Nektarios stared at her, his lips tight. “Are you finished whining, little girl?”
Lyssa shrugged. “For now.” She paused. “Wait a second. Did you say, three Sorcerers? Somebody else other than Lubon and Lee is dead?”
“I’ve just received word that Samuel fell to assassins,” Nektarios replied. “It’s why I called you here. His death is an unfortunate escalation of this already disastrous incident. I think he figured they wouldn’t come after him again so soon. He was being careful, but the Society is weakened as a result of his carelessness.”
Lyssa gasped. “What the hell?” She leaned over and took a few deep breaths.
A world without the white-suited old man was hard to contemplate. She’d assumed he’d last to be at least two hundred.
She didn’t understand how it could have happened. He was so careful. Had their meeting led to his demise?
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked, clinging to a desperate hope Nektarios had decided to try his hand at cruel pranks.
“I’m never anything but serious,” Nektarios replied in an annoyed tone. “Losing Lee and the Eclipse was bad enough. It’s as you said before. Losing an Elder makes it seem like the Society can’t protect its own. This is a very, very serious matter. It’s now obvious that someone else is aware of the grand emptiness spirit and is taking extreme measures with little concern for how much attention it draws. We can no longer wait on this matter. We need to be more aggressive in containing this issue. We believe the assassins intend to transfer the grand emptiness spirit to their control.”
Lyssa wished the Elder had a chair. Her knees wobbled. “You probably shouldn’t have made me leave him, then.”
“I assume you used a shard vault and took precautions,” Nektarios replied.
“Alarm spells that would draw a lot of attention,” Lyssa said.
A vague hint of satisfaction flashed over his face. “Then you’re not a child. I question your maturity, but you do have some skills. Please note I have people watching your room as well.”
Lyssa watched him for a moment before deciding she needed the Elder on her side. “Someone attempted to smuggle a spying shard into my room the other day.”
“Really?” Nektarios frowned. “Then we know the enemy is already on Last Remnant, or their servants are. Where is the shard now?”
“Probably floated out to the ocean by now.” Lyssa shrugged.
“Unfortunate, but at least you stopped them.”
Mentioning Tristan might not help. She didn’t need the Elder changing his mind about supporting her, and having different people targeting whoever was after her might lead to different and hopefully converging solutions.
“What do you intend to do?” she asked. “I thought we couldn’t risk unsealing Jofi without big trouble, and there’s no good way to destroy him.”
She’d been so distracted by her brother’s regalia she hadn’t realized something important. Trying to steal Jofi came with a lot of serious challenges.
“What could anyone do other than try to kill me to get him?” she asked. “That doesn’t guarantee anything. Now that I think about it, stealing him isn’t enough since the seal involves the ritual, the Night Goddess, and my essence.”
Lyssa wasn’t about to risk her life and soul because an Elder panicked. They needed a decent plan that didn’t involve pointless sacrifice. She now had both her brother and Samuel to avenge.
Nektarios flicked his wrist dismissively. “My subordinates have found evidence the enemy has been investigating powerful spirit sorcery techniques. They’ve come across information concerning a ritual the enemy could use to wrest control of the spirit without as much risk as during the first sealing ritual. It wouldn’t destroy the spirit, but we have no reason to believe that’s their goal.”
Lyssa nodded. “Okay, so they’ve got something figured out and want to steal Jofi. Do we have any idea who it is?”
“No, that information eludes us.” He inclined his head toward her. “Which is why we’re going to force them out of hiding and eliminate them directly. That’s the most straightforward solution.”
Lyssa almost laughed but stopped herself at the last second. “Does this involve a plan where we use me as bait?”
“You are the most expendable person left in this matter,” Nektarios replied coldly, “and the one who is the next most likely target. I believe the others were targeted because of their practical knowledge of the related ritual and the possibility of being used against our enemy should they gain control of the spirit. The remaining Illuminated involved, other than you, are now in deep seclusion.” He took a deep, wheezy breath. “This is all frustrating. We should have handled this better than relying on this foolish lie and a young girl.”
Lyssa wanted to complain about being dismissed as a young girl, but the man was almost six times her age. Betty White was a young girl compared to him.
“I suspect Tristan St. James might be involved,” Nektarios said. “We can’t ignore the timing of his return to Last Remnant. I was tempted to deny him the right to return, but when I realized he was coming, I thought it was an excellent opportunity to lay a trap for him.”
Lyssa cleared her throat, taking her time to decide her next words very carefully. She couldn’t lie to a Tribunal member without suffering repercussions, but she also wasn’t inclined to cooperate fully with a man who saw her as nothing more than an expendable asset he could use to eliminate a threat to the Society. Tristan might be ruthless, but at least he’d demonstrated he cared about Shadows’ lives.
The best strategy, as always when dealing with Sorcerers, was telling the partial truth and leaving out one or
