At those words, the multiple prophecies Cheyenne had heard from Oracles and in her own dreams came back to her. Cut out the heart. Cut out the rot. Christ, it’s all tied together even as we sit here telling stories.
“What did she say?” Ember asked, her luminous violet eyes fixed intently on the drow.
“She wanted to challenge our father before her time,” L’zar replied simply, “Ba’rael had convinced herself she could do much better than the unprecedented era of peace under his Cycle.”
“She thought K’laht was too soft on our people.” Maleshi snorted. “Too content to let Ambar’ogúl run itself unless the Crown’s intervention was absolutely necessary. Hell, that’s how I got my job.”
“You served under L’zar’s father.” Cheyenne gazed at the war general. “For how long?”
“Longer than any of us care to think about right now.” Corian raised his tankard toward Maleshi and drank.
“Wait, wait.” Ember pressed both hands on the table and glanced for a second at the silver skull in Maleshi’s hand before looking back up at L’zar. “I still wanna hear about this plan of hers. She told you she was going to overthrow your dad?”
“No.” A thin smile tugged at the corners of L’zar’s lips. “She told me she meant to challenge him. By the old laws, of course. Her marandúr hadn’t yet been returned to the Rahalma altar, and, I suppose, she wanted my full support.”
Elarit snorted, the thin silver chains draping across the bridge of her nose jingling when she shook her head. “It worked out so well for her.”
Sitting beside her, Jara’ak chuckled and widened his eyes at the troll woman’s rare facetious comment. “You have a way with words, Lady Masharun.”
“Don’t call me that.” Elarit buried her face in her goblet but looked up at Cheyenne.
“She’s not wrong.” L’zar sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling of the bunker. “It didn’t work out anything like what she’d planned.”
Ember nodded. “Because you didn’t support her.”
“Ha.” Corian waved his hand over the table, shaking his head. “Ba’rael didn’t give a shit whether or not she had L’zar’s support. She assumed giving him that information would goad him into making a fool of himself.”
“Which I’d already done a thousand times over at that point,” L’zar added dryly.
The magicals chuckled and kept drinking like their cups would never empty.
“She goaded him all right.” Maleshi raised her silver skull toward L’zar. “Right into making herselflook like an idiot.”
Cheyenne frowned at her father. “What did you do to her?”
L’zar rolled his eyes. “Trust me, Cheyenne, if I’d wanted to physically hurt my sister, I would have done it centuries ago. Psychological damage, on the other hand, is a different game, at which I naturally excel.”
Jara’ak thumped a fist on the table. “You’ve been building up for centuries is what you’ve been doing. Give the damn punchline.”
Ember’s eyes widened as she gazed from one magical around the table to the next. “This is a joke?”
“Only in the sense that I still find it highly amusing,” L’zar replied blankly.
Corian blinked, swaying forward in his chair before turning toward the drow and pointing a fur-tipped finger at L’zar. “If you don’t tell her, I will.”
“Everyone’s in such a hurry.” L’zar set his drink on the table and tipped his chair backward on two legs, smoothing his long white hair away from his face. “I ruined all her plans, Cheyenne, by returning my marandúr to that altar before she grew enough of a spine to do it herself.”
Ember shook her head in disbelief. “Why?”
L’zar grinned. “Because I could.”
Jara’ak barked out a laugh. “Just to fuck with her head. She should’ve been used to it at that point, eh?”
Maleshi took another long drink. “It gave L’zar first right to challenge K’laht for the throne and turn the new Cycle for himself if he so chose.”
L’zar pointed at her. “That was never my intention.”
“Anyone with half a brain knows that,” Foltr added with a grunt.
Cheyenne narrowed her eyes at Maleshi. “You said patricide.”
“I did.” The general gestured toward L’zar and raised an eyebrow. “I’ll leave that elaboration to your royal drow ass.”
Cheyenne’s father gazed around the table, then rolled his eyes. “Ba’rael doesn’t have half a brain, and she never did. To keep me from the throne I never wanted, she snuck into the Heart like a coward in the middle of the night and returned her marandúr, then slit our father’s throat in his sleep and turned the Cycle by force.”
“Jesus.” Cheyenne slumped in her chair and grimaced at the Bloodshine in her goblet. “And that was it? No one tried to stop her?”
“There was no one to stop her. I certainly wasn’t going to.”
She looked quickly at L’zar again. “But it was your fault.”
“Oh.” He feigned surprise and gazed around the table, chuckling. “I didn’t realize you had any interest in defending the Crown’s actions, especially not after you defied all the odds stacked against you in the very fabric of fate by challenging her yourself.”
“I’m not defending her.” Cheyenne’s fingers tightened around the black metal stem of the goblet. “I’m saying you should have taken responsibility.”
Elarit’s high laughter filled the bunker. “That ship sailed long before the last Cycle ended, Cheyenne.”
“And it doesn’t weigh on you even a little?” The halfling’s hands slid off the edge of the table into her lap as she stared at her father. “That your own father died because you wanted to screw with your sister’s head?”
“In a perfect world, that would seem abhorrent, wouldn’t it?” L’zar grinned back at her and spread his arms. “As you so aptly put it about a week ago, Cheyenne, I dropped a coin on a table. Ba’rael did the rest. I didn’t challenge the Cycle, and I most certainly didn’t guide her hand when the tip of the blade it held pierced K’laht’s throat. I have my own crimes to pay for if the day ever
