Chapter 259: The Palace of Secrets and the Mad Plan

She sat motionless for a few seconds, as rippling divinity purred around her in agitation. Her pale golden hair turned midnight black. Her amethyst eyes became vacant voids only broken with the subtle stars of violet sparks floating silently within. While marks of woven secrecy and shadows began budding from her fair, pale skin. As she then unclasped her folded hands, spreading them wide in an almost inviting gesture. And the shadows answered.

Long tendrils of once static shades cast by dim light began crawling towards her. Slowly at first, a fraction of an inch at a time. And then they were leaping. Running. Rushing, like children dashing to their mother after a day’s separation.

"My lord." Abraham whispered to me then, his tone cautionary and his stance switched to battle ready.

"Worry not." I replied. "Her powers are far too subtle to be detected casually. One has to be actively searching to notice. And even then, the divine trace of the Silent Goddess, is not to be so lightly underestimated."

"As you say sire." He nodded, though his muscles remained taught with primed tension.

I returned my focus back to my Eve. Her black dress spread around her in cascading folds of blackness, as shadows drew closer to her in worship. Like a dark flower in full bloom above an abyssal pool.

Then the shadows that once clung to her began to stretch and elongate unnaturally outward, leaving her side bar a thread of contact they refused to yield as they silently slithered past the creases on the floors and the gaps in the window sills.

But contrary to myself, who saw and was mesmerised by nothing bar her most sublime beauty, Nizam and the others had a very sudden and very opposite view compared to me. For their minds were suddenly flooded by the very vivid and very eerie mental image of a giant, long limbed and lithe purple spider, sitting stilly in the centre of it’s vast web, waiting for it’s sticky threads to tremble with the actions of trapped prey.

A blasphemous thought that they didn’t dare confess till many years had passed.

Though my pondering of her came to an abrupt end, when she took a sharp breath and I knew to be by her side then.

"What is it?" I quickly asked.

"That palace is a home to more secrets than people." She replied, her voice straining in a breathless whisper. "The shadows of every corner, steeple and room are filled to the brim with lies and deception... It’s overwhelming."

"And what do they tell you my love?" I asked, looking at the shadows about us, who seemed to grow rabid with words they sent to her.

"Too much." She hissed. "They speak too much."

I wished to comfort her, to tell her to command the sounds to quiet, but I knew better, and let her be for the moment. Let her calm herself, and take the reigns of these overly excited shadows and their secrets.

Eventually, the slight inconsistency in her breathing eased, and she spoke up with a returned sense of ease. Barren of it’s previous strain.

"Do they know who the traitors are?" I asked her.

"Which ones?" She released a mirthless chuckle. "There are too many." She said. "The shadows of that Palace are ancient Alexander. With surreptitious knowledge who’s value could weigh as much as entire history books."

"The shadows can tell her things they’ve seen before? Things that old?!" Isaac carefully asked, his tone radiating out a resounding echo of awe and horror.

"No." She and I shook our heads, allowing breath back into their lungs, before we stripped them bare again. "At least not yet."

"What?!" They exclaimed.

"When I have unlocked my fifth gate," she said. "I will be able to access what we, the children of the Gods, call our Graces, and one of my family’s is named the Communion. It allows us access into the memories of ancient shadows. Things they’ve bore witness to. Secrets they’ve kept for millennia."

"But you just said..." I quickly interrupted Nizam.

"Yes, she did brother. But to her now, without the necessary strength and authority afforded to her by the prerequisite unlocked gates of her blood, she would only hear a wave of unidentifiable and nonsensical gibberish." I explained.

"And I only heard them this time, because the Palace is so saturated by them. The shadows there are practically breaking at the seams at it all." She further explained, her brows knitting again in agitation. The voices must have grown in volume again, as she diverted some of her focus to us.

"The masterminds my love? The Left Seats or the Right Seats?" I asked.

"Both." She simply answered a moment later.

"Both?!" I and the others reeled back in shock.

"Yes." She lightly nodded. "They have both betrayed the empire. But not fully. It’s complicated."

"How so?!" Nizam asked aloud.

"The names of the betrayers the shadows whisper of come from both sides without prejudice. But when I ask about a few in specific, they immediately deny it." She answered.

"So it seems not one political party is responsible for this mess?" Isaac whispered in shock, having completely unexpected both the Left and the Right to put aside their many, many differences and join hands in such a manner.

"Or they are indeed a single political party." I cryptically said, my eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Do they call out the names of the three tenth rank masters of the east?"

She grew quiet then, and I knew she was communing my words back to those distant shades. Asking them on my behalf.

"They do not answer." She answered disappointedly.

"Why?" Nizam asked, slightly agitated.

"Secrets have weight brother." I said. "A child’s deception for taking an extra piece of sweets he was not meant to, is quite different than a wife’s lie of which bed she’s been lying in, which is something that can never rest upon the same pedestal as a trusted minister’s treachery to his nation and king. And the same applies here. A tenth rank master turning judas is wholly different from a random bureaucrat’s coat-turning."

Once done, I let that thought settle in them, as I turned back to Eve.

"What of the Left and Right Ministers then?" I asked.

"...Ruiyuan. They only answer back his name." She answered a moment later.

’There we have it.’ I thought. ’Glee was indeed right on the mark.’

"My love." I said. "We need more. Anything at all you could give us. Particularly the state of which the Moon Palace is currently in."

She smiled then. "Even as we speak now there are killings in the darkened corridors and loyalties being bargained in the silent stretches of the halls."

"So it’s safe to say that it is one of barely controlled chaos?" I asked with a gleam in my eye.

"Exactly." She nodded, with a knowing smile. She could tell what I was thinking.

"Is the royal family in danger?" I asked.

She looked at me blankly.

"Alright, are they in mortal danger right this instant?" I was more precise this time.

"No." She answered. "Tianlan and his children are not in immanent danger." Nizam took a breath of relief at those words. "Though their defences are shrinking fast. Faster than you might think."

"How long do they have?" I questioned.

"...A month. Maybe a little more with favourable odds." She said, though she did not sound entirely confident in her answer.

"Can you see them my love? Their exact location?" I asked, as a plan continued forming in my mind.

She nodded. "The princess is pacing in her room. Weixiao is training his powers on the highest point of the Palace, where the moonlight is brightest. And Tianlan... Tianlan is not in the Palace."

"Where is he?" Horus asked with furrowed brows.

"None know." She said. "The servants don’t know. They don’t even realize he is missing."

"Someone must." I said. "Someone must hold the secret."

"Then it is a secret that very few actually know." She declared.

"Has he been missing for long, my lady?" It was Isaac who then asked.

"No. The servants patrolling along his private wing, seem completely at ease. And they are even readying tomorrow’s schedule for him. So it seems they expect him to exit that room on his own." She answered.

Silence fell on us then. Each absorbed in their own thoughts, before every eye slowly began to converge upon me. Waiting my command. And I did not take long to give it.

"My love, I know it’s tiresome, but keep watch over the Palace for me."

"Very well." She shrugged, as she returned back to her silence.

"Isaac, Glee, have your men in the city immediately begin a city wide search and investigation into the eastern emperor. Even if he does reappear by the time morning comes, we must know where he is going, and what he is doing there."

"Sire!" They saluted.

"What do we do brother?" Nizam spoke up then, his voice expectant and eager.

"We, little brother, will make preparations to infiltrate the Moon Palace." I declared.

"What?!" He and my guards exclaimed.

"We will enter that Palace." I repeated.

"And do what exactly, my liege?" Isaac asked in trepidation.

"We are reaching the limit of what my Eve can currently do in this distant hovel, and yet we remain too blind in too many areas. This could be easily rectified by simply interrogating a few of the residents of that rat hole they call a Palace. Especially with her ability to detect lies. We need this information not just for the sake of the eastern royal family but for our future sakes as well." I finished while looking at my anxious faced brother.

"And then what?" He asked me.

"Then we will smuggle the ruling family out of it." I replied with a smirk.