The ceiling of the room was too high to be real—a dome of living darkness, stitched with stars that pulsed like trapped hearts. The walls breathed. Literally. They were covered with organic tapestries that whispered in extinct languages, each thread exuding the sickly scent of dead flowers and freshly spilled blood.
In the center of the room, floating on an altar of liquid obsidian, Eleonor reigned.
Her throne was made of enchanted gold, but it still seemed small before her. Her skin was white as the pale moon that had forgotten how to shine. Her eyes? Two slowly rotating galaxies, too deep to be fathomed.
She watched the three children kneeling before her with a sidelong glance.
"Those brats..." she thought, with a slight taste of jealousy curling on her tongue. "All sighing for Kael... my grandson. And now they kneel as if I were a goddess. Pathetic. I hate it when they treat me like a goddess."
