NOVEL NEXT Chapter 62: A Traitor Among Us?!
I felt I had to move, now.
To remain seated would be to let Sahryne win the game she had started without even raising her voice. Her words, her laughter, her scent — all of it wrapped around me like an invisible chain. But I hadn't come here to play the role of a trophy. So I took a breath, pushed aside the cup they'd served me, and stood.
A shiver ran through the hall. Not fear — rather a keen curiosity, like a blade sliding from its sheath. I was only a man among hundreds of demonesses, and yet each step I took rang too loud, as if the marble amplified my solitude.
I crossed the crowd. The laughter stopped, then resumed, a little lower, a little more mocking. Gazes followed me, some shining with scorn, others with an almost sick curiosity. Murmurs rose, scraping my neck like invisible claws:
— "He dares to stand…"
— "What does he still want to prove?"
— "Maybe he thinks she'll listen to him?"
I could hear them all, but I kept my head high. If I lowered my eyes, I would become what they wanted to see: a ridiculous anomaly, a male lost in a sea of female desire that did not belong to him.
The atmosphere did not pause for me. The drums continued to beat, heavy, making the dancers' hips roll. Their bodies arched beneath sweat-soaked veils, their low laughs mingling with the tinkling of gold bracelets. To my left, a noblewoman with a painted face already grabbed two dancers by the waist and dragged them toward an alcove in a burst of laughter. To my right, two courtesans exchanged a cup of wine, their lips brushing silently before pressing together frankly.
Everything went on, yes. But every look, every ironic smile reminded me that my walk had broken something in this tableau. I was the intruder who allowed himself to cross a ritual that was not his.
My steps led me straight to the dais. Kaenira still sat there, motionless, her armored silhouette gleaming like a living shadow in the torchlight. Her yellow gaze, slit like a she-wolf's, was already fixed on me. She didn't need to speak: she knew why I had come, and she let me approach. Perhaps to judge me. Perhaps to crush me with a word.
Each step drew my throat closer to the invisible thread of her blade. And yet, the more I walked, the more I felt that fragile certainty inside me: if I stepped back now, I would no longer be anything here.
I swallowed. The roar of the drums vibrated through my bones, but my breath became clearer, as if the chaos around no longer mattered. I was going to speak. Not to the hall. Not to Sahryne, nor to Velithra, nor to the dozens of women feasting on my missteps. No. Only to her.
To Kaenira.
I stopped at the foot of the dais. The roar of the drums faded in my mind, replaced by the too-rapid beating of my heart. Kaenira sat above me, motionless, her yellow eyes fixed on me like two blades ready to cut.
So I bent the knee.
Just one. But that gesture, in this palace, rang like thunder. I, the man, the intruder, the one who should never have crossed these walls, knelt before her.
Silence fell. One could have heard the crack of a fruit bursting in a cup, the rustle of a veil. The whole hall held its breath, not out of respect but out of expectation. Ready to laugh, ready to hiss, ready to see me crushed.
I lifted my eyes to her. My voice came out lower than I had expected, but clear.
— General Kaenira… I would like to request a private audience. I have things to tell you that concern only you.
A shiver ran through the crowd. Then the murmurs, venomous, erupted at once:
— "What does he think he is?"
— "A private audience… he's mad."
— "She could kill him on the spot."
I heard them. All of them. Each word pricked me like a needle. And yet I remained still, head held high even on my knee, my eyes locked on Kaenira's. I knew that if I looked away, if I let fear take me, it would all be over.
She did not answer immediately. She did not even move. Her silence stretched, heavier than the marble beneath my knees. Her lips tightened barely, her breath barely stirred in the stifling air. The red lanterns cast moving reflections on her obsidian armor, as if flames were already dancing on it.
Kaenira didn't answer. Not with a word, not with an immediate gesture. She simply stared at me. Her yellow gaze did not blink, did not falter; it pierced me like a blade heated white-hot. The silence that followed my words became almost painful. Even the drums seemed hesitant to beat.
Then she moved. Slowly.
One step, just one. The creak of her obsidian armor sounded like a sentence. She stepped down from the dais, and that single motion made the air around her recoil, as if the whole palace had held its breath. The torchlight slid along the black edges of her cuirass, highlighting the curves of her torso trapped in metal, and each red reflection made me feel as though she had stepped out of a furnace.
She stopped close enough for me to feel her shadow weighing on me. Her eyes fixed into mine left no escape. I was kneeling, vulnerable, and yet I forced myself to hold her gaze. Because the second I looked away, I would have lost.
She let a few more seconds hang. Too long. Too heavy. I felt the murmurs shiver behind me, ready to burst, ready to tear me apart if she rejected me.
Then her voice fell. Cold, dry, but with a nuance I couldn't have defined. Not warmth, no. But… curiosity.
— Follow me.
The murmurs exploded at once. A wave of voices rose behind me.
— "She's taking him…?"
— "Impossible…"
— "She would have killed him already if she wanted to humiliate him."
— "Jealous, me? Yes. Jealous. ahahhahaha."
I felt dozens of gazes sink into my neck. Jealousy, suspicion, desire. Everything mixed, and I felt as though I carried that whole crowd on my shoulders. But Kaenira did not turn to them. Her gaze remained fixed on me, straight, cutting. Then she turned her back slowly and walked away, not waiting for me to follow.
I rose, my knees still protesting from the weight of the stone. Each step I took behind her drew new whispers. Some mocking, others hateful, others… worried.
And inside, I thought only this: She could have killed me. She didn't. She wants to hear what I have to say.
Damn… that was worse than anything. Because at that moment I understood that I had captured her attention. And with her, attention could be as dangerous as a blade.
And I, there at her feet, understood that I was gambling my life on one sentence.
I straightened slowly, still numb from the cold stone that had marked my knees. Kaenira was already walking away, not turning back, and yet I felt she knew each of my steps, that she listened to me follow without needing to check. She didn't wait: she demanded, and I bowed to that demand.
Behind us, the hall did not remain silent long. The murmurs resumed, first hesitant, then louder, like a swarm of voices regaining confidence. The drums sounded again, the flutes drew breath, the dancers found the rhythm. But something had changed. Their laughter seemed heavier, their gestures more pronounced, as if the whole hall were playing a role while waiting for the next act of a play it couldn't yet read.
I didn't dare look back. I knew that if I met their eyes now, I would see jealousy, envy, perhaps hatred, but also that burning curiosity I had unwittingly awakened. They would have devoured me on the spot with their eyes. No, I had to walk, keep my back straight, and accept that every second to come could cost me my life.
Kaenira opened a side door, heavy, engraved with runes that pulsed with a dull glow. She said nothing, not even an order. She simply entered, sure of her strength, certain that I would follow. And I entered.
The murmur of the hall stayed behind us, muffled as the doors swung shut. I still saw one last time the red lanterns dancing on the columns, the silhouettes of women bowing toward the dancers, the glints of wine shining like blood in the light. Then the noise died.
The doors closed with a rumble, and silence fell again.
We were alone.
She and me.
And I understood, at the precise moment the outside world faded, that this tête-à-tête would not be merely a conversation. It was a trial. Perhaps the most dangerous I had faced so far.
So I started straight away:
I set the parchments, the seals and the medal on the table without ceremony, as one throws a stone into a calm basin. The sound of paper on wood seemed vulgar to me, but necessary: it broke the silence and planted the accusation in the room better than any shout. Kaenira barely raised her head; her yellow eyes, cold like dead embers, clung to the documents as if they were already living proofs. I read in her face a detail that confirmed what I hoped — not surprise, no, but the reopening of an old wound.
"Sahryne?" she asked, voice low, controlled, without anger. Simply a question. Enough to open the crack.
I inhaled, and something older touched me — a memory too sharp of another life where I had seen the same signs, the same consequences. I had been witness, spectator and actor: emptied furnaces, sabotaged convoys, soldiers less well-armed at the wrong moment. I had seen maps change because a forge had fallen silent. Sahryne did not act for herself alone: Zyra pulled the strings. And all of this had cost, once.
"Yes." My voice was not dramatic. It was short, precise. "I collected evidence. Coded correspondences, falsified delivery registers, a southern seal modified. Accounts diverted to agents known to be in Zyra's pay."
I let her examine them. I saw Kaenira's hand brush the obsidian of her breastplate, not from nervousness, but to better feel where pain had already dug. She took a parchment, unrolled it, searched the names. Under her gloved fingers, the ink, the figures and the seals made sense. Her expression hardened, focused, and for the first time since the banquet I saw a scar that was not only political: it was personal.
I let my thought slip like a black thread: and yes, you doubted it, but nothing certain. I had the weapon that turned doubt into a blade. In my head I allowed myself a cold, insolent smile: I had not come to be the plaything displayed. I had come to put you in my pocket, to reconquer the South, to take your forge and, if you permitted, your body — not as a vulgar trophy, but as an alliance sealed by iron and flesh. This region, this strength of forges and arms, I intended to take back. You, all these demonic goddesses who think yourselves untouchable, you would soon dance on the tip of a finger. The taste of revenge was bitter and sweet at once.
I silenced that smile and spoke in a low voice, more for myself than for her: "In my previous life, you lost half your territory because of a similar betrayal. That is what Zyra will try to reproduce. Fewer hands, less steel, battles lost for mechanical reasons — not for lack of courage. I saw the map change when the forges went quiet."
Kaenira made no move to contradict. She gave me, rather, the calm dread of a woman who calculates. Then, almost without detour, she said: "Why now? Why you? Why bring this to me?"
I knew that was the key. If I answered boastfully, I would be sent back into the hall like a torch thrown into straw. If I lied, she would smell the stratagem. I chose cold truth, no frills.
"Because I want you with me. Because I have seen what Zyra is capable of, and I do not want you to lose again. Because if you want to take back what is yours, you need to know who strikes you from behind. And because — I admitted — I want that when you take it back, you know it was I who put you back on your feet."
A silence. Her gaze drifted, for a moment, to the window where the distant glow of fireworks colored the sky. I liked that image: the festival burst outside and, here, in this closed room, alliances were being woven that would decide who held the arms tomorrow. Kaenira gave a nearly wicked smile, one that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"You speak like a man who thinks he can buy a city with audacity," she said, and there was a very brief, bitter laugh. "You play with fire, Sora. Or you are mad."
I didn't flinch. I laid out the facts one after the other, no courtliness: dates of transfers, crossed names, signatures. Each element was a nail driven into the hypothesis of a plot. She read, furrowed her brow, calculated timings, imagined possible movements. As she went through my files, her rigidity cracked. I saw a silent pain — the memory of a lost territory, of a day when her hands had heated less steel than they should have.
When she finally looked up, her voice was deeper, less distant: "If what you claim is true, Zyra is not only trying to weaken my forges. She is trying to cut off my limbs."
I allowed myself then a more direct confession, a part I might not have dared reveal to others: "I want this South to belong to us. I want your alliance. And, if you accept it, know that I am not here to negotiate a paper treaty: I come to offer you a joint seizure of power. And I…" I left the word hanging, feeling the danger and immodesty of saying it.
"…I want you by my side when we take back what was taken from us."
Her look changed, something unpredictable, almost human, cut through the stone. A breath, then a half-smile that was neither embrace nor rejection. "Show me your proof," she said, coldly directive.
I unrolled the rest: names, routes, signatures of agents known to work for Zyra. With each document, each detail, I felt the room tip from one instant to the next: from cold indignation, perhaps, to the anger that forges the sharpest steel. Kaenira didn't sacrifice her fury; she filed it away.
When I finished, she placed a hand on the table, close to the medal with the corrupted seal. Her fingers were large and firm; I thought I read in them more than the will of a leader: the wound of a betrayed forge. Then she looked up at me.
"If you lie," she breathed, "I will not kill you for show. I will make you disappear without a sound."
The threat was not a frivolous promise. It was the precision of an executioner. I nodded, without false bravado. I had staked too much to back down.
"I will not betray what will allow us to march." My voice was calm, almost neutral, but each word was a stone. "I want a clean alliance: together, we retake the ground. Together… we will make Zyra regret starting this game."
She remained motionless for a long moment, counting probabilities on the edge of an invisible sheet. Then, finally, she let out a short, muffled laugh, and breathed: "Very well. We'll see what your proofs are worth. But know this: I attach myself to no one without guarantee. If you want my trust, you will have to prove yourself worthy. And if you want my body," — her voice dropped lower, the shadow of a smile — "you must first prove you can hold me in your hand without breaking me."
There were, in that phrase, several implicit promises: a political alliance, a test, a trial. I accepted without hesitation. In my head, like a cold, very clear refrain, one thought imposed itself and I did not erase it: the map would return to our hands, their dances would be nothing but noise, and these queenly demonesses would finally dance to the tune I had given.
She set the parchment on the pile, eyed me, then added, almost like a mischievous order: "Prepare yourself. We will act quickly, and we will act cleanly."
The door stayed closed a moment longer. Outside, the drums still beat, but here, in this private room, we had begun to forge something else: not just plans, but a dangerous promise — mixed with alliance, ambition, and a desire that was no longer only political.