Whisper of Blade | ✓ (Crimson #1)

Chapter 15: Seeing the Dawn

At times, Minerva wished she held the power to suspend reality—if only to decide what she desired to say. Some nobles and politicians possessed a certain gift for instantaneous eloquence. She did not.

Nola had prepared her a careful speech, one of flatteries, of empty compromises. A rigged formality designed to dampen the flames, saying everything while meaning nothing.

And Minerva hated it. She didn't believe in a single word.

Her mind insisted on darting from place to place even as the people below waited for the first sound to depart from her lips. Folding her hands in front of her waist to stop herself from twitching, Minerva looked upon her people.

Her mother sat in the front row, filing her real fingernails beneath the long metal ones. A strike of the Blackguard flanked the Emperor beside her. Though red robes clothed them, Minerva knew if she had a view of their backs, she'd find the black circle of a sun set against the scarlet background.

Countless nobles filled the room to overflowing, men and women Minerva had dined with, been the epitome of a model child for. Besides the Empress, they were all soft. Even now they took discrete puffs from ivory pipes, adding to the smoke cloud hanging below the floating firelights. How many of them would last a day on a Terron war front? How many of them still remembered the way of a blade?

Minerva felt the pin she'd been fidgeting with in her sleeve snap in two. It had been said that the first Empress, Korlana Pyroline, had not been overly fond of the Pyro rulers of her time. She'd made alliances with the dragons and the Hydros and staged a coup to overthrow the current powers reigning over the fractured might of the Flamelands.

The histories no longer concurred and Minerva knew they'd been changed. Korlana had been a liberator of the common people, but the history writers focused on her wielding power—giving rise to the notion that the golden bloodlines possessed a divine right to rule. But Edina had not taken her to study with the dragons instead of stuffy tutors for nothing.

Minerva remembered the lesson of Korlana's last words before her disappearance: "The day those in power can only think of what they deserve—when the people are trampled upon and silenced, when the poor are sent to fight the rich man's wars but cannot keep their swords by their sides in their own country—that is they day when the empire must die and be reborn. Let us pray to the One that a leader rises who will stand for them. Let us hope that the people still possess the will to fight."

Someone in the front row yawned while others shifted on their feet, unable to stand at attention for even five minutes.

That small action, compared to the ramrod straight backs of the Hydros as they gazed up at her—motionless as if crafted from the ice they were so fond of—unleashed the fires of rage in Minerva. Her gaze snapped back to the whole room, as if she needed to reassure herself of enormity of her decision and its consequences.

At the very back of the room, positioned beside the door she'd entered through, Matsudo placed a hand on the hilt of his sword. Mouth tightening into a grim line, he nodded at her—as though he'd seen the intent solidify in her expression—and that nod spurred her on to the most reckless decision of her life.

"You are not my people," Minerva said, the syllables seeming unnaturally drawn out until she realized the white dragon had plucked the words from her mind while she spoke and mentally broadcasted them—her voice unchanged—to the entire audience.

Of course the dragons knew what she was planning. They could see the thoughts taking form in her mind. A foreign flash of resolve, of extra courage, burned through her and she understood that the gold dragon on her right had granted her the coveted dragon's blessing.