“So many of you came,” Agnes said. Matthias took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve, as if the Cerulean might be a mirage.

“I am taking it things went well with your High Priestess?” Vada asked.

“She will not be High Priestess much longer,” Sera said grimly as Leela hurried up to them.

“Sera, what should we do?” she asked. “Are the humans going to hurt us?”

Agnes felt resolve set in, strong and steady. “No,” she said. Then she called out, “Byrne Misarros!” The warriors with golden disks at their necks all turned. “I command you to drop your weapons and cease this fight.”

For a moment nobody moved and Agnes felt her confidence begin to crack. Then Matthias stepped forward.

“Ambrosine is dead,” he shouted.

And to Agnes’s utter shock, Hektor strode up next to him.

“Agnes is the Byrne matriarch now,” he said. “You will do as she commands.”

One by one the Byrne Misarros dropped their weapons and fell to their knees. The Renalt Misarros didn’t seem to know what to do. Then Agnes saw them begin to kneel as well and wondered just how powerful a being the Byrne matriarch was, until she saw a woman stepping off a small boat and striding up the beach toward her.

“The Renalt,” Vada gasped, and then she was kneeling too, and Matthias and Hektor and Eneas. Leo and Agnes looked at each other and knelt in the sand alongside them. Only the Cerulean remained standing.

“Rise,” the Renalt said. Agnes stood and found herself looking at a woman in her late forties, with brown skin and liquid black eyes. She was clad in an elegant gown of glittering, champagne-colored beads, a crown of oyster shells nestled in her thick dark hair. A silver cape streamed out from her shoulders and she held a small scepter in one hand, topped with a smooth white dosinia.

The Renalt cocked her head. “So you are Alethea’s daughter,” she said. She looked at Leo. “And you are very clearly her son.”

“I am,” Agnes said as Leo gave a swift nod.

“Matthias,” the Renalt said, acknowledging him with a flicker of her eyes.

“Your Grace,” Matthias said.

The Renalt gazed down at them all imperiously. She turned to Sera and Leela with the same expression Agnes had seen on Ambrosine’s face, a famished greed.

“It appears that my daughter and her guard did not exaggerate,” she said. “You are all Saifa incarnate.” Sera opened her mouth to protest, but the Renalt was snapping her fingers. “Arrest them,” she said, and her Misarros leaped at her command. “The silver ones too. We will sort them out in Banrissa.” She gave Agnes a hard, discerning look. “It seems as though the Byrne stranglehold over this country is finally at an end.”