Chapter 522: Arrival At Rhyx City [Bonus - ]
Silas reached out with his heavy palm resting firmly against her shoulder, giving her a reassuring pat that sent another bunch of butterflies tumbling through her midsection.
"And remember our contract," Silas added, an amused smirk tugging at his lips. "Use an anonymous offshore routing account when you transfer the money... If your accountants see an electronic wire sent directly to me, it’ll be quite a big issue."
Aki swallowed the lump in her throat, forcing her composure to knit back together, though she couldn’t wipe the bright, breathless smile from her face.
"I gave you my word, Lord Silas. Your account number is etched into my memory."
’And once those numbers enter the international clearing system,’ she thought with a flicker of clever royal pride, ’all I need to do is cross-reference the account’s primary registration routing through my private terminal... Your true name will appear right on my screen... unless you gave me a shell company but even a shell leaves a digital shadow.’
She took half a step forward, unable to restrain herself, and wrapped her slender arms firmly around his waist.
"Fuu..."
She pressed her cheek against his chest, inhaling the lingering heat radiating from his clothes.
Silas stood startled for half a second before his arms came around her back, returning the embrace with a gentle steady squeeze.
Aki pulled back slowly, her fingers lingering against his lapels before dropping away.
She couldn’t stop the small petulant pout that formed on her lips. "I don’t suppose... there is any possibility of an extension? Even three days?"
"You’ve already stayed seven," Silas chuckled. "Your household is probably tearing Rhyx City apart looking for their runaway princess."
"Can I come back, then?" she asked, her voice dropping into an earnest vulnerable plea. "Will the gates be open?"
"Anytime you need to breathe, Aki," Silas said softly. "You have an open invitation to Blessed Land."
𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂
"GWAHAHAHA! That’s enough sweet-talking! The morning temperature is rising, and the sky won’t wait for lovers’ goodbyes!"
Before Aki could say another word, a gauntlet slipped beneath her arms, and she was effortlessly scooped off the stone flagstones in a massive one-armed lift.
"Lady Thor!" Aki gasped, clutching her silk fan and her new necklace as her boots dangled two feet in the air. "A moment of dignity, please!"
"Dignity is for dead kings sitting on cold thrones!" Thor roared with booming cheer, resting the twenty-five-year-old royal securely against her broad silver breastplate.
The God of Thunder turned toward the assembled women, throwing her head back as her wild blonde locks danced in the gale.
"Farewell, people of the Keep! May your steel stay sharp, your mead stay cold, and your Lord keep his head on straight!"
"Safe travels, Thunderer!" Morwenna called out, raising Tidebringer in salute.
"Don’t drop the royal!" Thora barked with a wide grin.
Thor looked down toward the doorway of the Keep, where a pale face with wild midnight-black hair was peeking cautiously out from behind the heavy oak jamb.
Rika, wrapped in a wool blanket and clutching a half-eaten smoked sausage, shrank back into the shadows the second Thor’s storm-blue eyes locked onto her.
"And you, Rikavariashaluna!" Thor bellowed, her voice rattling the roof tiles. "Chew your meat properly! If I return and find out you choked on a chicken bone, I will carve your epitaph on a chamber pot!"
Rika’s muffled furious screech drifted from the dark interior.
"GO JUMP INTO A VOLCANO, YOU BLONDE GORILLA!"
Thor let out a booming belly laugh, then turned her gaze back to Silas Graves.
A sudden softer warmth settled over the deity’s rugged features.
She looked at the young Lord standing calmly on the stones.
He was young and his raw cultivation was still climbing the mortal tiers yet there was an immovable center to him.
A strange gravity that made beings like Eluned, Morwenna and even Rikavariashaluna willingly lay their heads beneath his banner without a single chain of coercion.
Thor flashed him a broad fearless grin, her blue eyes crackling with a tiny spark of golden static.
Silas met her gaze with a smirk tugging at his mouth, and gave her a slow wink.
A small crimson blush brushed across the high-altitude tan of Thor’s cheeks as she let out a loud delighted huff through her nose, shaking her head.
’By Odin’s beard... he really is a charming little bastard,’ Thor thought, her fingers twitching with the urge to reach down and ruffle his dark hair one last time. ’A very, very good boy.’
"We’re off!" Thor announced.
KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!
With a singular concussive thrust of her muscular legs, the God of Thunder detonated into the sky.
The courtyard flags groaned beneath the explosive upward force, a hurricane of displaced air whipping the skirts and cloaks of the women below as Thor and the Princess shot straight into the cloudless blue sky like a golden artillery shell.
High above the valley floor, the wind shrieked as Thor swung Mjölnir in a wide arc above her head, the ancient uru metal humming with a deep cosmic vibration that tore through the atmospheric veil.
CRACK-SHATTER!
A jagged golden rift of concentrated Asgardian thunder tore open in the middle of the sky.
Thor dove straight through the fracture, the world of the Umbral Basin instantly dissolving into streaks of liquid light.
In less than a heartbeat, the violent gales ceased, replaced by the tranquil sun-drenched silence of the celestial crossroads.
They touched down gently upon the pristine white marble path of the eternal garden.
’Ah we’re no longer in the snowy area...?’ The Princess thought, that was far behind.
The colossal trees with silver bark and golden foliage swayed gently overhead, casting dappled shadows across the emerald lawns.
The air here was warm and fragrant, smelling of blooming starlight and undisturbed dew.
Thor set Aki onto her feet, allowing the Princess to smooth down her wool skirt and catch her breath.
"Well, little royal," Thor rumbled, rolling her broad shoulders until her silver pauldrons clanked together. "Did you enjoy your little holiday in the dirt? Was it worth seventeen counts of fraud?"
Aki didn’t hesitate.
Her azure eyes sparkled with an intensity that had never existed during her twenty-five years in the imperial capital.
"It was extraordinary," Aki breathed, her voice tumbling out in a rapid excited torrent as they walked along the marble lane. "Lady Thor, you have no idea... Eluned showed me how to identify mana herbs by the pattern of their root veins and Silas... Lord Silas took us into the deep trenches. We crossed blades with lots of monsters and he carved a literal goddess out of hundreds of years of solid ice and the food... they don’t serve tiny sterile portions on silver platters, hell they roast entire haunches of meat over open embers and pass it around with their bare hands!"
’Not to mention the alcohol...’
The Princess would sell a lot of things to get her hands on that mead again... It made her feel fuzzy in a good way.
Thor threw her head back, laughing boisterously at the girl’s uninhibited chatter.
"GWAHAHAHA! You sound like a tavern bard after three flagons of mead! See? I told you that boy knows how to run a hall! Don’t fret, little Princess. Once you settle your business, I’ll haul you back down there myself. I still owe that pirate woman a proper fight and the Dragon too."
They approached the center of the garden, where the tall dark-skinned guardian stood motionless, resting his weight against his obsidian-tipped spear.
The glowing white tribal marks across his bald scalp pulsed in steady pulse.
"Greetings, Daughter of Odin," the Gatekeeper intoned solemnly. "You return from the forgotten threshold."
"Greetings, spear-man!" Thor replied with an easy wave. "We’re taking the high transit back to the mortal plane. Open the upper atmospheric lane for the place where we came from!"
The guardian turned, the tip of his spear tracing an intricate circle in the air.
A towering arch of white marble flared to life, swirling with the cerulean light of the mortal realm’s upper stratosphere.
"Proceed," the guardian spoke.
Thor scooped Aki back into her arms with practiced ease, paying no heed to the Princess’s quiet squeak of protest and leaped straight through the swirling blue veil.
WHOOSH!
The serene gardens vanished.
Instantaneously, the crushing cold and thin vacuum of the upper stratosphere slammed into them but Thor maintained a shimmering frictionless sphere of golden thunder-mana around them, insulating the Princess from the sub-zero void.
Beneath them, the curvature of the mortal planet spread out in breathtaking splendor... an endless ocean of swirling white cloudbanks, broken far below by the glittering neon grid of Rhyx City.
Thor angled her descent, descending through the cloud cover with hypersonic acceleration.
The city grew from a circuit board of glowing lines into towering kilometer-high spires of chrome, glass, and steel as Thor banked hard around the eastern residential spires, decelerating with miraculous precision as she cleared the high-altitude smog layer.
With a soft muffled thump of displaced air, Thor touched down on the private polished marble terrace of the Princess’s penthouse suite.
She set Aki lightly onto the stone, crossing her arms over her silver breastplate with a broad satisfied smirk.
Aki stood on the terrace, the familiar smell of the city’s air scrubbers washing over her senses.
She turned, looking up at the towering Asgardian deity with a raised brow.
"Will you be staying for tea, Lady Thor? The household staff can prepare a roast."
Thor blinked, looking at the blue-haired royal as if she had grown a second head.
"Stay for tea in a glass cage?" Thor barked with a loud snort. "Are you thick in the skull, girl?! I’m flying straight back to Blessed Land! The Lord has a fresh cask of dwarven ale waiting in the cellar, and I have no intention of letting that pirate woman drink my share!"
Aki’s jaw dropped.
"Wait—right now?! You’re leaving immediately?!"
"Catch you later, little royal! GWAHAHAHA!"
KRA-BOOOOOOM!
A pillar of golden lightning erupted beneath Thor’s boots, blowing Aki’s hair and skirts wildly across the terrace as the God of Thunder rocketed back into the sky, vanishing into the upper storm clouds before the thunderclap had even faded.
Aki stood coughing in the ozone haze, stamping her boot in pure frustration.
"Unbelievable! You muscle-headed brute! You could have at least carried my luggage!"
"YOUR HIGHNESS!"
The heavy reinforced glass doors leading into the penthouse suite were thrown open with a frantic bang.
Three royal security maids, clad in pristine black-and-white formal uniforms, rushed out onto the terrace with their hands trembling and their faces pale as paper.
The lead maid, Mira, threw herself onto her knees before Aki with tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Praise the Ancestral Obelisk! You’re alive! You’re unharmed!" Mira wept, clutching the hem of Aki’s woolen traveling skirt. "When Lady Thor seized you from the balcony, the entire sector security grid went into a level-four lockdown! We thought... we thought the Asgardian had taken you as a celestial hostage!"
"Calm yourselves," Aki commanded, her tone instantly shifting back into the cool noble tone she had wielded for a decade.
She snapped her silk fan open, fluttering it with grace. "Lady Thor merely escorted me on a private excursion so there was no hostage situation and now, Stand up, Mira... Compose yourself."
Mira scrambled to her feet, wiping her eyes frantically, before her gaze drifted over the Princess’s attire.
"Your Highness... your dress," Mira stammered, horror dawning in her eyes. "What are you wearing? That fabric... it smells of wood ash and iron and your hair—"
"I was somewhere," Aki said smoothly, brushing past them into the climate-controlled warmth of the suite. "It is high-grade traveling wool. It kept me warm, which is more than I can say for the silk rags you usually pack."
"We must prepare a bath immediately!" the second maid cried, clasping her hands in sheer distress. "The Crown Prince’s motorcade has already entered this district... His Highness will be arriving at the penthouse in less than forty minutes to conduct an official inspection!"
Aki’s shoulders subtly stiffened as her grip on her silk fan tightened by a fraction of a millimeter.
"My brother is coming here?" she asked, her voice dropping into a cold flat tone.
"Yes, Highness!" Mira urged, gesturing toward the master quarters. "He received word of the security breach! If he arrives and finds you unwashed, smelling of common smoke and dressed like a mercenary, the reprimand will be catastrophic! Please, allow us to prepare the scented oils!"
"I have already bathed," Aki replied with an annoyed scowl, recalling the refreshing dip in the hot mineral spring in the Keep that morning. "I am perfectly clean."
Mira sniffled, leaning in slightly, and made a small distressed face. "Highness... with all due respect, you do not smell ’proper.’ You smell of... pine needles and wild mint. It is far too pungent for the parlor."
Aki felt an involuntary twitch in her eyebrow.
’Pungent?’
Eluned had spent two hours showing her how to harvest the silver-leaf ferns by the river, teaching her how to express the pure cold sap with a wooden mortar and pestle to craft natural soap cakes.
It was the exact same botanical compound that Silas used, which gave the Lord of Blessed Land that subtle captivating scent of fresh rain and mountain cedar.
To call it "improper" was an insult to the Goddess herself.
Before she could voice her defense, her maids seized her by the elbows, ushering her with respectful urgency down the private corridor toward the royal bathing pavilion.
"There is no time, Highness! The Prince’s schedule permits zero delays!"