When We Met

CH 35 Logan

My plans were rapidly converging, the intricate web I had been meticulously weaving for years was nearing completion. However, Father and Noah seemed to be eyeing my decisions with growing suspicion particularly my choice to grant freedoms to all the clans, not just our own. His narrowed gaze lingered on Roalsine, my personal servant who remained ever by my side or so everyone thinks. I could practically see the cogs turning in his shrewd mind as he tried to unravel the mysteries behind my actions.

I needed to divert his suspicions, sow seeds of doubt that would lead him askance. It was becoming increasingly difficult to conceal the full extent of my machinations from my own siblings. Maria was already privy to certain broad strokes of the plan, having facilitated parts of it herself. Yet even she remained unaware of many gritty, nitty details - details I had kept closely guarded, permitting no cracks of light to shine through.

My lips pursed as I watched noah scrutinising Roalsine again. Yes, it was time to bring Noah into the fold, as much as it pained me to lie to one of my kin. I motioned for him to join me in my study, the crackling fire casting dancing shadows across the stone walls.

"Brother," I began once the heavy oak door thudded shut behind him. "There are matters I must share with you, matters of grave importance regarding the future of our clan."

Noah's brow furrowed but he nodded, weathered warrior's hands clasped behind his back. "I'm listening."

Leaning back, I steepled my fingers, carefully considering how much to reveal. "As you know, I have enacted a policy of emancipation and restructuring across the clans. On the surface, it is to unite us, to shed the antiquated shackles of the past."

I paused, holding his gaze. "But there is more afoot than even Fate suspects. Roalsine...she is not merely a servant. She is a key part of the turning tide, carrying knowledge and abilities that will permanently shift the balance of power in our favour."

Noah's eyes widened almost imperceptibly. Always the pragmatist, he processed this in silence for a moment before responding. "And what of Maria? She has been positioning pieces on your behalf, has she not?"

"Indeed." A faint smile played across my lips. "Maria understands the necessity of our course, if not the full depth of its roots and branches. But you, dear brother, you I shall entrust with everything. Our clan deserves no less than complete fealty from its leaders."

As the night wore on, I began unraveling the tapestry, allowing Noah to bear witness to the meticulous construction of my life's work. His stern features betrayed flashes of surprise, calculation, and ultimately,...resolution. By the fire's last glowing embers, we were bland bound as co-conspirators poised to rewrite the ancient saga of our people.

Noah hung on my every word as I meticulously unveiled the layers of my intricate master plan to disrupt the balance of power and elevate our clan above all others. With each new revelation, his eyes burned increasingly brighter, greedily drinking in the finer points and strategic brilliance. While I had once foolishly aspired to follow our father's path as an honourable clan leader, Noah had seemingly always craved more harbouring a dark, insatiable ambition to seize the throne for himself.

As the night stretched on, I could see the massive weights of doubt and constraint visibly sloughing off Noah's shoulders with every secret I entrusted to him. This incredible moment he had covertly longed for was finally unfolding - the opportunity to outmanoeuvre our father and claim his seat of imperial power. The old war hawk would be caught completely unawares, blissfully oblivious to the intricate great game I had spent decades spinning into an unbreakable web around him.

"Brother..." Noah's gruff voice was barely above a rapturous whisper, laced with undisguised hunger. "You have ensnared our father in the most exquisitely insidious trap ever devised. He is utterly blind to the viper's rebellion silently unfurling under his negligent gaze."

His calloused fingers drummed out a steady, merciless cadence against the arm of the chair, the barest outward flicker of the scarcely restrained jubilation contorting his weathered features. The visions of conquest and ascendancy were already dancing behind his flinty eyes, imagining the moment of delicious triumph.

"Make no mistake, our clan shall be elevated to dizzying, unprecedented heights of power and domination," I affirmed with a small, conspiratorial nod. "Roalsine is the critical lynchpin, but there are countless other pieces aligning, other seeds planted whose noxious blooms will strangle the old defenses."

Noah leaned forward, the flames burnishing his face in a sickly, sinister golden mask. "You must share every minute, Machiavellian detail with me. I will keep silent council better than the grave itself..."

His piercing stare bored unblinkingly into my own as I hesitated only a moment before proceeding. With carefully measured words, I began divulging the extent of my stratagems - the meticulous recruitment of shadowed fringe allies, the courtship of certain ancient power players, even the systematic acquisition of long-forgotten relics and profane, heretical lore.

Noah consumed each addictive new revelation like a parched man gulping from an oasis, his expression shifting between wicked delight and somber awe at the sheer, corrosively subversive scope. Despite his composure's steadily fraying edges, he remained terribly, graveyard-still as I unfurled the tapestry before him.

"It will all pay out as the final acts commence," I intoned solemnly as the hearth's flames cracked and sputtered. "One by one, the creaking, decaying pillars supporting our father's establishment shall start to buckle and splinter."

A feral, victorious grin slowly spread across Noah's lips as the last visages of his restraint evaporated like so much smoke on the night wind. "And when they finally collapse in a cataclysmic heap..." His obsidian stare bored straight through to my rotten core, bright with the furious intensity of blinding ambition and long-simmering malice. "Our ascendancy will be forever cemented upon the smouldering ashes, unfettered domination ours to wield as we see fit. No more shall we suffer under the dead weight of Father's antiquated, insipid honour."

I returned his savage smile, sharing the wicked mirror image as our pact as co-conspirators bound us together against the coming devastation the grand upheaval all those years of patient secrecy and Machiavellians would ultimately unleash. The old sun of our clan was dying, its feeble final moments a wheezing, rattling gasp drowned in the encroaching shadows.

But a new dawn's bloody, purifying light was cresting over the horizon a lurid crimson sunrise blazing from the white-hot crucible fires fuelled by Noah's ambition and my own remorseless willingness to sacrifice any piece or principle in our eternal ascent to power.