Shadow's Throne

Chapter Eight

Cal's Pov

"We need to talk about Maven," I say trying not to flinch when I say my monster of a brother's name.

Mare, Farley, Davidson, and I are all in Davidson's study. After breakfast, I told Davidson that Mare and I had something important to discuss with him and Farley. He said he had so free time after breakfast, so here we are.

Davidson keeps his face blank, but I can tell he knows exactly where this is going.

I continue. "Mare told me about the Newblood whisper you found. Premier, I told you to keep me informed if one was to ever arise. And when one does, I find out from Mare instead of you?" I saw my voice getting louder.

"Tiberias, I told Mare beforehand because she knows you better than anyone here and I knew she'd be able to make the decision on whether to tell you or not," Davidson calmly states.

Farley scoffs next to him. "This is great and all, but I have more important things to be doing right now. So do you mind hurrying it along and getting to the point where I get involved in this?"

I ignore Farley's outburst and continue. "I understand Premier, but in the future, please let me know personally."

Davidson nods. "And how does Maven fit into this?"

I glance at Mare who's looking everywhere but at me. I sigh and turn back to Davidson before continuing. "As you know, I wanted to know about any Newblood whispers because I hoped that since Newbloods are stronger than their Silver counterparts, that one would be able to undo what Elara has done to my brother. And now, since one has been discovered, Mare and I have decided that we want to try."

We sit in silence as everyone processes this information.

Farley speaks first, a lot less annoyed this time. "We have no guarantees that the whisper would be able to help him. And even if they did, how would we do it? Maven's under constant guard making it impossible to either get him alone or capture him. And now that the Lakelands and Norta are allied, it's going to make it twice as difficult to make it into the Archeon. It's already been difficult to find a way to get us all in for the ball."

I've already thought of everything she's said and I understand how difficult this is going to be. But I hadn't thought of the Lakeland's part in this. And how crucial they could be to making this work.

"What if we remove the Lakelands from the equation, " I say earning confused glances from everyone, including Mare. I continue. "The Lakelands are already causing so many issues for us and it's very obvious that they're just biding their time until Norta is weak enough for them to easily take it, and we can't have that. We need Norta. So the obvious solution is to get rid of the Lakelands."

"We can't just go and get rid of them with the snap of our fingers. We're gonna need a plan and a very large army," Farley says pointing out the obvious.

"Then we take them over," I saw hesitating before finishing my thought. "By killing the royal family."

"Kill the royal family? You say that like it's no big deal and we can just snap our fingers and ta-da! No more Cygnets! But it sure as hell doesn't work like that Calore and you of all people should know that! They're nymphs and god damn powerful ones at that! Killing nymphs in their palace that's surrounded by water is a suicide mission!" Farley yells jumping from her seat to glare down at me.

Davidson replies before I can say anything. "Farley, you have a point, but so does Tiberias. If we get the Lakelands out of the picture, it'll make our job ten times easier. And I know it'll be hard, but I'm sure we can find some way of killing the Cygnets."

I nod in thanks at Davidson.

Farley sits back down in her seat and nods. "So, what's our plan?"

Sorry, this is pretty short but I guess some interesting things happened so I hope that makes up for it!