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September 25 - October 17, 2025
I bring no jewels or gold to celebrate the New Year, Your Majesty. Instead, I bring you a lady for your Upper Household, Chassar had said. Loyalty is the greatest gift of all.
Susa paused. “Are you afraid?” “Of course.” “Good. Fear will make you fight.
“But my task—” “Not all of us can finish our great works.”
These wyverns made their nests in the mountains and the caves, and they mated with fowl to birth the cockatrice, and with serpent to birth the basilisk and the amphiptere, and with ox to birth the ophitaur, and with wolf to birth the jaculus.
“You had better start praying for salvation, my lords,” he said softly. “Fýredel, the right wing of the Nameless One, appears to have woken from his sleep.”
That is the problem with stories, child. The truth in them cannot be weighed.
It was customary for the vows to be taken at midnight, during the new moon, for it was in the darkest hours that companionship was needed most.
“Only ignorant men do not ask questions.”
Fire, the element of the winged demons, required constant feeding. It was the element of war and greed and vengeance—always hungry, never satisfied.
Water needed no coal or tinder to exist. It could shape itself to any space. It nourished flesh and earth and asked for nothing in return.
“Love and fear do strange things to our souls. The dreams they bring, those dreams that leave us drenched in salt water and gasping for breath as if we might die—those, we call unquiet dreams. And only the scent of a rose can avert them.”
My evening star. If the sun burned out tomorrow, your flame would light the world.
“The one who wears the chains is a thousand times greater than the one who wields them,”
Tané stared at his lined face. “What do you know?” she whispered. “Everything.”
“I realized,” she said, after a period of silence, “that she had been spoon-fed a story from the day she was born. She had been taught no other way to be. And yet, I saw that despite everything, some part of her was self-made. This part, small as it appeared at first, was forged in the fire of her own strength, and resisted her cage. And I understood . . . that this part was made of steel. This part was who she truly was.” She held his gaze. “She will be the queen that Inys needs in the days that are to come.”
Loth moved to sit beside her. When he touched her elbow, she looked up at him. “I am glad we found each other again, Ead Duryan.” He paused. “Eadaz uq-Nāra.”
“Damn you, intransigent fool.” She almost choked on her laughter. “I have crossed the South and the West to get back to you,
“you are my child. I forgave you all your sins on the first day of your life.”
To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart.”
“They raise us to be soft as silk, distract us with luxury and wealth beyond measure, so we never rock the boat that carries us. They expect us to be so bored by our power that we let them do the ruling in our stead. Behind every throne is a masked servant who seeks only to make a puppet of the one who sits on it.
