𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀 𝐒𝐔𝐂𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.
It's the beginning of a new age when Jaylah Imperatrix seemingly returns from the dead to reclaim her throne. And in perfect timing.
In her absence, evil has be...
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Act 2 Chapter 100 JAYLAH
"Ah." Klymene closed her eyes, breathing in the jasmine air. "This place is even more beautiful than your mother described it. Like something out of a fantasy tale."
Jaylah put down her fork and gazed out at the view beyond the high pavilion they were sitting in. Now that they were situated to the east of the palace, the infamous Floating Towers were visible off the coastline. Only they were not towers at all. They were chunks of the island that inexplicably floated in open air with nothing to hold them up but the might of the Gods Themselves. She watched the mossy vines hanging from their bottoms sway hundreds of meters over the ocean.
"I did not know what this place looked like. My mother never told me of her childhood here."
When Klymene looked over the table at her, Jaylah saw something like pity in the turn of her mouth. "She just did not think you would care."
"Perhaps I would not have. I certainly would have feigned apathy. But..." What was she even trying to say? Her feelings toward her mother were so twisted and complicated she did not even know how to express them. How was one meant to know how they felt about a person they had never truly known? The mother Jaylah knew would never have purposely birthed a usurper to kill her husband, and yet she had. Of course, none of them got to see where her plan would have ended—or what she would have done with to Jaylah. The daughter she lamented. The daughter she feared.
Klymene rested a hand over Jaylah's. Klymene, who had cared for Jaylah like a mother up in the mountains as her world tilted on its side. She had still been a brutal Princess then, but once in the dead of night Klymene caught her writing a letter to her dead mother telling her of her regret. The ache had only set in then, though Jaylah knew she did not deserve to feel it after being so cruel to them for so long. There was a reason Ourania was her mother's favorite. She only realized it weeks after their corpses had begun to decay, that that knowledge hurt her. Or perhaps Alexander was right, and she only wanted the things she could not have.
As if reading Jaylah's thoughts on her face, Klymene said, "Your mother would be as proud as I am that you have accomplished this, that you have united the nation of her blood and the nation of her heart."
"United." Jaylah tried the word on her tongue. "It may have been a fair deal, but the nation of her blood is still under my fist."
"An important distinction. After all, Aegeus worked to annex the Southern Isles for decades. You completed in an hour what he could not accomplish in a lifetime."
"I had the foresight not to embroil myself in war as he did. Though he left me his wars, not yet won. Now it is up to me to extinguish them before they can ignite into a full-blown conflict." The Navrikans she was dealing with, but the Kalingi... They would not be pleased to learn of how she outmaneuvered them. Not pleased at all.
Klymene lifted a shoulder. "You are dealing with the same enemies he was, and you still did it. You are ten times the ruler he was."
Jaylah knew Klymene was very delighted with her when she gave out compliments like this. She was always encouraging but normally very tight-lipped with high praise unless she knew the recipient deserved it. It was rewarding to know Jaylah was the cause of Klymene's delight. Almost as rewarding as her father's approval had been.
Picking a date oozing with honey off her plate to her lips, Jaylah said without thinking, "Do you think my father was ever proud?"
Covering her mouth after just taking a bite, Klymene let out a wry chuckle. "I do not think his approval is a thing you should ever worry about, much less desire."
Jaylah's teeth stopped halfway into the date, and she pulled the bottom half away on her fork. She was no longer so hungry.
Something cold churned in the pit of her stomach when she thought of outwitting her father at every turn as she fled with the locket of Draven across the continent and wondering if a small part of him was impressed that he had taught her so well. That she was the only one cunning enough to be his equal.
Of course she hated him for what he did. Just not as much as she should have.
