Page 66 of The Sovereign, Part One (The Sovereign Saga #1)

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 least attempt glamour. Minimalist is 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.

“Ah,” she said, eyes sweeping over the four of us. “Senior Advisor Poeima.”

“Just Isara,” I said with a nod. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“I should thank you,” Hecta replied with a polished smile. “Lourdes speaks of you as if you personally rewrote The Eight.”

“She exaggerates,” I said.

“She markets ,” Hecta corrected lightly, then turned her attention to Maxim. She paused.

“How odd.”

“That I’m here,” he said, his hand still resting at my shoulder. “Perhaps.”

“Supplicants, predominantly male Supplicants, typically avoid the preliminary design phase,” she noted, almost academically. “It’s become something of an unspoken rule. Most prefer the final reveal to the process.”

Maxim’s eyes held hers. “What a terrible rule.”

It was disarming—simple, sincere, and entirely Maxim. Hecta’s expression shifted, just slightly, the way a curtain might stir when a draft is unexpected.

“Noted,” she said, and gestured for us to begin.

She extended a narrow palm, and a cascading beam of soft light bloomed above the center of the consultation table. A rotating cluster of projections formed: a blank venue shell, a palette wheel, flowing threads of archived textures and sounds. A world waiting to be named.

I leaned forward. “I don’t want ceremony for the sake of spectacle,” I said. “No scripted grandeur. No calculated awe. I want it to feel… grounded. Like it could have happened a hundred years ago, or a hundred from now.”

Hecta didn’t blink. “Timeless.”

“Yes. Meaningful. Intentional. Light without being cold. I don’t want to feel like I’m performing my Oathbond.”

“No projection panels?” Hecta asked. “Hover plinths?”

“Only music and florals. Nothing visual.”

“Color story?”

“Pearl, stone, and shadow. I want the light to do the rest.”

Avaryn groaned audibly. “It’s giving museum curation , not celebration.”

“It’s called taste,” Bellam muttered, not even bothering to glance in her direction.

Hecta raised a brow, then waved her fingers to bring up a few sample settings—one with virelux banquette seating, another more open and architectural, and finally, one that shimmered with natural elements despite being housed inside.

“That one,” I said, pointing to the last. “Can we neutralize the central aisle? No runner, no flower arch.”

Maxim spoke again, “She wants to feel like we’re walking into a life, not a production.”

I looked up at him, startled for a moment by how perfectly he’d captured it.

Hecta watched him with something close to curiosity now. “You’re either very perceptive,” she said, “or very in love.”

“Hopefully both,” Maxim replied with a warm but confident grin.

Bellam made a sound in her throat like she might combust from secondhand emotion.

Hecta nodded slowly. “Very well. You’ve made this easy.

I’ll build from this framework. We’ll keep the focus on tone and pacing.

The space will speak for itself. And”—she glanced at Avaryn with a touch of mischief—“we’ll save just enough room for a few unexpected flourishes.

Tradition, after all, must be tempted, if not broken. ”

Avaryn grinned, finally. “Now that’s something I can work with.”

We moved on to timelines, to arrangements, to legal formalities that made my stomach tighten just slightly: how long we’d stand beneath the Accordance veil, how long Maxim would be expected to speak, whether I’d want the Tethering Vow to be performed in front of guests or kept private.

There was no right answer, only what felt like truth.

And in that space, surrounded by transpane and light and the people who knew me best, I could feel something life-changing gathering in my chest.

Hope. That’s what it was. Not the polished variety we’d been conditioned to display, but something far more unruly, achingly powerful, and just fragile enough to frighten me with how fiercely I wanted it to last.

After we offered our appreciation and goodbyes, the panels closed behind us with a wisp, leaving behind Hecta and her palatial gallery.

The corridors outside felt cooler, lighter, as if the rest of the world had remembered how to breathe.

It was dangerously easy to forget in moments like this, that we could still be targeted.

That until our Oathbond was finalized, Maxim’s rights were limited, his protections incomplete.

For now, I kept my head down and my presence small—just long enough, I hoped, to carry us across the threshold where we would finally belong to one another, in name and in law.

Avaryn peeled off with a distracted wave, citing a prior engagement that, knowing her, was likely more strategic than social.

She didn’t hug me, but she gave Maxim a look that was both appraising and respectful, an unspoken acknowledgment of the role he now played.

Then she turned and strode toward the Skith port with the ease of someone who knew her place in the world and didn’t need anyone’s approval to keep it.

“I like her,” Bellam said flatly as we ascended the pale composite incline toward a different platform.

“You would,” I replied.

Maxim smiled faintly. “You adore her. But it’s amusing to watch you pretend you don’t.”

The Skith ride was brief but scenic. It had been nearly a month since I’d taken one, and to my surprise, I’d missed it.

There was something meditative about the way the pods moved—magnetic, frictionless, silent save for a low harmonic current that barely kissed the senses.

We chose seats in a mid-tier pod, chatting about the various fabrics and décor in Hecta’s gallery as the city passed around us in a blur of motion and color.

I’d once taken this kind of travel for granted, but now every movement outside the safety of home felt sharp-edged.

Still, in that moment, suspended in speed and silence, I felt something close to peace.