Chapter 174: Care to Bet, Darling?

When the guards reached Xana’s side, they stopped.

The same one who had stopped them at the entrance looked at Thalassa with guilt. He grabbed his companion by the shoulder and pulled him back to apologize.

"We didn’t know she was with you."

"She isn’t," Thalassa replied coldly.

The beastwoman’s tail bristled in response. "Xana is with them! Xana wants to fight with them!"

The blue-haired woman frowned. "Fight?" she murmured. "And why does it look like this crazy woman has been following us the whole time? Wait... did she?" She looked Xana up and down and paused for a moment.

Then she glanced uncertainly into the carriage. He still hadn’t come out, and he had clearly told her to handle the matter herself, but she couldn’t simply ignore her or let them take her away.

Besides... a look of contradiction filled her face when she noticed that the wolf woman didn’t seem willing to give up.

However, the guards who heard Thalassa’s response didn’t hesitate. They approached the wolf woman.

"Savage creature, pay or leave the city. We cannot house your kind here."

Xana took a step back, her face showing she was ready to resist.

But when she tried to make a move to slip past the men—one that seemed capable of forcing both guards to retreat—she suddenly collapsed to the ground. This instantly broke the tension and unleashed murmurs from all the civilians watching the scene.

The guards didn’t stop just because she had fainted. They grabbed her by the arms and began carrying her toward the exit. Thalassa looked back into the carriage with anxiety, but seeing that the wolf woman was already quite far away, she lowered her gaze, resigned.

Cassian stepped down once the crowd had dispersed.

His expression didn’t reveal much of what he was thinking. Although the mermaid wanted to ask him, she swallowed her words and walked with him to the room they had reserved.

Once inside, his voice broke the silence: "Does she make you feel sorry for her?"

She opened her eyes, surprised, and answered: "Shouldn’t she?"

"Not really. You didn’t force her to follow us all the way here, nor did you make her have such bad manners as to stop a moving carriage and climb inside as if it were hers."

"She doesn’t seem to have bad intentions."

"And that doesn’t stop her from being a nuisance, although..." Cassian’s expression seemed to be considering something for a moment, but exhaustion quickly overtook the thought.

For Thalassa, his hesitation didn’t go unnoticed. "Although what?" she asked, trying to get him to continue.

He gave her a slight smile, stood up from where he was sitting, and approached her. Once his mouth was close enough to her ear for her to feel his breath, he whispered:

"Although I could really use some relief right now."

After saying that, he pulled away and looked at her with a mocking expression.

"You’re the worst. With a woman you just met? And besides, what makes you think she’d fall for you?"

"Want to bet?"

"Aren’t you busy? It’s a miracle you even talk these days."

"Like I said, I could really use some relief. The absence of Adela or the others might be more of a punishment for me than for them."

Thalassa rolled her eyes. "What are we even betting on anyway? They already took her away."

"Mmm, maybe..." Cassian’s eyes seemed to say he didn’t believe that wolf woman would give up so easily.

...

Meanwhile, even though Pradiles was no longer Cassian’s target, the empire itself was receiving a rather special visit.

Ravena sat on her throne. Her face looked uncomfortable, even doubtful, at the arrival of the women in front of her.

"Elizabeth Vane," she said aloud, then shifted her gaze to the one accompanying her. "And what did you say your name was?"

"Morgana Valois," she replied with a slight grimace, but her eyes met the empress’s without fear, with a mysterious gleam that made the person on the throne shift uncomfortably.

Ravena nodded and turned her attention back to the marquise.

Since Demor and Pradiles were relatively allied, she had allowed Nexus to operate in Pradiles a long time ago—though now that was one of the things she regretted most. If she had known how successful it would become, the tax she would have forced that cunning bitch to sign would have been much higher.

"In any case, congratulations on your new empress. I’ve heard many good things about her. I’m sorry for what happened to your emperor."

"Thank you, Your Majesty. It’s quite the compliment coming from you."

"May I know why you’ve come?"

"Your Majesty, two of our citizens disappeared while traveling to your empire."

Ravena crossed one leg arrogantly and replied with authority: "Traveling to, not here. Besides, I remind you that you still owe me one person. Your emperor agreed to send him."

Elizabeth frowned and observed the empress’s movements carefully. She really did resemble Margery... A bit of her master’s essence was in Ravena as well...

"He’s not coming. He’s not the one you’re looking for."

"Oh? So sure?"

"I am."

The calm in Elizabeth’s response unsettled the empress, who shifted in her seat, showing that the reply had affected her more than she wanted to admit.

"I have my own problems in my empire, Miss Vane. Even so, I have tried to find the two missing women. One of them I believe is my niece. I definitely wouldn’t harm her. Though it seems you already have some idea about this," she answered sharply.

"You’re right. The two missing women are quite important to me, so I’ve been searching for them myself using all of Nexus’s resources. Even so, I couldn’t find much. That’s why I thought it best to come speak with you directly."

"I have no leads, Marquise. I’ve even come to believe my subordinates were lying when they said they saw them enter that carriage."

"But do you know anything about Margery’s mother? You must have some useful information."

Ravena glanced at the other people present in the room besides the two women. She showed a moment of doubt, but still began to speak.

"Margery’s mother... my sister, she always believed something was wrong, she was very clever, you know? I never understood her, but one day she disappeared and then returned completely changed and paranoid. I couldn’t help but pay attention. But the strangest thing was that in Pradiles, two heads of the most important houses in our empire—or at least one of them—achieved transcendence shortly after she returned. My sister believed it was because of her and fled from here with her two children. It was the last time I saw her. What the Rothssons and the Grandels—the two who became powerful enough to threaten me—did afterward only convinced me that I had probably misjudged my sister."

"Thank you, Your Majesty. Do you know if we could arrange a meeting with the two Transcendents you mentioned?"

"They’re dead. They were found not long ago not far from here. I would have killed them myself if I could, and I definitely would have questioned them to learn more, but..." Ravena paused tensely. "An elf took them. I would have stopped him if I hadn’t been so cowardly."

Elizabeth frowned and was about to ask something else, but the empress seemed to understand before she needed to speak.

"They know nothing," Ravena said. "You can try if you want. The few surviving subordinates are in the dungeons, but they say nothing or don’t know what to say."

"I understand," Elizabeth nodded.

Then the marquise gave Morgana a look. The young woman smiled, knowing it was her moment to act.

"Your Majesty, you wouldn’t mind if we stay a few days, would you?"

A cunning smile was the only thing left on Morgana’s face as she spoke those words. In her mind, a single question kept echoing: "Are you still going to say that ice cube won when my plan for Pradiles is complete? Huh, darling?"