Chapter 1249: Dawn Beneath a Borrowed Silence

Morning returned to Hell’s Paradise Island with such gentle beauty that one might have mistaken the previous night for nothing more than an unpleasant dream.

Sunlight descended across the mountains in broad amber veils, touching the highest peaks first before flowing into the valleys, forests and winding roads below. Mist still lingered over Hell’s Paradise Lake, pale and weightless beneath the newborn light, while the distant city slowly reclaimed its usual glitter as windows brightened and traffic began threading between towers once more.

Birds had already resumed their noisy little disputes among the trees as they sung arrestingly for the arrival of a new day after the Void... the winds carried the clean scent of wet leaves and cold stone as if untouched by absolute darkness, and millions of ordinary people opened their eyes to another morning without the slightest understanding of what had passed above them while they slept.

The world had survived three minutes without light and humanity had already decided this required coffee, news anchors and theories.

For the young princesses and heiresses returning from their retreat, however, the morning possessed a far more immediate tragedy.

Their freedom away from their homes was over.

The convoy heading back toward Infinity Chaos Hotel had steadily diminished as the roads divided across Paradise. Family vehicles waited at designated junctions, personal guards reappeared with professionally blank expressions, and one spoiled heiress after another was reclaimed by the duties she had spent several glorious days pretending did not exist.

Nastya departed with Gianna after spending several minutes mourning her return to "civilized imprisonment," a description her sister received with the weary patience of someone who had presumably heard worse.

Clara left not long afterward, followed by Natasha, Priya and Jade, while several others disappeared into their own convoys as the roads separated toward private estates and family compounds.

The disappointment was real, if hardly tragic.

For several days they had escaped schedules, expectations, family politics and the suffocating etiquette surrounding names powerful enough to enter newspapers simply for attending dinner.

Their little retreat had somehow accumulated enough laughter, romance, secrets, danger and absurdity to nourish private their gossip for months, and whatever complaints followed them home could hardly erase the fact that their final day had been worth every interruption waiting on the other side.

Yet among those who remained in the convoy, the mood had gradually become quieter.

Phei was wrong!

Nobody had decided precisely what wrong meant, and the first woman brave enough to ask would likely have earned the gratitude of every other curious soul in the procession. Unfortunately, whenever anyone approached him, Sienna seemed to materialize nearby with such natural inevitability that questions suddenly became considerably less urgent.

Phei bore no visible wounds:

His face remained infuriatingly handsome, his body had apparently recovered from whatever horrors the previous night had inflicted upon it, and nothing obvious explained the difference everyone could feel.

Yet his presence had deepened until even people incapable of properly sensing anything wrong with him like Maddie found themselves aware of him differently.

Something vast sat beneath his skin now, compressed so deeply that it rarely showed itself, though every so often a faint pressure escaped him and the surrounding air seemed to become heavier for no reason anyone could explain.

Those with cultivation would’ve felt considerably more.

Phei had gone away as a Master.

The Young Dragon returning with them no longer felt like one.

...his behavior was stranger still...

...Phei had barely spoken.

Considering he was, that alone should have qualified as a medical emergency.

Normally, locking Phei Ryujin Tiamat inside a luxurious space with beautiful women produced shameless compliments, teasing, wandering eyes, casual touches and at least one statement that made somebody question whether hitting him would count as flirting. This morning, though, he mostly was beside Sienna with his head against the seat of her car or his eyes turned toward the passing landscape, answering only when necessary through the comms and sometimes closing his eyes for several minutes at a time.

Everyone noticed.

Sienna noticed them noticing.

That was usually enough to end the matter.

She did not hover over Phei like an anxious nurse, nor did she repeatedly ask whether he was comfortable.

That would have required far too many unnecessary words:

She simply remained beside him, and whenever somebody lingered too long, those deep violet eyes would shift toward them with the serene patience like a goddess who had once watched realms become bones and therefore possessed very little urgency regarding somebody else’s curiosity.

The curious person invariably remembered somewhere else they needed to be.

What made the situation stranger was how naturally Phei accepted it.

He did not complain when Sienna ended conversations for him and guarding him.

Once, when she silently removed his phone from his hand after realizing he was exhausting himself answering messages, Phei merely looked at her, saw whatever rested behind those violet eyes and surrendered the device without argument.

Catrina noticed from another vehicle... she had returned safely the previous night after visiting her parents and now rode beside Cassiopeia because Dravenna had taken Phei’s car and he rode with a cold beauty Catrina would rather not cross, occasionally looking toward Sienna’s car farther ahead.

Cassiopeia caught those glances more than once, but neither woman gave voice to the concern sitting between them.

Landon, Brian and David had become occupied with another mystery entirely.

Before leaving, the three had locked themselves inside one of the rooms and held what they would later insist had been a serious private discussion.

In reality, they spent the first several minutes staring at one another and silently hoping somebody else would volunteer to say the dangerous thing.

David eventually lost patience:

"Do you think this has something to do with what Maddie told us?"

Brian rubbed both hands over his face. "I was enjoying our beautiful agreement not to say that aloud."

"You’ve been thinking about it."

"Obviously I’ve been thinking about it; wouldn’t you given what she told us?"

Landon remained near the window, arms folded while watching the final preparations outside. "Whether we’ve been thinking about it isn’t important. What matters is whether Phei has."

Both men looked toward him.

Nobody repeated what Maddie had told them the previous night.

They had laughed when she first hinted at it, largely because accepting something so absurd immediately would have required all three to reorganize several beliefs about power, cultivation and their increasingly abnormal friend. Their laughter had faded when Maddie did not join them, and by the end of the conversation all three understood enough to realize that what she had told them was not something to be carried casually into another room.

David released a long breath. "I just hope he hasn’t changed his mind."

Brian looked at him before giving a humorless laugh. "God, guys do you realize that we sound selfish."

"We are selfish," Landon said.

"Thank you. Somehow that helped tremendously." David rolled his eyes.

Landon finally looked away from the window. "Everybody is selfish when something powerful enough is placed in front of them. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make you better, just less honest. The important thing is whether power leaves anything human behind; a family, friends and people you’ll do anything to protect and refuse to sacrifice for anything. In simple terms, boys; some morality and a line that still matters when crossing it would make you stronger."

Brian stared at him. "That was disturbingly mature."

"I have occasional relapses."

David laughed, breaking enough of the tension that the three could breathe normally again.

They agreed on nothing else.

They did agree that Maddie’s secret she’d shared remained theirs.

Whatever it meant, whatever Phei intended and however much the prospect whispered to their own ambitions, none of them would be the reason another person learned about it, especially not their women!