Valeri stood only half a metre from her father, the man that her mind had almost deified for most of her younger years.

He had been both terrifying and awe inspiring at the same time. He’d come from some wealth, but nowhere near the wealth that he and, by extension, Valeri now possessed. He’d turned what was effectively a small sum into a truly ludicrous amount of money, and he’d done it with economic tricks and contracts.

Contracts that he was extremely good at collecting on.

How else would he obtain the services of someone as extremely competent as Yeram, a Shadow Walker? One of the few that were professed to be the most dangerous assassins even outside of the Brauhm Empire. While she didn’t necessarily believe that every Shadow Walker was as good as legend told, Yeram certainly wasn’t a slacker.

Her father had no doubt put the man in paper bonds but left him with something that gave Yeram the incentive to stay by her side for far too many years. Her father was a master of doing that, of putting people in jail cells that they wouldn’t mind living in for the rest of their life. In fact, he’d done so with herself.

All it had taken was her desire to learn the rapier for him to bind her with limitations. She couldn’t be let to break from the little dollhouse that she’d been placed in; too useful an asset to be used and then pawned off when the opportune moment revealed itself. She’d learned all the skills that would allow for her father to plant her within another family or trade syndicate and have her control it from the inside out.

She’d followed that path, even after her mother’s God appeared in her dreams for a moment, granting her the power of Might for no understandable reason at the time. But now she had come to understand what Tarania had been doing, what the random gesture had been—other than a desperate last bid on a horse before you’d gambled away all your money.

Tarania had cracked the veneer, showing Valeri that the surface behind the cell her father had put her in was just grey stone, rather than the warm and comfortable interior she’d believed it to be. It had been years ago when that had happened, after her mother had left. But since, the veneer had grown decrepit, unmaintained by her mind as she lusted for what laid outside the window of her cell.

Then Maximilian. Gods damned Maximilian. Or, if Rethi was to be believed, Demigod Maximilian. However that was even possible, not that she was going to naysay it. He’d stood right outside of the window of her cell, staring in at her with a stark grin against the miserable life she’d found herself locked in. He hadn’t reached in and grabbed her, as such. Instead, he’d done the next best thing by loosening the bars and then given her the tools to work with, and a pressing need to do so.

Midday, the man she still considered her trainer, had given her even more complex tools, working directly with her until she was ready. She hadn’t known what she was being prepared for, even if she was being trained to fight, but now that she stood before her father with genuine anger and spite roiling inside her gut, she realised that she really was ready.

She was ready to break from her cell, and use the steps that Maximilian was now teaching her to walk her own path, rather than be restrained to one that existed at her father’s whim.

“Your paper is so important to you, father?” She snarled, towering over the much shorter man who’d spawned her, “Your little bonds and contracts do nothing against people who disregard the fallacy of your power. Your power only exists within its little bubble, and there it is almighty. But I’ll have to warn you, Jitah Ephars, that I have a big fucking bubble-popper.”

Valeri leant down to tap the scabbard of her massive claymore, burning holes in her father as she did so. The man’s expression soured, finding himself at a junction in front of his suddenly assertive daughter. Of course, this is what he had feared, that her natural assertiveness that had served her so well in her learning of social techniques would one day extend further outside of where he wanted her.

“You wish to be rid of the Ephars name?” He asked darkly, still maintaining an equal footing with his daughter despite her obvious physical evolution since he’d last directly met with her, “To be rid of our legacy, our power, and our influence?”

Valeri barked harshly with laugher, “Our legacy father? Our power and influence? I am no fool, and I haven’t been for a long time. You cannot preach to be about a legacy built on the lives of those born below our means. Do not pretend as if you haven’t been buying and selling slaves that passed through Crossroads at a discount from Vahla, and taking the risk of carting them to the Brauhm Empire.”

Valeri’s words spat like acid, her eyes growing even angrier as she let the burning liquid of her most repressed emotions sear the inside of her throat and spray from her mouth. She could feel the beginnings of tears and sobs, but she took the rage that was overwhelming her into the mess of tears and clamped down on it, her voice going cold.

“I’ve known for years how you do business, father.” The two members of the Ephars family stood opposite each other, both combating the other with their eyes and expressions, but Jitah was the first to sit in his chair, looking up at his daughter with no admission of defeat.

“Uaele, one of the many maids in this household, has been relieved of her duties. It was not in her job description to treat you as anything more than her mistress apparent.” Jitah said, his voice just as cold as her own. Valeri could feel the cold shock of it, even if she’d felt the strange disturbance of routine earlier, but to imagine that woman, the woman who’d taken care of her like her own child, being anything other than venerated was offensive.

“Trying to pull the rug out from under me, Jitah?” Valeri snarled loudly, a renewed fire making its way into her voice like scorching magma. “You want me to walk back into your cage and watch you lock the door that much? I’m sorry but I’ve come to the sudden realisation that you simply aren’t necessary.”

The man’s face creased with a slight shock before pulling back to his iron façade, “Not necessary, Valeri? What, do you believe that you could run the empire I’ve built? You believe that you can hold my position and keep the power that you’ve enjoyed your whole life?” The deriding words struck Valeri in the chest like she’d imagine Maximilian’s hammer would, resonating and deep. But that was only until a flush of energy washed over her, reassuring her like a mighty hand pressing against her back.

“No. You aren’t necessary. Men like you sit at the top, believing themselves to be sacrosanct, protected. But you aren’t.” Valeri’s words resonated just a little too deeply, echoing impossibly off of the walls of the little room, Might flooding the room from her body, “You bleed just as well as the common man, and you die a hell of a lot faster.”

She watched as her father’s throat hitched, the subtle display of a snaking, genuine fear seeping into his mind. Valeri grabbed the sword from the table, finding the long and heavy metal piece far lighter than it normally would be. In fact, it was almost featherweight, though Valeri’s enraged mind didn’t amuse itself with the baffling change in weight for very long.

As Valeri placed the sheathed blade to rest on her shoulder, she felt another wave of Might echo forth from the body, more noticeable to her now than it had been before. The man, who she regretfully called her father, grinded his jaw ever so slightly before glaring at her in a way that only further made himself look weaker in her presence.

“Yeram, if you would enter the room.” Jitah called, making a spike of fear shoot down Valeri’s spine. Her father was calling her jailor, and she was almost certain that she wasn’t able to win in a fight with the extraordinarily powerful man. She’d seen the man go toe-to-toe with Rethi, before he’d glowed so bright that he may as well have been the sun.

Valeri heard the door click, though the sound was so precise that she couldn’t help but think that Yeram had intentionally made the noise as he’d opened the door. With a few silent steps, Yeram stood just off to the side of Jitah’s desk, head bowed slightly in a servile stance. However, Valeri did take note of one thing.

Yeram did not move to stand close to her father, or close to her. To both of the Ephars, trained extensively in the insanity that was politics, they immediately understood what Yeram was doing. Jitah, who had done so much as call the master assassin and shadow shifter into the room, did his best to not show the pang of sour that bloomed within his chest.

“Sir?” The Shadow Walker that Jitah had spent an inordinate amount of money and time procuring stated simply. Yeram’s voice remained purely neutral, just the way it had been for the countless hours that he’d spent watching over Valeri as a child. The same way that he’d spoken in those countless mundane conversations that she’d tried to rope the stoic man into each and every day.

The fear that had shot down her spine began to ease, and then finally dissipate before it had ever reached her gut the way that true fear did. Instead, it changed into a sort of calm, and as she looked back over to her father, she began to wonder what he could possibly offer the Shadow Walker who’d played as her minder and protector for so many years. What would he be able to offer that could make the man sway towards Jitah’s control once more?

“Well, father. It seems that the power of your contracts are beginning to wane.” She said, her voice only just disguising her snide snarl that she desperately wanted to show. Her father looked up towards the Shadow Walker, meeting the eyes of the middle-aged man who’d served under him for at fifteen some years now.

Jitah had realised that he had erred in his judgement, when his eyes met with the other man’s. They weren’t filled with fury, hardly something that inflammatory, but instead as if he were looking at a stranger, coldly and with an exactingly critical eye. In but a moment Jitah had gone from being a master that Yeram had been faithful to for years, to just a stranger.

And it was all because he’d left the man to protect his daughter. Or, more accurately, to protect his investment.

Jitah leaned back in his chair, regarding his daughter and the man that did the equivalent of betraying him, if only in the smallest gesture. Was Jitah convinced that the man felt a genuine affection for his daughter? Not entirely, not after what information he’d procured on the Shadow Walkers. But there was clearly something that she could offer that he could not, but what that was…

“Ah.” Jitah said letting his muscles relax as his mind came to an understanding, “It’s the boy, isn’t it? Maximilian Avenforth.” Jitah’s eyes never left Yeram’s dark irises, but Valeri turned her own gaze towards the Shadow Walker as well, questioning the man lightly.

“No, it is not.” Yeram responded, and even with the neutrality his voice was accustomed to, Valeri could still hear the slight distaste in it as he talked about the veritable Demigod, “But it will suffice for brevity, sir.”

“For brevity?” Jitah responded coolly, “You come here with split alliances, yet you don’t do your old master the kindness of telling him what the other party’s offer is?” The two men stared at each other for a moment before Yeram let his posture relax out of the intensely formal stance he had taken since Valeri could remember.

The man hummed slightly as he took off the coat of a head servant and threw it down onto the table between them, then rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt beneath, displaying the powerful arms that were covered in horrifying and disfiguring scars.

“Well you see,” he responded, the neutrality slowly evaporating from his voice and transforming it into the quiet tolling of a bell in the distance, “you have no counteroffer, Jitah Ephars.”

“I’m not sure that I’ve ever been told that there was no offer that I could make, Yeram.”

“Is that so?” Yeram spoke, his voice lowering to the point where it drowned out Valeri’s echoes of Might, then somehow dipping even lower below that still, “Would you be able to declare war on the Brauhm Empire and the Church of Daylight?”

Valeri’s eyes flew wide open, then turning towards her father whose expression warped with such violent speed that she could hardly recognise the man in front of her. Jitah Ephars, for the first time in many, many years, was truly and completely shocked.

“Have you any idea the absolute ruin that’d follow after that proclamation? The Brauhm Empire is no mere border city.” His eyes wandered from the man to eye his daughter in her moment of shocked weakness, “Are you willing to do that, Valeri? Sacrifice everything for whatever dream you’ve cooked up in your mind?”

There was a long moment of pause in the atmosphere, and for just half of that, Valeri found herself genuinely unsure. She hadn’t known of this, about this war that Yeram desired. Nor did she know why or how they were supposed to do that. Yet…

“Yes.” She said, her voice filled with a supreme wave of Might, her skin suddenly glowing with power, looking as if obsidian had a bronze light shining through. “I trust him, as much as I might dislike who and what he is. If it is a war that he desires, I am certain that his reasoning is sufficient.”

The words were surer than she felt internally, but as she said them, she realised how true they were to her. Yeram was a man who she felt she could trust, even after she’d learnt just the surface of his secrets. She hated that the kind, if stoic man that she’d known through her childhood had to be such a monster underneath, but… had he ever been anything but himself, even still?

“What reasoning might that be, oh Shadow Walker?” Jitah Ephars snarled as he realised that he was impotent here, having lost any power he had over the two others in this room. Without a word, Yeram leaned over the table, placing his mouth awfully close to the Jitah’s ear and whispering a collection of words that Valeri couldn’t quite make out.

But she could see the horror dawn on her father’s face. That moment was enough to distract her from the black shadow that had been leaking from underneath Yeram’s clothing, snapping outwards and lashing at her father’s throat without a single sound. The dark, cloying mass of shadows lingered around the man’s neck for a moment as Jitah’s face seized into an expression of extreme pain, then dulling into something that looked more like a doll than a human expression.

Valeri couldn’t quite understand what was happening, but as Yeram’s darkness pulled away from her father’s neck, she found herself staring at a neatly cut hole in the man’s throat, which only then flooded the front of his clothing with crimson blood.

The shock was immediate, but Valeri didn’t have a moment of time before the murderer of her father turned his dark eyes to meet hers.

“Jitah Ephars has been killed.” He intoned, filling the room with finality, “Call the Officials.”