But, dear reader, if you have ever witnessed the moment before a storm breaks, when the air grows so heavy with promise that even drawing breath feels like defiance, then you might understand what it was to stand in that courtyard and watch two empresses meet for the first time.
For this was not merely an introduction. It was a declaration of war wrapped in silk and courtesy, each word a blade testing the other's armor, searching for weakness, for the vulnerable places where steel might slip through and draw blood.
Vetra Nivarre, Regent Empress of Nevareth, stood at the center of her assembled court like winter incarnate, beautiful and merciless in equal measure. Her gaze swept over Eris with the clinical precision of a jeweler examining a stone of dubious quality, lingering on the travel-worn edges of her cloak, the foreign cut of her dress, the pale hair that marked her as creature of fire rather than frost.
The assessment lasted perhaps three heartbeats.
