Corian’s gaze flicked toward her before settling on the raugs again. “Correct.”
Cheyenne stepped in front of him to block his view and waved a hand in his face. “Let them do their raug thing, man. I’m sure they can handle it without you watching them. I wanna hear about all this ‘before the drow took the throne’ stuff.”
Wrinkling his nose, Corian met her gaze. “I take it a spark of inspiration is waiting to catch fire.”
“Hey, if you’re better at teaching me O’gúl history than spellcasting, then yeah. Probably.”
He chuckled through his nose and nodded. “All right. Drow haven’t always ruled Ambar’ogúl, and it wasn’t always one Crown on the throne over all of it.”
Behind the nightstalker, L’zar picked dirt from under his fingernails and snorted. “Whoever thought that was a good idea couldn’t see any farther than their own lifetime. Or didn’t care.”
Corian rolled his eyes. “You can’t blame everyone else for not being able to see the future.”
“Of course I can. And I can see the future.” L’zar widened his eyes and flipped his fingers back and forth for a different view of his nails.
Cheyenne frowned at the drow thief and shook her head. “We can ignore him.”
The corners of Corian’s mouth twitched in amusement. “We can try. It depends on how much detail you want me to go into.”
“The CliffsNotes version is cool.”
“Mm-hmm.” Corian briefly closed his eyes to gather his thoughts. “As far as any of us know, this world started with a handful of different kingdoms, each ruled by a different race, and their capital cities inhabited mostly by the same race as their sovereign. If we’re basing any of this on what the records say—”
L’zar snorted. “Whatever records still exist and haven’t been tampered with.”
Corian ignored him and continued in a flat, unamused tone. “These kingdoms enjoyed a lot more peace and prosperity than any of us have experienced, especially in the last few thousand years.”
“I wonder why?”
Cheyenne peered around the nightstalker to shoot her father a deadpan stare, but L’zar was busy with a last-minute self-manicure on his other hand. “Peace, huh?”
“Regulated by the fighting pits, yeah. As I’m sure you noticed, that’s another of Ba’rael’s glaring mistakes during this Cycle. This is an inherently violent world, kid. We take our outlets where we can find ‘em.”
“Sure. So, peace and prosperity. Lots of different rulers. No one’s singing Kumbaya, but they’re all playing nice enough. I get it.” The halfling looked back up at the nightstalker and nodded. “What happened?”
“The drow weren’t satisfied.”
“Hey, big surprise.”
Corian smiled. “The records name him as Sylra Nightflame. Obviously not his real name, but I guess that doesn’t matter this long after the fact. He started rounding up others of his race, pulling them out of hiding and bringing as many drow together as he could to build their own little kingdom.”
“Hiding,” L’zar hissed with a humorless laugh, “Those drow didn’t hide, Corian. They were relegated.”
“They made decisions and stuck with those decisions until they found someone who would make a different choice for them.” The nightstalker folded his arms and gave Cheyenne a wide-eyed look.
Surely that was meant for L’zar, not me. The halfling tried to ignore her father’s comments, but it was impossible not to pick up on Corian’s last words. “What decisions?”
“The decision to rise up and claim their fate.”
L’zar finally stopped pretending he was far more interested in his fingernails. “That’s the mildest version in existence, vae shra’ni. Don’t sugarcoat it. By the deathflame, she’s my daughter. If anyone can handle the truth, it’s the drow standing in front of you.”
Seriously? He’s suddenly fighting to give me all the pieces of the puzzle?
As Cheyenne blinked dumbly in surprise, Corian lost his tense composure and whirled to face the drow thief. “Would you care to explain to your daughter the origins of your race’s authority in this fell-damn world?”
L’zar spread his arms, kicked one heel out to bow low over his extended leg, and grinned. “If my Nós Aní permits.”
Corian rolled his eyes and stepped aside, gesturing for L’zar to join them. The drow thief’s golden eyes flickered toward Cheyenne as he stepped into their circle of three now. She leaned away and scanned him. Same crazy grin. I think that’s his lucid face.
Behind her, a low, guttural chant rose from Cazerel, his warriors, and Foltr. Soft yellow and orange light flashed slowly, reflected in L’zar’s golden eyes. At this point, both drow had abandoned any interest in the raugs’ spell.
“Our kind rose from the darkness, Cheyenne.” L’zar tilted his head, studying her reaction. “You know our other name, don’t you? Mór edhil.”
“Dark elf.” The halfling narrowed her eyes. “That doesn’t mean we are the darkness.”
“No. We were merely born from it.” His mad grin widened. “You of all people should understand we are not the source of our existence. We are not those who came before us, yet we can’t untie ourselves from the threads that birthed us, hm?”
Cheyenne leaned slowly toward her father. Jesus, this feels like talking to a toddler. If I even knew what that was like. “If you’re gonna keep talking to me in riddles, Weaver, I’d rather listen to Corian’s version.”
The nightstalker laughed and looked at the drow thief.
L’zar raised an eyebrow, his opposite eye twitching into a squint.
Okay, that’s either annoyance or approval. Here we go.
He leaned toward her until their faces were inches apart, chuckled, and withdrew. “It’s easy to forget you are exactly the age you look. So young.”
“And so not interested in being talked down to because of it.”
Corian dropped his gaze to the ground between them with a smirk.
L’zar took a sharp breath through his nose and smoothed his hair back with both hands. “Then let me spell it out for you, Cheyenne. We drow were created to live in shadow, you understand? Mór edhil. All the dark corners of this world were ours. All the darkened threads of the Weave. All the magic no one else
