if she’d let herself, and the only one of us who knows where she is is whoever is currently making her tea."
She turned from the star chart and let the picture sit there in the room for a moment.
"And here you are. About to do the exact same thing she did. Except younger, with two daughters and a son who deserve a mother who isn’t a stack of correspondence held together by a hairstyle, and yet I am sitting in this room watching you sort letters. What does that teach the Lumina family? That it is perfectly acceptable to have some fun."
Athea finally set the next letter down, though her posture remained as unyielding as the Citadel walls.
"Athena is leaving a shifting empire in my hands. I do not have the luxury of her early retirement."
"And there it is. The line you’ve been writing in your head for years to explain why you’ll never get to stop."
Athea did not respond to that.
The silence stretched between them, longer than either of them was strictly comfortable with, and neither of them moved to break it. Calyra drifted back from the wall and let herself sink onto the corner of Athea’s desk instead of returning to the chaise, which she knew Athea hated and which Athea did not bother to remark on.
"Speaking of shifting empires," Calyra said at last, her voice dropping into a quieter, more calculated tone. "Let’s talk about the recent council meeting. Valerie was practically vibrating in her seat trying to get approval to bring Zaeryn here to the capital for the Lumina Gala. If only she actually knew who he was. It’s almost charming. She thinks she’s playing a political game. She’s playing a much larger one and she has no idea."
"Valerie can be a bit childish sometimes." Athea closed the folder in front of her and laid her hand on top of it. "Keep an eye on her for me. I don’t have the attention for her right now."
"Sure," Calyra agreed easily.
"Thank you."
"You owe me," Calyra shot back, her tone sharpening just enough to remind Athea of the leverage she held. "You understand that if it wasn’t for me taking your side during that session, you would have been put in a very tough spot."
Athea’s ice-blue eyes narrowed fractionally. "I am the First Heir and Imperial Chancellor of this Queendom. The council answers to my jurisdiction. They would have listened to my directive regardless."
"Not if I had chosen to stand with the opposition." Calyra picked up one of the smaller letters from the stack on Athea’s desk, glanced at the seal without really reading it, and set it back down a fraction out of alignment with the rest.
"I know exactly what questions to ask to make your arguments look entirely unreasonable. I could have made the entire council suspicious about why you were so heavily invested in keeping a lone combat cadet tucked away at the Lyceum.
Why a First Heir with a continent of correspondence on her desk had developed such a particular opinion about one boy’s social calendar." She paused, letting the threat dissolve back into a warm, reassuring smile. "But do not worry. I am a loyal sister. I will make sure Prince Zaeryn’s identity won’t be revealed prematurely."
Calyra slid off the corner of the desk and wandered back toward the chaise, her tone turning playful again. "Just do me a favor. When the day comes that you finally tell Zaeryn all about the Lumina family, don’t forget to tell him how much his aunt has protected him all these years. Let him know how cool I am. You shouldn’t be the only one painting herself in a good light in front of him."
The mention of speaking to Zaeryn directly caused a rare, visible fracture in Athea’s perfect composure. She looked down at her desk. Her hand had come to rest on the closed folder, and it stayed there. The silence stretched long and heavy between them.
"Zaeryn and I have never even had a real moment together," Athea confessed softly, her voice carrying a weight she rarely showed. "When I projected myself into the emergency meeting at the Citadel... that was my very first time actually looking at him in real time. Looking directly into his eyes."
Calyra did not answer at first. She let her sister have said the thing.
When she did speak, the political gamesmanship had fallen away.
"I’m not surprised, Athea. You have a real problem when it comes to spending time with your children. Viora is completely grown up now, a Warlady, and she’s distant. You can’t go back and fix what happened there." She let out a quiet breath. "But you can still do right by being a better mother to Aphrodite. I can already see that you’ve been trying to make yourself more available for her lately, but you need to do more."
Calyra stood and crossed to Athea’s desk.
"And that applies to Zaeryn, too. You should make it a regular thing to carve out time for him. Speak with him, even if it’s just through a secure Holo-broadcast."
Athea’s hand tightened a fraction on the folder.
"No. Regular holo-calls are a liability." Her voice turned cold and absolute. "That is one way to get his existence exposed incredibly fast."
"But when I become Queen, which will be very soon — I will initiate the necessary rule changes. And then, I will finally bring Zaeryn in."
Calyra was quiet for a moment, watching her sister.
"You know," she said eventually, "I keep thinking about how well he and Esmeira would have gotten along. Those two. I can already picture it."
Athea stopped working for once and looked up at Calyra. A small smile briefly touched the corner of her mouth.
"I have thought about it, too."
Calyra let out a short, amused breath and leaned a hip against the desk.
"Aphrodite will hate him."
Athea gave her a stern look.
"What. That’s not even doubtful, sister. The first time he sets foot in this palace as anything resembling family, she is going to take one look at him and decide that he has personally come to ruin her life.
You know this. I know this. We have both seen how she doesn’t get along with anyone who dares to outshine her. Neither of us should pretend otherwise."
"I’ll deal with it when the time comes," Athea said.
"You’ll deal with it." Calyra’s mouth curved. "I’d pay to be in the room for that."
"I’m sure you would."
