Chapter Twenty-Three

Sylvia dresses for Vaida’s banquet, feeling the strain of her false identity. She and Arin share a charged moment before the orchestrated descent of rulers and Champions. In the hall, Sylvia is seated among Champions Timur (Lukub), Diya (Orban), and Mehti (Omal), while Arin navigates Vaida’s ostentatious spectacle and thinly veiled propaganda about the Awaleen.

Over dinner, Sylvia smoothly manages tensions: she and Timur curb Mehti’s lechery with a fabricated threat of Vaida’s wrath, and she probes Diya, who chillingly claims she was chosen after stabbing her parents. In the courtyard festivities, Sylvia banters with Felix, notes Vaida’s flirtations with Arin and his refusals, and learns Timur’s humble origins and recruitment story. Restless, she retires early.

An attendant, “Ava,” arrives to help with the gown but instead plunges a dagger into Sylvia’s chest. The glamor drops: it is Soraya, Sylvia’s former attendant thought dead and the rogue Mufsid. Soraya confesses her mission to prevent any Jasadi royal restoration, denounces the old regime, and claims the Mufsids will forge an egalitarian Jasad by culling the weak and rejecting royalty. She reveals she helped lead Arin to Mahair and condemns Sylvia’s latent ruthlessness.

Bleeding and desperate, Sylvia stalls Soraya and triggers her magic to shatter the window, hurling herself into the palace gardens. Surrounded by onlookers, she signals Arin that Soraya is escaping. Arin, torn, orders Jeru and Wes to keep Sylvia alive, then sprints to hunt Soraya rather than risk exposing Sylvia’s secret by healing her publicly. Medics are summoned as Sylvia loses consciousness.