“I don’t know. There’s never been a situation in Libelle where two combatants survived a battle against a Chevalier. My understanding is that the one who deals the deathblow gets the title.”
Nym hummed. “I’m curious. I’ll have to dig into this a little further.”
“I don’t know if it even really matters. If I got the title, I’d probably just give it to James.”
“What? Don’t you want to be Chevalier?”
“No.”
* * *
14 | Electric Butterflies
The elevator doors opened to a beautiful garden with domed, glass panes overhead. The peak of the spire gave a grand view of the night sky beyond the lucidium halo’s shimmering aurora.
All around them floated pale, cyan embers, all flickering like little sparks. Wisps of manipulated electricity, twisting in ways no normal arc of lightning could ever bend. The wisps floated and tangled like electric threads until they formed ghostly butterflies.
They climbed an illuminated set of stairs onto the rooftop conservatory. A sublevel beneath the glass floor housed a shallow stream beneath the garden. Light refracted through rippling water cast soft, ambient light across dewy petals and emerald leaves.
As another flashing butterfly wisped past his visor, a memory long buried away welled to the surface.
His mother often read poems to him as a child on gray, rainy afternoons. For a fraction of a moment, Liam was a child again, leaning against the rain-dappled windows overlooking Euclid’s bustling business district. A scheduled, spring thunderstorm rolled through the city.
The business district… I went to my mother’s office with her on a day home from school. She read poetry to me on her break…
A certain line of that poem always stuck out to him and returned to his mind in that moment:
“Illuminate the sky, herald dragonfly, as electric butterflies flutter by.”
Liam hadn’t heard that poem nor his mother’s voice in over ten years. For a moment, he was crushed by the weight of that memory. The weight eased as the memory drifted a little further away with every step he climbed. Soon, it was lost at sea again, carried away to some corner of his memory he’d never sail through again.
At the top of the stairs, the garden opened to a wide battleground surrounded by small trees, vines, and flowers with bioluminescent petals. Beyond those plants and across a vast, chessboard-patterned floor stood a female exalt in a white and gold suit.
The most powerful exalt in Libelle—the Chevalier, Serena Lucienne.
She watched them approach with calm on her features. She held her helmet at her side, balanced against one hip. Hair bleached ashen blonde framed her face and delicate features. Her dark eyes carried an air of indifference toward the two of them.
“You’re the first visitors I’ve had in four years,” Serena spoke. Her voice was just as regal as Liam remembered. Low, velvety, powerful. Serena Lucienne may have been a woman of petite build and stature, but her speed, skill, and kill count were testaments to her ferocity.
“I’ve been watching the two of you for a while, now. Caught my attention when I heard about the two prodigy students of Jove Darner. Odonata Team 5 of Euclid… my old home.”
A wistful smile crossed her features as her gaze flit downward.
“…is the old conservatory still there? Over by the museum?”
James looked too dumbfounded to respond. Perhaps her venture into such casual conversation had insulted him on some level.
“It’s still there,” Liam said.
“That’s good to hear. I miss it terribly. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to challenge Jove Darner as well. It would have been an amazing battle. I had always wanted a match with him before I became Chevalier. Our paths simply never crossed.”
I feel like I’ve had this conversation with you before.
Just like last time, I said…
“He’s around.”
Serena smiled softly. “Yes. I think so, too.”
James, however, evidently had enough of the small talk.
“You know why he’s not here?” James spoke with bitterness in his voice.
The Chevalier said nothing as she fixed her cold, dark gaze on James.
“Answer me,” James demanded. “Tell me you know what Chrysid did to him.”
She drew a long breath and leaned her head to one side. For a moment, Liam thought that she might speak and give answers to all the many questions that their last days with Jove had left them with.
What answer would you want to hear from her?
“Kai Odonata wanted this world to be protected only by the most powerful exalts. We owe him everything,” Serena said.
James moved to storm forward before Liam extended one hand to stop him. James huffed.
“Don’t give us that scripted bullshit! You’re the Chevalier, you’re supposed to protect humanity. What Chrysid’s really got going on out there—outside of this pretty little biodome—it’s a crime against humanity and you know it. By doing nothing, you’re complicit with it. How many other realms has Chrysid cannibalized for lucidium? What did they do to deserve that?”
For a moment, Liam thought he glimpsed the subtle knitting of her brow.
“The only thing a predecessor can ask of their successor is to be better.”
“That’s bullshit! You could end Chrysid, but you choose not to. Is it not worth giving up your pretty little tower? Huh?”
“If you want to know the truth so badly… rise up to it. Look it in the eyes. I can’t guarantee that you’ll like what you see, though.”
“Whatever.” James gave up trying to get through to her. “There’s two of us. We fight together. If you want support exalts to even the odds, call them in now.”
The Chevalier stared at them, her gaze shifting from one twin to the other as her expression dissolved into something calm and stoic.
“I wouldn’t recommend that.”
James’s nose scrunched up, “…why the hell not?”
“Becoming Chevalier… changes things.” Serena pulled her helmet on and tightened the fastenings at the base. “If you have any care for your brother’s safety at all, I recommend that you take this battle as one-on-one only. It will be the last for some of us. The only people on this battleground should be the
