Read Novel Full Chapter 1838: No.
Chapter 1838: No.
Quinlan stood at the rail of Luminareth’s high balcony with hundreds of thousands of elves on their knees below him, petals still coming down like warm snow, and read the quiet script only he could see.
[Peoples of Iskaris conquered: 1/4]
[Reward: ???]
The roar of his brand-new nation climbed the palace face in waves, and in the middle of all that joy its brand-new sovereign was reading a floating window like fine print.
’Dwarves, humans, beastkin,’ he mused. ’It even wrote me a to-do list.’
He flicked the window shut, question marks and all, and filed the whole thing away for a quieter hour, because the sound below him was changing.
The roar drew itself in, pulling back from the walls and walkways the way a tide leaves a shore, wave after wave folding into an enormous, breathing hush, until a city of hundreds of thousands held one collective breath. Faces upturned. Ears high.
"He will speak," someone whispered far below, and the whisper traveled better than the horns had.
Behind his shoulder, Isveth had risen from her knees, hands folded and eyes bright, the Head Maiden of the Faith visibly preparing to receive scripture.
Whatever came out of the Holy Son’s mouth in the next minute would be recited at services for the rest of this brand new nation’s existence, and every line of her posture said she knew it.
Myrasyn rose beside her, sunset caught in her living crown, and gave him a small, encouraging nod.
Quinlan looked out over his mother’s people for a long moment.
"I have three goals," he told the elves, and the canopy carried it to the farthest branch.
The hush deepened.
"First." He raised one finger. "Unite Iskaris. Every land and every people, elf, dwarf, human and beastkin, under one banner. And when the continent stands together, I will reach up and tear the Heavenly Restriction out of your sky."
A sound moved through the square, half gasp and half prayer. He kept going.
"Second." Another finger, and the villain’s trademark grin came with it. "Your race. Do you know what the rest of Iskaris says about elves? That you are, without question, the prettiest people on the continent." He let the compliment settle. "And that you make good archers."
The square made a strangled sound, indignation and laughter colliding in mid-air.
Quinlan didn’t smile with them. He let the laughter run one second too long, then asked, without raising his voice:
"Why are you laughing?"
The canopy carried the question to every last branch, and the laughter died where it stood.
"That’s the entire entry. Everything the world bothered writing down about your race." He listed it out, flat as an appraisal. "Pretty faces. Decent bows. Reliable backliners. And down in the slave markets, the highest-priced sex slaves."
Across the square, hundreds of thousands of ears began to sink.
On the balcony, Sera held her chin up. The healer whose whole existence had once carried a price, body and years and name together, listened to her entire race summarized that way, in public, by the man she loved, and did not look at the floor once.
"Are you content with that?" He looked out over the silence he’d made, unhurried. "Because you reacted like a people who’ve made peace with it."
Down in the front rows, an old ranger’s knuckles went white around her bow.
"I haven’t."
The grin returned, and this time nobody in the square mistook it for a joke. "The world is due a very rude awakening on the subject of elven strength. My second goal is just that: to watch you blossom into the potential I know you have."
Across the square, the ears rose again, and the roar that tried to be born right there had teeth in it, thousands of chests filling with shame and defiance in the same breath.
"Third."
He let the word sit. The square leaned in. Up on the balcony, Sera stopped breathing for a second, because she could count on one hand the times that tone had come out of him.
"My mother has been gone from this world for a very long time." Quiet, level, matter-of-fact. "I will bring Luminara home, and when she steps into Thalorind again, I will show her everything her children built while she was away."
Myrasyn had prayed to the Progenitor her whole reign, and not one of those prayers had ever asked for her to come back in person. Her hand closed on the rail.
Beside her, Kaelira watched Quinlan and smiled, soft and small.
A different silence took the square, the sound of hundreds of thousands of minds arriving at the same wall together.
Behind him, Isveth made a sound like a hymn dying in her throat.
"...Home?" The whispers collided somewhere over the crowd. "He said he’ll bring her home."
"He said it like she’s at market..."
"The Progenitor is a prayer. She isn’t a, a person who can simply..."
"He’s her son. Would her son say it if..."
Nobody finished a sentence.
"That’s all," said the man who had just promised his nation a returned divinity, and stepped back from the rail. "Let’s get to work, shall we?"
Then he simply turned and walked, past Myrasyn’s regalia and Isveth’s trembling hands, collecting a wobbly, blossom-drunk Rosie off the rail with one arm on the way, and gave the most important address in elven history exactly zero closing ceremony.
For three whole steps, the only sound in the capital was petals landing.
Then an elderly magistrate in the front rows came up out of her kneel with tears shaking loose off her chin, and said it to no one and to everyone.
"All my life I served the crown. It promised us quiet borders. Peace with the dwarves, protection from beastkin, our old ways kept exactly as they were." Her voice cracked wide open. "He just promised us the sky."
"Promised? No, he demanded!" a soldier shouted, visibly energized. "He demanded we become a race he can proudly show off to his mother when she returns!"
The old ranger’s bow was still in a white-knuckled grip. She said it down at the bow, not up at the balcony. "Every one of them told me elves make good archers." Her thumb moved once along the bowstring. "And I thanked them for it. Every time."
"Then what are we waiting for?!" a young voice shouted down from the walkways, cracking with laughter and tears at once. "Follow him! Just follow him!"
The square detonated.
The sound that went up had no words in it at first, only voice, joy with its skin off. Then the name found them again, E-LY-SA-RIA, E-LY-SA-RIA, rolling up the palace face in waves while the petals came down like a second snowfall, chasing their sovereign through the doors.
He didn’t turn around, but his lips kept curling upward little by little until the maids saw a sight they’d never forget for the rest of their lives.
Inside, the processional hall was still lined wall to wall with staff, every one of them bowing to the Holy Son as he passed with Rosie now asleep against his shoulder, worn out from blooming a whole city. Sera and Kaelira fell in behind him, and Isveth glided after them with the doors’ thunder at her back.
Myrasyn came last, and quietest.
She caught up to Isveth halfway down the hall, and when she spoke, her voice was pitched low, meant for one set of ears only.
"You are going to be very busy, my friend." She said it smiling. The smile reached nothing.
The melancholy underneath had been waiting all evening, patient as winter, and now that the ceremony was over it came up through her like groundwater.
Isveth’s hand found her friend’s sleeve. She opened her mouth with something gentle in it.
Quinlan stopped walking.
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
The last Queen of the Elves straightened, caught out in her own palace, and then let it go, too tired to keep pretending.
"Look at what my reign amounted to, Quinlan. My own council chained me beneath my own palace, and my people had to be saved by a miracle to have any chance at a better tomorrow."
Her hand moved toward him and gave up halfway. "The faith held when the crown rotted. Isveth and her order never failed anyone. The new age deserves to be built by the hands that stayed clean. I do not deserve..."
The queen with droopy green eyes full of regret was interrupted.
"No."
Myrasyn blinked. "...No?"
"No, Myrasyn Ael’vyrn." Quinlan came around fully, Rosie snoring on undisturbed, and the whole attention of a primordial landed on her at once. "You don’t get to self-pity your way out of work."
Her mouth opened. Nothing useful arrived in it.
"Fanatics are wonderful, but I’m not running this nation on faith alone. A country that runs on nothing but hymns starves with perfect posture. The elven people need a proper governor."
He tipped his head at Isveth. "No offense."
"None taken, Holy Son." The Head Maiden inclined her head, serene.
"Then you have Jasmine," Myrasyn tried. "Your Tyrant of Commerce. The whole continent has already begun whispering about her..."
"I do have Jasmine." The grin arrived, slow and merciless. "My amazing twenty-five-year-old human lover, who was a merchant girl haggling over silk margins when I met her, currently raising my domain out of raw wilderness, chronically overworked, and about to inherit a great deal more. Or..."
He let it hang for a second.
"...I have a four-thousand-year-old queen with a crown’s worth of statecraft experience standing in front of me, fishing for permission to retire." A beat. "Guess you’re out of luck."