THE USURPERS| 2021

CHAPTER 14: ANCHOR

CHAPTER XIV
Anchor
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"Emile?" I said breathlessly, almost entirely ignoring the fact the man before me wanted to depose my father.

My sickly brother could barely walk across a room without collapsing. The last time I saw him he had been in his worst condition. His skin had a grey pallor and I remembered how he had struggled to get a word out when I had asked him a question. Emile had been thirteen then, but his thin frame made him appear even younger.

My hands gripped the edge of the table, my eyes cast downward. I could've cared less about who wanted my father off the throne. I knew many did.

But Emile? My poor older brother who could hardly bare the weight of living–him as an Emperor?

"You're mad." I said, half of the words coming out from under my breath. My mind couldn't shake the image of Emile, half dead on my father's opulent throne. "Emile is not fit to rule."

"That's why you're here." Julian said, his tone slightly sardonic. "To help him rule."

It was then that I realized what they wanted. They wanted my father off the throne and Emile on it. With me behind him, holding power in the shadows.

"I am not fit to rule either."

"You are more fit to rule than your father." General Altan replied with no hesitation. He was either insane or playing at a game that I could only begin to guess at.

I was a gaunt looking girl who barely met his mid-chest in height. I had spent almost half of my life shut away in a temple. There was nothing about me that showed any capacity to rule an empire.

"So you want me to be in my brother's ear if he's the emperor? And then what? Will you be in mine?" There was no way that General Altan's interest in Elysia ended with Emile on the throne.

General Altan still had a smile playing on his lips. "Our desires are simple.We want the empire gone. And Illiya restored."

He shifted in his seat, which his sheer height and presence made look like a throne. If he had been born into the Emoria line, the Elysian noblemen would have tried to put him on the throne as soon as he came of age.

"That's hardly simple." I said, still in shock of his plan. "You can depose my father and break apart the empire. But restoring Illiya is impossible."

"Not if The Sword of Keranis is found."

The glass sword that my father had outwitted the demigods to shatter. The harness of their powers.

"It's not completely gone, if you were wondering." He continued. "Your father still has the pieces of it. The sword can be shattered but it will never be completely gone. So he kept the pieces in his safeguard."

"And you want to put them together?" Foolish question. Of course he did. The sword intact would mean Keranis's return to earth. And the restoration of their powers.

General Altan had moved closer, close enough that I could see the amber flecks in his smoke eyes. "With your help."

"How would I help?" I asked, suddenly feeling the need to run out of the room. The way he was looking at me was strange. Like I was rainfall in a desert.

"You're the last connection to Keranis. Her last child." It was dead silent after that. I could only stare back at General Altan, wondering if he was mad or I was just naive.

"I am the daughter of The Emperor and Empress of–"

"Not in the traditional sense." Dana interrupted, her eyes giving me a weighty glance. "Those she blesses with divine gifts are her children."