The Strategic Deception

Cordelia

The massive dining hall was suffocatingly quiet. All the staff had already rushed off to tend to the arriving guests, leaving me standing alone in the center of the room. The golden branches of my late mother’s necklace rested heavy against my bare chest. It hummed with a strange, warm vibration, buzzing merrily against my skin as if it possessed a heartbeat of its own.

But the magical