“Please, sit,” she invited.

I sat down in a cushioned chair. Beast jumped onto my lap and flopped.

Lady Wexyn gazed over the water, her expression serene.

“You have questions,” she said.

“So many.”

She nodded. “I’ll do my best to answer as a thank you for your hospitality.”

“Let’s start with the simplest one. The flying?”

“Tuhl Gravity Disruptor. A tiny single-use gadget with an inaccurate name, since it doesn’t really disrupt gravity, it simply creates a powerful lift for about 7 seconds. I had it attached to my right shoe.”

“It doesn’t sound safe.” Using anything with “Tuhl” in its name meant taking your life in your hands. Tuhls made genius tech that killed them with depressing regularity.

“It isn’t. It requires a lot of training and explodes about 25% of the time. Really, strapping anything that causes a subatomic reaction to your body is a terrible idea. I do not recommend it.”

“It was very impressive,” I told her.

“Thank you.”

“Did Kosandion hire you?”

She nodded. “In a manner of speaking. He spoke to Clan Nuan, and Clan Nuan suggested I would be an excellent solution to his problems.”

“So you’re a bodyguard?”

“Not exactly.” She looked over the water again. “When people think of desires, they usually think of love or lust, depending on how cynical they are. But there are many other desires. Wealth. Power. Freedom… Revenge.”

She gave me a sweet smile. Suddenly she seemed wrapped in power. It suffused her, an unyielding merciless energy, contained yet ready to be weaponized at any moment.

Cold dashed down my spine.

“Some say that the need for revenge is the second strongest desire. Some say it’s the most powerful one. I, like my mother before me, am a Priestess of Revenge. When the supplicants pray before my altar, they lay their grudges bare, and if their cause is worthy, I do what they cannot. Sometimes I am justice, but mostly I’m vengeance.”

She had walked toward Prysen Ol like an unstoppable elemental force. She hadn’t said a single word during that fight. She showed no emotion. It wasn’t personal for her. Looking at her must’ve been like staring Death in the face.

The half-forgotten teachings of the Temple floated up from my memory. The priests and priestesses of the Temple taught that unfulfilled desires created an imbalance in the universe. The deeper the desire, the greater the imbalance. Correcting that imbalance was their sacred mission.

“Harmony,” I said.

She smiled. “Yes.”

Amphie and Prysen Ol had conspired to assassinate Kosandion. His death would have thrown the Dominion into chaos. “Was today vengeance?”