For ten years, the heart of the divine palace was not a throne room, but a classroom. The real Eliora grew amidst constellations woven from pure light and libraries where books were bound in the leather of extinct celestial beasts. Her world was Azael. He was her sunrise and her twilight, the voice that explained the music of the spheres and the hand that guided hers as she learned to trace runes in the air that shimmered and held.

His touch was a constant. When she was small, she would climb into his lap as he sat upon his obsidian throne, curling against the cool, hard silk of his robes, his arm a secure bar around her waist as he pointed out the shifting patterns in the star-map ceiling.