Without turning from Lindon, Mercy raised her hand, palm-out.

The director corrected himself mid-sentence. “Ah, it seems that the show will resume in just a few more minutes.”

The musicians lowered their volume. A few members of the audience glanced up at their box, but most people kept their eyes low.

Lindon stared at Mercy. It seemed there were more perks to being a Monarch’s daughter than he realized.

She lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. “So I’ve never asked, but now that we’ve got this chance to talk…what exactly are you and Yerin? Are you…” She twined her fingers together.

Lindon felt like every light in the theater had turned onto him.

“First I thought you were together,” Mercy went on, “and then after watching you and finding out you had both been adopted into the Arelius family, I figured you might have thought of yourselves as brother and sister. But the more I watch you…there’s something there, right?”

Excitement painted every inch of her face. The music stayed low, the crowd murmured, and the show wouldn’t start until Mercy allowed it to.

Lindon’s face burned, and he dug for an excuse to get himself out of the conversation.

[Just move your mouth and make words come out,] Dross said. [Your thoughts are a mess, so talking isn’t going to make it any worse.]

“She…makes me want to work harder,” Lindon began. “When I’m not with her, I feel like something’s wrong. But everything is based on advancing together. That’s all we do.”

He looked down at the stage so he wouldn’t have to look into Mercy’s purple eyes anymore. “If we tried to do more…what would that look like? Would we have to give up advancement? Would we have anything in common?”

“And you’re okay with that?” She sounded confused.

He responded honestly. “I don’t know.”

Mercy settled back into her seat. After a few seconds, she waved her hand. The music swelled again as the show resumed.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “there’s one easy answer: make it to Monarch. Then you can spend all the time you want on romance and no one can say anything. Just ask my mother.”

~~~

On the day Lindon was to leave for the tournament, the entire Akura family turned out in force.

In an open courtyard so vast that Lindon could not see the end, an uncountable number of people had gathered. They organized themselves into squares, some more precisely than others, representing the families and sects and clans within Akura territory.

It was an ocean of humanity. The noise they generated shook the ground.

Black towers rose evenly between the squares, and a grasshopper-like Remnant of white smoke wavered on top of each of those towers. The spirits played haunting music that drifted over the scene, weaving in and out of the crowd's titanic murmurs.

Lindon watched from above, on a platform supported by a violet Thousand-Mile Cloud. He stood to Mercy's left, while Pride stood to her right. Charity rose above them all, floating on a platform of her own.

They were on display. Two minutes after they rose into the air, the noise of the crowd heightened into cheers, and the music peaked in triumph.

Lindon stood stiffly, his mind choking on the sheer scale. In any direction he looked, he saw more people than he had ever imagined existed.

Constructs in each of the towers projected an illusory image of the three Underlords into the air so everyone in the endless crowd could see. Lindon could now see himself as a forty-foot-tall figure of madra, as flawless as anything a master of the Path of the White Fox could have produced. Every time another construct farther away sprang to life, showing Mercy and Pride and Lindon, a further burst of cheers erupted from the crowd around it.

This was a staggering display of the Akura clan's wealth. The weight sunk in as it never had before: he was representing them, a power that dwarfed the Blackflame Empire. Whether he liked it or not, he was one of the clan's faces now. He had to please them. The force of their displeasure would crush him.

Charity spread her hands, and a gentle ripple of madra drifted out over the crowd. Lindon was certain that even she couldn't reach the end of the gathered people, but when those in the center quieted, a wave of silence spread out over everyone.

The Sage began with a speech designed to reinforce the power and dignity of the Akura clan, and how their family was synonymous with the stability of humanity. Lindon listened intently until he realized he would learn nothing of value. This was only to impress everyone with the importance of what they were doing.

Instead, he examined his illusory image.

He had always been tall, but next to Mercy and Pride, that was even more apparent. With Mercy in the center, it looked as though they were arranged in descending order of height. Mercy came up to his chin, and Pride only his shoulder.

His expression had always looked like he was spoiling for a fight, but since ascending to Underlord, he had changed in a dozen tiny ways. Now he looked stern. Too stern, or so he thought as he examined the giant projection of his face. His discomfort made him look like a judge ready to order an execution. He tried to relax, but the situation was too tense.

He was dressed, as were Mercy and Pride, in the best the Akura clan had to offer. He wore a stiff outer coat with a high collar that flared behind him like a cape and plum-colored inner garments, tailored tightly.

The outside of the coat was black, but the inside was a bright violet that looked like it was on the verge of starting to glow. There was a line of script ringing the lowest hem of his coat that actually did glow bright violet, and after examining it thoroughly, he had been disappointed to find it was only decorative.

The one concession the Akura family had allowed him was his badge. Halfsilver now, representing his rise to Lord, the badge hung over his chest. It sparkled with bright points like stars in a gray sky, and its presence near his chest made him slightly uncomfortable, like a spiritual itch.

Halfsilver interfered with the orderly control of madra, and while it wouldn't hurt his sacred arts unless he tried to channel madra through it or kept it pressed against his skin, he still wished it were made of ordinary silver instead.

Pride wore an outfit much like his, without the badge, and Lindon was somewhat relieved to know that he had found the one person with a less friendly face than his own. Pride stood as though he were looking down his nose at the world, but his perpetual glare made him look like he needed a good punch.

Mercy looked just as at home as her aunt. Her outfit was sleeker and smaller than her male counterparts, and her hair had been tied up into intricate waves laced through by silver strings and dotted with amethysts.

She stood perfectly at ease, her black-gloved hands resting in front of her, the hint of a smile on her lips. The clan had given her powders and paints for her face, so her skin was flawless, her lips a shade more red, her eyes deeper.

The biggest difference between the three of them was their eyes. Lindon's were black—not Blackflame oceans of darkness, just ordinary dark human eyes—while the other two were the deep purple of the Akura head family. The same purple shared by the closest square of people, the ones arranged on a dais at the front of all the rest. Instead of standing on the courtyard, these each had a cushioned chair, their ranks rising up in tiered rows. The Akura head family.

These weren’t just the elite Underlords who had been eligible to potentially compete in the tournament, though he spotted some of them too. Akura Grace leaned back in her chair with her eyes closed, so that Lindon thought she might be cycling. Or sleeping.