The royal court’s intimidation was complete from the moment the snow began to spread through the Great Hall. The look on the King’s face was all she needed to know to prove that. He had recoiled, the lines on his face deepened, and his eyes went dull with understanding, that he had nothing to counter her, nothing to stop her. But she would take her time. It was not yet her intention to take over the King’s Hoverstone. Only they should understand that she could take over, at any time.

She watched the wedding between Lord Gern Jorbert and Lilian Bilt with contempt. The young woman was giving herself away to a man twice her age, three times her age, maybe, and it was not with her full consent. Her father sold her. Like she was no more than livestock. How could she permit such a thing to happen to her? Khara would never submit to such maneuvering, and those who tried were the first to die. Or would be.

She hadn’t used magic yet to kill anyone. It would happen eventually, and then she would know her true power. But up until now, the elf, her parents, their sycophants, had all been killed the old fashioned way: kicked off a hoverstone or meeting the bite of a sharpened blade.

The King arose from his throne and the couple stood before him; the King said the words of old to seal the two to each other. She barely listened. The wedding was not what interested her. She had come here to leave her bedchambers at night to look for the cavern, the one she believed existed below Strongwind Castle. Though it might be deeper than that, a part of the Hoverstone, itself.

She’d been foiled so far.

And that Syrio followed her once. She knew she would be watched, but likely her ability to do magic spread back to Tero, who then informed Syrio of the danger; perhaps he knew there was danger before hand, since she had a dragon’s egg. She smiled to herself as the bride and groom kissed one another lightly below. Either way, she decided then and there that Tero would have to die.

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The cousins would no longer trouble her without going to great lengths to do so. And if the death of a cousin troubled her personal guard, they would join the man in his nose dive towards the Flatland.

But none of them dared challenge her.

Her hoverstone was highest off the Flatlands; it was a long way to the ground.

The whole of the court stood to clap the Jorbert-Bilt union and she stood up to do so, too. It was expected of her, and more importantly, she was thrilled at the idea of seeing her potential enemies weakened through marriage. For who would stand in her way, if not the Jorberts?

“My Lady,” a voice whispered behind her. “I bid you come with me. Now.”

She froze.

The pointed end of a steel blade tip poked lightly into her back, just above her hip. One slide in and down, and that was it; she would likely die, and not right away. In the following months, experiencing excruciating pain. But....

She turned around slowly to face her would-be captor. It was Syrio. His blade-tip did not move with her and so pointed now into her belly. “What will you do, cousin?” she asked. “Gut me here? In front of all these people?”

Syrio looked side to side nervously.

His mouth opened to speak. No words came.

“I thought not.” She grabbed his wrist. His grasp on the knife loosened, and then the weapon was in her hands. She slipped it under her belt. “And you will find I am merciful, for I will let you leave with a kiss.”

She leaned over and kissed his cheek lightly, feeling the soft down whiskers of a man who’d never been able to grow a beard. But it was not her kiss that made him tremble. It was her cold breath. And the magic words she began to speak to him in a tone so low that only he would be able to hear, and so act, upon them.