Entering the Sovereign of Conceit’s demesne wasn’t like entering Lilly’s back in Navanaea. Instead of a progressive, soft feeling like a smothering blanket, the edge here was sharp enough to cut. A hard, invisible edge, a rapidly fading headache, and then… nothing. Looking back over my shoulder, there was not so much as a shimmer in the sky.

Before us, the last of the green had gone under a blanket of snow, kept smooth by lashing winds I had to use magic to block out.

Seyari, who’d been circling above, slipped through right after me, tucking her wings in before flaring out to pull up from the dive beside us. I saw her smug expression before I looked down and saw Quiraxa’s shocked one.

Shocked only for a second, then quickly schooled back into a half-sneer that was probably permanent. “You truly are an oaf.”

Seyari huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Pardon?” I wasn’t even mad. Just confused.

“You smashed right through my Mistress’s barrier, horns first.”

“Oh. I think I felt that, yeah.”

“That barrier is more than strong enough to keep mortals out! You should at least have been more inconvenienced.”

“I’m… sorry? You could’ve warned me.”

“I was waiting for you to ask.”

I blinked. “You just wanted me to smack off it like a bird off a too-clear window.”

“That is entirely untrue.”

Seyari laughed as she rolled around us, earning a glare from Quiraxa.

“You know I could’ve dropped you if that happened, right?”

“You would not have,” Quiraxa said with such assurance that it almost baffled me.

“Isn’t that hypocritical? Assuming I’m competent enough not to drop you, but would also just smash into the barrier.”

Quiraxa was silent, brooding.

“She’s right, Quiraxa,” Sey chided. “But you’re also not wrong. I bet Renna only noticed it after she mashed through.” She glanced my way with a broad smile. “Did you miss me circling?”

“…I thought you found a good updraft,” I admitted sheepishly, before looking down at Quiraxa. “You could’ve told me about the barrier, though!”

Quiraxa tried to shrug and mostly managed it from where I was carrying her. “I did not deign it necessary.”

“So… what about the intruders? How’d they get in?”

Quiraxa waved one clawed hand absentmindedly. “They had a strong enough demon with them. The barrier’s not meant to keep demons out. In fact, that’s how we knew there were squatters. They never arrived for an audience yet also did not leave.”

“And no one would want to stay here otherwise,” Seyari added, and I was surprised how playful her tone was.

“Of course! Nothing could compare to an audience with Utraxia herself.”

My wife rolled her eyes and muttered “sycophant” under her breath.

“Are we close, then?” I asked. “Because if it comes to a fight, I shouldn’t be carrying you.”

“And I shouldn’t fight,” Quiraxa agreed. “That rise up there, you can set me down. Where the squatters are located is a simple enough flight that I am certain your wife could follow the directions.”

I wasn’t sure if that made it less or more likely that this was all an elaborate ambush. But at this point, I was very nearly convinced it wasn’t—if only for how Quiraxa treated me. The usual stab-you-in-the-back types were overly nice, or quiet. Rarely were they provocative.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“’But not me,’ or did you miss an ‘even’ in there?” I said acerbically.

“I never misspeak.”

“You’re impossible.” I sighed.

At that, Seyari broke out laughing mid-cartwheel and I flushed a deeper red all the way through landing on the hill. Quiraxa glared at my boots melting into the snow, but said nothing. I glared right back, up until I was up to my knees in ice—and then I switched to hovering.

Which continued to melt the snow, so I tried holding myself aloft with wind magic. Just as I was about to spin myself upside down, I felt Seyari’s magic touch mine, and I righted.

“What an interesting display,” Quiraxa deadpanned.

“I consider it courteous.”

She scoffed, then pointed one long, clawed finger. “That mountain—the most prominent peak. They are in its western base—a cave atop a cliff that overlooks the ice field.”

“And what have they been doing that’s disturbed you?” Seyari asked.

“They haven't asked permission to stay, yet have passed the barrier. Moreover Mistress Utraxia has felt their magical workings. Whatever they are up to, the fools mean to hide from us. It is unacceptable.”

Seyari furrowed her brow. “Why not deal with it yourselves, again?”

“We are not in the business of solving others’ problems.”

Seyari turned to face Quiraxa and pressed the issue. “But isn’t it your problem now that they’re here? Aren’t they staining your reputation?”

“If someone drives people—and mortals—onto your land, do you not look to quell the source?”

“So you just let them be, doing whatever they please until then?”

“Why should we lift a finger if they do not pose a threat to us and ours?”

Now, it was my turn. “How do you know they don’t?”

Quiraxa scoffed. “They have but one demon of rank.”

“Are you certain?” I asked.

“We have observed no others.”

Seyari narrowed her eyes. “I’ll be frank. We want to know if this is a trap you are leading us into.”

I expected anger, and while I did feel a little from Quiraxa, her face took on a decidedly perplexed look, one that I doubted she adopted often with the odd angle it gave to her lips and brow. “I have not deceived you. Should I have intended such duplicity, I assure you that I would not be found out so easily.”

“Then…” Seyari heaved a loud sigh. “You are actually serious.”

“Of course I am!”

“This.” She pointed at Quiraxa, wings twitching angrily.

The conceit demon tilted her head, tails twisting lazily behind her. “Hm?”

“This right here is why you cannot understand who the better choice is!”

Oh here they go. Seyari’s magic left me in her distraction, and I sank down into the hissing snow, watching the crowned top of the mountain. It almost seemed to wobble in the early morning light.

“It was never a choice! Royalty carries far too much power and prestige for any other option to even be considered!”

“But what about love? Shared interests—the willingness to take on others’ burdens and be selfless and—did you feel that?”

“Was that not your wife blundering to the ground?”

“No.” I had felt the ground shake a little despite sinking into decades-old snow. I could barely form a reply—the mountain was wobbling. Bulging out one of the sides near the top, even. Mutely, I pointed at it.

“Renna, did you…” Seyari trailed off as she followed my outstretched finger.

Quiraxa turned around as well, and she was just in time to see the top of the mountain explode.

From a distance, it almost didn’t look real. It looked like the first sandcastle I’d made on my island falling apart. Except my sandcastle hadn’t thrown a dark cloud up into the air. Moreover, I didn’t think an eruption like this would have multicolored lightning arcing through it. The one that’d birthed—or rebirthed—me certainly hadn’t.

But that was something different altogether. A little release on a vent of pressure, not an amount of rock enough to bury Astrye twice over sliding down and blowing out like it was nothing.

The shockwave reached us a moment later, and sound did too, a low, rumbling boom that I felt all the way down my spine, jarring every vertebra from skull to tail tip. Following behind the initial blast, a low, undulating rumble droned on, shaking the earth. Ash and soot and rock covered the sky. From within a hastily-constructed dome of wind magic, I watched bits of mountain falling into the snow, staining the white with gray.

In a scant few seconds, the world was plunged into a starless night, the budding sunrise snuffed out.

“I… I must warn Mistress,” Quiraxa said in a shaking voice.

When I looked over, her eyes were glowing. Sey’s too, and she was transfixed. Slowly, I turned to look as well, turning on my aura sight. Over the volcano, a roiling mass of magic had coalesced—forming into something at the center.

“Fuck,” Seyari mumbled, shaking. I could see tears forming at the corners of her unblinking golden eyes.

With instinct I never knew, my armor’s burning gauntlet melted away, and I took her hand in mine. “Go,” I told Quiraxa. “Bring help.”

She didn’t argue. I watched her take one step, then two, then five. Soon, she was a blur, streaking across the now-pockmarked landscape. I held Sey for a moment, just until the ash started to fall around our little dome of wind.

“He’s done it,” she mumbled.

“We’ll undo it,” I replied, squeezing her hand. “Whatever it is, isn’t finished just yet. And a rain of stones won’t stop us from flying there, will it?”

She nodded, then shook her head. “Yeah. You’re right. Let’s go ruin Mordwell’s plan a step from the finish line.”

Seyari pulled me up into the air, and together we flew toward the erupting mountain as fast as we could.