The thawing of the Empress’s crystal-clear irises was an event of terrifying, slow-motion beauty.
For ten thousand years, the eyes of Empress Yan Huaisu had been two motionless spheres of dark blue star-sapphire, ground with sight care to gaze always across the empty expanse of the Glacial Nave. They had seen neither light nor shadow. They had reflected only the total zero of the suspended void.
Now, as the golden fire from the joined scepter surged through her crystal-clear temples, the deep sapphire of her eyes began to soften and liquefy.
Micro-fractures of frost along the rim of her eyelids melted into clear, dew-like beads of sky ether that rolled down her high, sculpted cheekbones like tears of liquid light. Within the blue depth of each sapphire orb, a fine, detailed chest muscle of twelve overlapping crystal-clear leaves began to dilate.
The motion was with a sound so delicate it was like the rustling of dry silk in a royal wardrobe.
The pupils, black as the deepest oceanic trenches of the Nadir, widened to drink in the warm lantern light shed by Yan Zhiqiu’s lamp. Then, with terrifying, conscious deliberation, the two huge sapphire spheres rotated downward in their sockets. It locked their gaze directly upon the mortal figures standing on the cobalt terrace.
