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Usui didn’t provide more context. Lux pushed and pushed, but Usui just snapped that they needed to gather the par animarum—the paired souls whose union had created millions of souls and brought them to the new world.

Lux agreed that they needed to speak to them, but he needed context. His duty was to meet with the Conclave, collect information, and relay it to the creators of his new world. It was the very reason he’d come here.

But Usui refused. Mostly, it seemed, because she was still too lethargic and confused to explain whatever had occurred.

Lux flamed all through the night as Usui slept in the cave. What did that mean? The Conclave had bartered the souls he and the par animarum created with the maalaichte cnihme?

The maalaichte cnihme were a ruthless army of soul eaters. Their only goal was to survive and conquer, by any means. To live eternally, they devoured worlds worth of souls. They’d attempted to conquer Matriaza, and they’d failed. They’d attempted to conquer Morduaine, a neighboring world, and they’d failed.

As awful as they were, Lux had made a deal with them once. It was a facade, like most things Lux did, to get what he wanted. A world. A place to raise the souls he and the par animarum had created.

The deal was that the par animarum reigned over the little blue rock for three hundred thousand years. At the end of it, the maalaichte cnihme would return to take their land back, and in exchange, they’d get a billion souls.

It was all a sham, of course. They’d only agreed out of desperation. The souls they’d created needed bodies, and there were only so many resources on Matriaza and Morduaine.

So when the time came, when the maalaichte cnihme returned, the par animarum planned to move those souls here, to Matriaza and Morduaine. Scarce resources, they may have had, but it was better than no resources at all. For a few years, while the par animarum fought off the universe’s greatest enemy, the souls they’d created would be safe.

The story was far deeper than that. It spanned millions of years, after all. But the point was simple.

The maalaichte cnihme were enemies of all. They could not be trusted. They were the epitome, the living embodiment, of evil. They needed to be exterminated like the vermin they were. No one in power should’ve been making legitimate treaties with them.

If the Conclave had made a deal with them, this land was no longer safe. The people, the land itself, but especially the governing entities.

Lux could not allow the par animarum, the previous rulers of this world, to arrive until he knew what treaty the Conclave had created with such monsters.

He knew it wouldn’t be wise to show at the Conclave Hall with Usui considering they’d imprisoned her, so he went on his own as soon as the sun rose.

* * *

“We weren’t expecting you back so soon.” A woman Lux didn’t know gave him a smile as he sat in the queen’s seat. “I thought you would return with the others.”

The par animarum.

Was that a threat?

Were they intending to ambush Lux, his family, and their friends? The ones who’d ruled this world, who now ruled a new one? Was that what this was about? Was that why they’d imprisoned Usui? A battle of power?

Was that why they’d aligned themselves with the maalaichte cnihme?

“Oh, they’ll be here soon,” Lux said. “I’ve just missed it so much here. Had to make an extended stay of it. My new home’s a fair deal like this world, but it’s not quite the same.”

“Ah, yes, I remember hearing about that.” A man further down the table in the front row leaned in to meet Lux’s gaze. “You’ve got a few worlds within one there, don’t you?”

“That’s one way to phrase it.” Dimensions, Lux called them. One was the mortal world, one was the Angel world, Matriax, and one was the Fae world, the Land of Light. “Quite lovely.”

“How do you go about travelling between them?” the first woman asked.

Why did she want to know? So she could relay it to the maalaichte cnihme? So they could invade his world and pillage every layer of it? “Only certain people are capable of opening egresses between them.”

“Oh? Like who?”

Lux only gave her a tight-lipped smile. He was certainly not answering that.

“I’ve wondered if we could do something like that here,” a man’s voice at the end of the table said. “Perhaps we could form one with more fruitful land.”

“Some have tried, and they’ve failed. It requires great power.”Power you all don’t have, Lux thought. “But even so, the land wouldn’t be any more fruitful. It’s the same world, just another layer of it. The terrain is similar between them all.”

“Huh. Fascinating,” the first woman who’d spoken said. “I’d love to see it one day.”