The Royal Library was bright with sunlight, its towering shelves casting long shadows that stretched like silent sentinels across the marble floor.
Dust motes drifted lazily through shafts of golden light, disturbed only by the restless figure who moved between the shelves—haunted, searching.
Cathain had dismissed the guards.
Even the librarian who wanted to help him,
He needed silence.
Or perhaps he needed to hear only one voice—even if it came from within.
But that voice had returned.
It slithered at the edge of his thoughts, coiling like smoke, whispering the same ruinous seduction it once had long ago.
The same voice that had driven him to madness.
To destruction.
To the empire full of ash and grief.
And to her death.
Cathain clenched his fist.
Iris,
Not this time.
She can't control him this time,
Not when his empress's soul had returned.
Not when fate had spun the wheel again.
Not when he can save everything.
