Page 114 of The Sovereign: Part One
The three of us who’d remained at the table traded glances.
She smirked, but I could still see the hurt in her eyes.“He’s my brother.If he can’t talk to me, he needs to talk to someone.”
Roan’s expression softened.“I love you, too, Elle.”
She winked.
The Hiven arrived with Roan’s food, gliding in without a sound.Roan barely acknowledged it.He stood, pressed a quick kiss to Lourdes’s cheek, and jogged off with a casual wave, already moving toward whatever plan had taken root in his mind.
Lourdes rolled her eyes, with feigned exasperation she reserved only for Roan, but faded when her gaze settled on his empty seat.It struck me how effortlessly she transformed back into her role as someone still entirely in control of the room.She turned to Leopold with a smile already forming, one that bloomed with polished grace.Within seconds, she was laughing, shoulder pressed against his, her hand brushing his sleeve as if to seal herself back inside the tone of the evening.
She looked radiant.Composed.Untouched.
And for a heartbeat, I wondered if she truly hadn’t noticed.If Roan’s sudden lightness, the strange, restless certainty in him, hadn’t registered.Or if she simply refused to see it, because acknowledging it might alert her to a possibility she couldn’t allow herself to consider.
She laughed again, head tilted back, unaware that her brother was already halfway gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The salon of Hecta, Visage consultant to the elite of Hyperion Proper, looked more like a gallery than a workspace.Curved panes of crystalline transpane caught the morning light and fractured it into shifting ribbons across the marble-inspired floor, while organic sculptures bloomed from alcoves.Every line of the room had been considered, every angle softened, every surface singing of opulence that never had to raise its voice.
I sat with my ankles crossed, palms resting on my lap, and tried not to feel completely out of place.
“This space,” Bellam murmured under her breath, leaning toward me, “is trying to seduce us.”
“It’s working,” I said, my eyes trailing the delicate arc of a suspended bloomlight above the consultation table.
Across from me, Avaryn had already slouched back into her chair, arms folded, exuding theatrical boredom.Her long braids were glossy and perfect, her lashes a calculated kind of dramatic.She’d dressed sharp, though—sleek charcoal sleeves and exaggerated shoulders—because pretending not to care only worked if you still managed to look stunning while doing it.
“I’m just saying,” Avaryn began, “this is your one Oathbond.You could at leastattemptglamour.Minimalistis basically just an excuse not to try.”
Maxim, standing behind me, shifted his weight just enough to place a reassuring hand on my shoulder.I didn’t have to look up to know he was smiling.He hadn’t stopped since I’d mentioned the appointment the day before.
Bellam responded before I could.“Some of us find elegance in restraint,” she said, voice sweet but edged.“We don’t all need to be dipped in hologlow and wrapped in organza scaffolding.”
“What’s…scaffolding?”Avaryn asked, her nose wrinkling as if she’d smelled something spoiled.
“It’s what they did in the old world to,” Bellam began, then stopped herself with a sigh.“Never mind.”
Avaryn gave her a smirk.“Are you attending with Roan?I heard you two were spotted by… everyone… dancing quite close at Lourdes’s gala.”
“I’m going to choose not to answer that, too,” Bellam shot back with a smile.
“Enough,” I said, firm but patient.“I appreciate the input.”
Hecta entered the room at that precise moment, flowing rather than walking, draped in a structured cream tunic with panels that swirled with color to appear as if they were poured light.Her skin held the warm depth of sun-drenched coastlines, a tone born from generations shaped by stone, salt, and sky.Her features were arresting: sharp cheekbones, a strong nose, and a mouth made for command rather than decoration.The kind of face you’d expect to see carved into marble.
Her dark hair was twisted into a high knot, secured with minimalist gold clips that caught the light but never drew attention from her presence.She wore no insignia.No surname.She needed neither.
She was, simply, Hecta.
Her refusal to use a surname had long rippled through Hyperion Proper, a quiet provocation in itself.In a society where surnames carried lineage, power, and pride, her choice to abandon hers was both radical and unmistakably intentional.
To the Vanguard, it was a scandal discreetly dismissed, overlooked in favor of her singular brilliance.To the rising class, it was folklore.The theories adjusted depending on the room.Some speculated she was born to obscurity, others claimed she’d renounced a powerful name as an act of rebellion, disgracing a Vanguard house in the process.The boldest gossips insisted she had no surname at all, that she was the unacknowledged child of two Sovereign whose union was never meant to leave a trace.But whatever the truth had been, it no longer held power.Not over her.Not anymore.
Hecta had become her own legacy.
Still, she was just two years from her Veritas Protocol, and speculation swirled, whether she would take on a Supplicant and, with him—or her—a surname, or if she’d somehow remain the exception, as untethered in name as she was in origin.
