Silence sat thick in the cavern—an almost awkward kind of silence—after Kael casually commented on the taste of the Dire Sovereign's head.
Lyratheia rose slowly from the rubble, still in somewhat disbelief, still pale, still visibly processing the fact that the creature that traumatized her for decades had died in one bite.
Then—
She raised her hand.
"…Wasn't I supposed to kill him?"
Kael froze.
Selene and Evethra turned to her in identical slow-motion confusion.
Kael's eyes shifted from Lyratheia… to the headless corpse... to his own jaws, still faintly glowing with golden fire.
"…Ah."
He blinked as the terms of the deal surfaced in his mind.
He was supposed to put the beast in a half-dead state so that Lyratheia, who wanted to exact her revenge, could kill it herself.
"Right. That was the arrangement."
Lyratheia stared at him flatly, and Selene buried her face in both hands, while Evethra just coughed, as if not sure what she should say right now.
