Chapter 1270: Failure’s Favorite Child

The idea alone made Eira’s lips twitch.

There was killing an opponent’s weapon, and then there was killing it, taking the Core, raising the corpse and one day pointing the same monster back toward the people who had once chained it.

The survivors were not much kinder to Danton and would attack him at an order even of it meant death!

Those were the one Phei had not killed were either enslaved beneath his Marks or freed from the chains that had forced them into Heavenchild and Maxton service. Either way, the secret army the two families had hidden for years no longer belonged to them.

Worse, pieces of that army now belonged to the exact Dragon they had been gathered to help destroy.

Eira rested her cheek against one hand as another tired grin found her face.

Her Master had walked into Anactica intending to interfere with a robbery and somehow returned with the robbery’s profits, several World Transcendent Cores, new slaves, liberated allies, an Undead Queen with fresh corpses and enough secrets to start a civil war between ancient families.

’Dragons really do possess a terrifying instinct for coming home with things.’

And still it was not over.

Phei already knew what he wanted to do next, and Eira knew the plan well enough to find the coming disaster almost refreshing. The remaining Legacy Families were going to learn what Heavenchild and Maxton had attempted.

Phei would not announce himself, naturally:

Her Master could be shameless enough to provoke ancient monsters for entertainment, but he was not stupid enough to sign his name beneath evidence proving he currently possessed the treasure every family on Earth would soon be searching for.

The truth would simply appear, fragments of them anyways and proof sufficient to make denial useless.

The families would learn that the two houses standing closest to the Coffer had quietly attempted to steal the entire thing beneath their noses, and after that Phei would barely need to do anything.

Ancient alliances were impressive only while everyone involved still trusted that cooperation remained safer than betrayal.

Once suspicion entered something that old, it did not remain politely attached to the present.

One missing treasury would become ten questions about previous years. Those questions would crawl backward through unexplained decisions, unusual movements, private meetings, missing resources and old insults until every patriarch began wondering whether the Coffer had been the first betrayal or merely the first one anyone had finally discovered.

That was what Eira liked most about the plan.

Phei had already taken their treasure.

Next, he intended to take their trust:

The sacred bond between the Legacy Families had survived exile, centuries and enough mutual hatred to qualify as a minor miracle. Phei was about to place one sharp truth inside it and see whether the miracle survived everyone suddenly counting each other’s knives.

Eira’s eyes gleamed despite the exhaustion dragging heavily at her soul.

And then there was Danton.

Missing.

Still missing.

That single detail transformed an already magnificent failure into something almost indecently funny.

Danton had vanished before Phei revealed himself.

Consort had been preparing to separate him from the battlefield when someone else reached him first, and from that moment onward Danton had no idea what happened in Anactica. Phei appeared afterward. The World Transcendents who witnessed what followed were killed, enslaved, freed or otherwise removed from any possibility of returning to Heavenchild and Maxton territory for an honest report.

No convenient survivor existed to explain that Phei Ryujin Tiamat had taken the Coffer; no any single one could return and tell the families who had slaughtered their Chained, who had claimed the survivors or where the dead cultivators’ Cores had gone.

The two families knew only the facts available from their side.

Danton had been given command of the operation.

Danton had possessed the Coffer.

Danton had eleven World Transcendents.

Danton had the keys, the route and every advantage the families had spent generations preparing.

Then the Coffer disappeared, the Chained disappeared and Danton disappeared with them.

Eira’s smile widened until fatigue could no longer suppress it.

Gods, she wanted to see Marcus’s face.

For the better part of a decade, Marcus had occupied a remarkably comfortable position as the family’s most visible disappointment. His plans always had failed, his pride had been repeatedly crushed and Danton had never wasted an opportunity to look at his brother-in-arms’s disasters with that infuriating amusement of someone convinced competence belonged exclusively to him.

All of those failures looked almost adorable now.

Marcus could embarrass himself every morning for the next hundred years and still struggle to equal what had happened under Danton’s command in a single operation. Danton had inherited centuries of planning and somehow lost the Coffer, the Chained and potentially the alliance itself among the 16 families once Phei exposed the attempted theft.

And because nobody knew who had actually ruined the operation, the shame possessed nowhere else to go.

Marcus would be furious about the loss, certainly. He had suffered alongside everyone else:

Yet Eira doubted even an Angel Progenitor was above feeling that tiny, delicious warmth that came from watching the brother who had mocked him for years suddenly become the larger embarrassment.

Failure had finally found another favorite child.

Eira covered her mouth as a laugh threatened to escape, though the movement tugged painfully at her depleted body and forced her to wince halfway through.

"Poor Danton," she murmured with absolutely no sympathy.

Wherever the blue-haired woman had hidden him beneath that impossible ocean, Eira hoped she had given him somewhere comfortable to sit. He might remain there long enough to return and discover his reputation had died before he did.

Only then did Eira remember what she had come for and she possessed an audience for most of her private amusement.

Selene stood several meters away, half swallowed by the apartment’s darkness, silently watching her with the strange stillness that had become even more pronounced since the Seed of Ending changed her Eternal Shadow Bloodline. Light reached the girl without difficulty, yet no ordinary shadow answered beneath her feet anymore.

Darkness gathered there instead, deep and hungry, devouring even the expectation that something should have been cast behind her.

Eira studied her for several breaths.

Selene studied her back.

The girl had apparently decided interrupting an exhausted ancient fairy while she privately celebrated the destruction of several centuries of enemy planning would be unwise.

’Smart girl.’

Eira pushed herself from the sofa and instantly regretted it when another wave of stabbing pain tore through her wings and raced along her meridians.

Her tiny face tightened while she waited for the worst of it to pass, then she muttered, "Celestial-grade needles my ass," with enough resentment that Selene’s eyes lowered briefly toward her wings.

Eira eventually lifted one finger toward her:

"Master is coming back, and if you’re still determined not to let him see you this soon, you should probably stop standing around as though your concealment is going to save you."

Selene’s expression changed only slightly, but Eira caught it.

Her smile returned.

"His perception isn’t what it used to be. Shadows, walls, suppressed presence, erased traces and little tricks that would have kept you invisible a few days ago aren’t nearly as comforting anymore. Believe me, I watched him and I know exactly how much that his perception has grown, and I’m far too tired to watch you learn the same lesson by having him stare directly at you the moment he comes through the hotel door."

The darkness around Selene stirred faintly.

Eira floated toward the couch again at a pace so slow she would have murdered anyone who commented on it.

"If you remain inside the reach of what he can perceive, he’ll find you. Maybe not because you’re careless, and maybe not because your concealment is weak. His Void simply notices things reality has tried very hard not to show him."

She reached the couch again and landed face-first into the cushions and remained there for several seconds before turning her head enough to look at Selene with one exhausted eye.

"So if you genuinely don’t want Master seeing you yet, little shadow, don’t waste your time trying to hide better."

Selene’s gaze sharpened.

"Stay outside his perception entirely."

The darkness beneath Selene deepened almost imperceptibly as the meaning settled between them, while Eira finally allowed the exhaustion she had been fighting since Anarctica to pull at closer to the edges of her consciousness.

Whether she slept for three days, seven days or woke twenty minutes later because Phei had somehow discovered another ancient catastrophe was no longer her concern.

For once, fate could solve its own damn problems.