“Right, let’s get back to business,” Orestis declared after ending the call with his mother.

  Eirene arched a brow. “You say that as though we weren’t just discussing cake.”

  “It was an operational debrief,” he replied gravely. “Maternal, but strategic.”

  I’m sure there are supply chain implications to frosting ratios somewhere.

  “Of course.” She laughed under her breath and slipped her hand through his arm again.

  They re-entered the ballroom as though nothing of consequence had occurred. The quartet had transitioned to something slower. Conversation had thickened. Wine was being poured with increasingly generous hands.

  Orestis scanned the room for the envoy. The man in mountain leather was still where he’d been—near the far wall, arms folded, watching the room with the practised patience of someone who attended events like these as a professional obligation rather than a social one.

  He adjusted course, intending to make a beeline for him only for Eirene to suddenly stop. He turned to see her staring towards another direction, a look of genuine surprise on her face.

  “Orestis,” she said quietly.

  He followed her gaze only for his face to fall.

  “… you have got to be kidding me.”

  There, at the centre of a small cluster of minor lords and well-dressed merchants, stood a woman in a gown of black threaded with gold. Her posture was relaxed. Her smile was warm. She was laughing at something someone had said, and the people around her were leaning in with the unconscious deference of moths drawn to a lantern.

  She would not have stood out in a room like this—unless you knew who she was. Eirene did. So did he.

  Eleuthera.

  At a ball. In Orthessa. Apparently socialising.

  Nope. Not getting involved.

  “How is she here?” Eirene asked, her voice carefully level. “Aren’t Orthessa’s wards supposed to detect anything divine?”

  “Your blessing is a mere shadow of her own divinity. As far as the wards are concerned, she does not exist.” He turned back toward the envoy. “Let’s just ignore her.”

  The words had barely left his mouth when he felt the all too familiar pressure settle over him. From the slight twitch he felt from Eirene’s arm, he guessed she’d been included in the gaze as well.

  Eleuthera’s eyes never left the people she was talking to, but from the way she smiled—at just the right moment—Orestis knew she was behind it.

  “Ignore her harder. Maybe she’ll go away,” Orestis said, determined.

  The pressure sharpened.

  Eirene huffed, somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “Clearly, she has other intentions. Let’s not be rude.”

  “I am not being rude; I’m being strategically evasive.”

  “You are pretending not to see her.”

  “That is the foundation of strategic evasion.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think we should ignore a goddess at a public event.”

  “You’re missing a crucial point.” He raised a finger. “She is the Goddess of Freedom. She would completely accept my choice to avoid her.”

  “I don’t have your history with the gods,” Eirene said. “But how confident are you that she won’t interfere with your discussion with the envoy if you don’t humour her first?”

  Orestis glanced over at Eleuthera.

  Precisely on cue, her smile widened by a fraction.

  Yes—she was definitely going to do it.

  He considered the alternatives.

  Option one: acknowledge her. Risk conversation.

  Option two: refuse. Risk escalation.

  Option three: fake illness. Unfortunately, divine beings could see through gastrointestinal theatrics.

  Option four: jump out of a window. Tempting. Reflexive. But as of six years ago, no longer a suitable method for stress relief.

  He exhaled slowly.

  “Fine,” he muttered. “But I am registering my objection.”

  “Noted,” Eirene said. “And overruled.”

  They changed course. The envoy could wait. The goddess, apparently, could not.

  ***

  As they approached, Eleuthera’s conversation concluded with effortless timing. The minor lords and merchants dispersed as though dismissed by instinct rather than instruction. None of them seemed to find the departure unusual.

  She didn’t tell them to leave. She simply stopped giving them a reason to stay.

  Eirene noted the technique. No divine power required—just conversational control. Redirect, conclude, release. She could do the same. Just not that quickly.

  She committed the sequence to memory.

  The goddess turned toward them. Her smile was warm.

  Orestis received it the way one might receive an invoice—with recognition, displeasure, and the clear sense that he was about to be charged for something.

  “Eirene. Orestis,” Eleuthera said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  He stared at her for one measured heartbeat. “I cannot stress enough how untrue that statement is.”

  Eirene felt a quiet flare of tension. Whatever his history with the divine, this was still a goddess he was addressing. Most people trembled at the mere pressure of a god’s attention. Orestis was lodging a formal complaint.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  But Eleuthera laughed, not seeming to care.

  “It is true for me. I honestly expected you to keep pretending I didn’t exist.” Her gaze shifted to Eirene. “It seems you are having a positive influence on him.”

  Eirene expected Orestis to brush that off. He didn’t. Something in the remark caught him—briefly, visibly. His expression didn’t change, but his weight shifted. A fraction of a second where she could see him genuinely considering whether it was true.

  “You did not leave much room for alternatives,” he said at last.

  “There is always a choice,” Eleuthera replied.

  “I judged the consequences unacceptable. At that point, it amounts to the same thing.”

  They spoke easily. Too easily.

  Eirene watched the exchange the way she watched negotiations—not the words, but the rhythm. Orestis was not performing deference, but he wasn’t performing defiance either. He was calibrating. Adjusting his tone with the precision of someone who knew exactly where the line was, because he had walked along it before.

  There was also how he had recognised the goddess instantly when they entered the ballroom. Eirene had only been able to identify Eleuthera because she had once met the goddess in person. No portraits of Eleuthera existed in any text she had found. No statues. No reliefs. The goddess was deliberately absent from visual records.

  Which meant Orestis had seen her face before.

  And yet Eleuthera spoke to him as though they had never met.

  That was odd. But then, many things about Orestis were odd, and pressing too early had never yielded anything.

  “Can I request,” Orestis said, “that you stop focusing on us every time we draw on the divine?”

  “But it’s so intriguing.”

  “You can do the same,” he pointed out.

  Eirene was surprised—not by his knowledge, but by the implication that Eleuthera could draw from any god’s reservoir. But a moment later, the reasoning became obvious to her. The goddess confirmed it as well.

  “That is because of who I am,” she said. “A mortal doing it is another thing entirely.”

  “I can explain the mechanics.”

  “Don’t.” Something genuine surfaced in the goddess’s expression—curiosity, unguarded and sharp. “I’d rather figure it out on my own.”

  Orestis sighed. “Then would you at least stop making it so obvious? Observe quietly—like a respectable deity.”

  Her hand lifted to her chest in feigned offence. “And deprive myself of the entertainment?”

  He regarded her without amusement. “Most would say being this annoying is beneath a god.”

  “But you know better, don’t you?” Eleuthera smiled.

  The words landed lightly, but Eirene felt their weight. You know better. Not a guess. An observation. Eleuthera was watching Orestis the way Eirene watched people who interested her—closely, patiently, and with the growing certainty that what she saw on the surface was not the whole of it.

  The goddess knew something. Or suspected it. And she was content to wait.

  Eleuthera’s attention turned to Eirene, and the warmth in her expression shifted. Still present, but more deliberate. Less social. More personal.

  “I would like to speak with Eirene,” she said. Then, to Orestis: “You can go take care of business with the envoy. His name is Toren Kaldvyr.”

  Eirene blinked. “Kaldvyr?”

  She knew that name. Not personally—but one did not move in merchant circles without hearing it. Clan Kaldvyr sat at the intersection of Logrion’s mining interests and its royal bloodline. Their endorsement was not given lightly or cheaply.

  “Yes,” the goddess replied. “He’s the king’s nephew.”

  Orestis’s irritation vanished. It didn’t fade or soften—it simply ceased to exist, replaced by something sharper and considerably more focused. The shift was immediate. One moment he was sparring with a goddess; the next, he was recalculating.

  Eirene recognised that look. He was no longer thinking about the conversation. He was three steps past it, building something.

  He glanced at her. She nodded once. Go.

  Orestis inclined his head to Eleuthera—brief, genuine—and left without another word. Eirene watched him cross the ballroom with the quiet, focused stride of someone who had already composed his opening. He would be fine. Trade was his language, even if he pretended it bored him.

  She turned back to the goddess. Eleuthera studied her with an expression that was difficult to place. Not maternal or evaluative. Instead, it was something closer to appreciation.

  “Interesting man you’ve found for yourself,” she said.

  Eirene chose her response carefully. “He’s not easy to find. He makes sure of that.”

  Eleuthera’s smile widened slightly, acknowledging the deflection without pressing it.

  “Most mortals are wary around me,” the goddess continued. “The ones who have heard of me, at least. I am not widely worshipped—by design—and those who do know my name tend to treat me with the careful distance people reserve for things they cannot predict.”

  She paused. “He does not.”

  “No,” Eirene agreed. “He doesn’t.”

  “He toes a line most people wouldn’t know existed. Respectful enough to avoid offence. Familiar enough to border on it.” Eleuthera smiled. “That takes either extraordinary confidence or extraordinary experience. I suspect both.”

  Eirene said nothing. She had her own suspicions about what lay behind Orestis’s ease with the divine. She had been collecting evidence quietly, patiently, and without pressing—because he had said not yet, and she had chosen to trust that.

  “He intends to tell you,” Eleuthera said. “I can see it. I have been watching mortals long enough to read the signs.” Her expression softened. Not pity. Understanding. “Part of him already wants to. He’s been slipping—and he is not a man who slips by accident. Which means the walls are coming down on their own.”

  Eirene knew this was Eleuthera's way of being kind—telling her to keep waiting, because it was working.

  “I have my own ideas about his secrets,” Eleuthera added. “I won’t share them with you. They’re his to give. But I will say this: I learned something very interesting when I visited Lyse recently.”

  Lyse. Also known as the Goddess of Proper Passage. Her domain was souls and the threshold between life and death.

  Eirene felt something cold settle behind her ribs. She didn’t let it show. Whatever Eleuthera had learned, whatever it implied about what Orestis was—speculation would only lead her somewhere wrong. She had watched too many people build elaborate theories from insufficient evidence and mistake confidence for accuracy.

  “He mentioned that you and Lyse were friends,” Eirene said instead.

  “So he did.” There was genuine amusement in that. “Very few mortals would know that we’re friends, let alone that she taught me that little trick to detect changes in our reservoirs. Normally, she would also be interested in someone like him. But she is currently… occupied with another matter.”

  Eirene filed that away. Another god. Another thread.

  Although, part of her wondered what could possibly be more interesting than a mortal who possessed knowledge no mortal should. One who was also capable of conceiving—and executing—the theft of divine power.

  “Now,” Eleuthera said, and the warmth in her voice settled into something more deliberate. “There is a reason I came here today—aside from teasing him. I want to bestow a portion of my power unto you.”

  Eirene blinked. “Why?”

  “So that we can speak without me manifesting an avatar, or you having to find one of my temples or shrines.”

  “What would it involve?” she asked.

  “Nothing dramatic. A thread of connection. Enough for mental communication.”

  Eirene nodded. There was one other detail that had caught her attention the moment it was said. “I thought you didn’t have any temples?”

  “Oh, there are a handful. Just not anywhere accessible these days.” Eleuthera’s smile softened. “But my shrines are quite common. We first met at one—an open road leading into the distance.”

  Eirene remembered. The packed earth. The barefoot woman. The absolute clarity that kneeling was a choice.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then you refuse. I find it entirely acceptable,” Eleuthera said simply. “I could always just send notes, I suppose. It might actually be amusing to see how he reacts to finding divine correspondence in his morning post.”

  The image was brief and vivid—Orestis opening a sealed letter at the breakfast table, reading the first line, and scowling. It made Eirene smile.

  There is always a choice. The goddess practised what she preached. And she never controlled.

  “All right,” Eirene said. “I accept.”

  Eleuthera extended her hand—palm up, fingers open. Not reaching. Offering.

  Eirene placed her hand over the goddess’s.

  Just like last time, there was no surge of power. No blinding light. Just a quiet shift—like a door she hadn’t noticed, appearing somewhere in the back of her mind.

  Eleuthera withdrew her hand. “There. All done.”

  Eirene focused on the connection, opening the door. She was aware of a presence beyond—faint, steady, and familiar.

  As long as you speak while the door is open, I will hear you.

  It was instant, like a thought appearing in her mind, but in Eleuthera’s voice. It was unexpected enough that she withdrew on instinct, closing the door.

  Eleuthera smiled and said out loud, “Go find your merchant. I believe he’s already secured the first meeting.”

  Eirene glanced across the ballroom. Orestis and the Frostmarch envoy stood together, the conversation clearly past pleasantries. The envoy’s posture had shifted—arms unfolded, weight forward. Engaged.

  She turned back, but the space beside her was empty.

  Eleuthera was gone. No ripple. No departure. Simply no longer there.

  For a moment, Eirene thought of using the connection to ask why she had left so abruptly. She dismissed the thought immediately—using a divine channel for something so trivial seemed discourteous.

  The thought rose, unbidden, that Orestis would definitely treat it otherwise.

  Eirene smoothed her dress and crossed the ballroom to join him, reminding herself not to adopt his looser standards.

  Side chapters are part of the higher tier, along with author notes and other extras.