The royal crypts - evening.
The air in the ancestral crypts was cold enough to mist the breath. The smell of ancient stone, damp earth, and the cloying sweetness of funeral lilies lingered in the air. Multiple torches had been lit. The high priest stood near the tomb, summoned to oversee the ceremony. Sydney's body lay in a funeral shroud.
Elliott stood at the head of her open tomb, his solar-gold robes a splash of defiant warmth against the cold, morbid background. That was also protocol - the sun's light must never dim. While everyone else wore black mourning clothes, Elliott's clothes stayed golden. His expression was one of deep, respectful grief. His hands - ridden with silvery scars - were clasped formally before him.
Aiden stood nearby, his watchful gaze trained on the ceremony. Every one of his senses was on high alert, focused on each person in the crypt, not only Elara. He didn't dismiss the possibility that Elara was just a distraction. Maybe the real assailant was someone else. His guards were posted at the door. Weapons inside the crypts were sacrilege, so the knights waited outside. For weapons, he'd had the high priest bring the moon sword along with the holy relics used in the ceremony. Just...in case.
Elara moved with almost automated motions. Her eyes were vacant. Her voice was hollow and monotone as she repeated the ancient prayers for the dead under the high priest's guidance. Her hands trembled as she lit the incense, offered the flowers, and finally sprinkled the sacred water around her mother's shrouded body. Her face was pale, her eyes rimmed red from tears shed all day. Elliott thought those tears were for the grief of losing Sydney. They were not.
Hours earlier, in the bathing chamber, she had asked to be left alone. The attendants complied, understanding her need for privacy. There, she had retrieved the vial. It tasted of ash and iron. As soon as she swallowed it, a cold dread settled in her stomach. The magic would be silent until activated, but the moment she ingested it her death had been certain. Every breath after was borrowed; every second a tiny theft from the life that would be taken.
Her vacant gaze lifted. Her stormy eyes met Elliott's warm ones.
Elliott. Her half-brother. Looking at him hurt in a way knives did not. The guilt was sharper than any physical pain. Memories arose - small images at first, then whole scenes of the past.
She remembered when they were children. Elliott had been a sickly, gentle boy, born around the same time as her. His mother had been a low-born concubine, and yet inside the court he had value because the emperor favored Gabriella. He had been the only male heir. In those years the court split into factions, and people learned to count allegiances like coin. Gabriella had always seen Elara with calculation. She'd seen her as a threat to her son's survival, and she'd been right, or at least pragmatic. Sydney had looked at Elliott with the same cool appraisal. Elara saw him like that too, but Elliott - he never saw *her* like that.
His eyes had been different, always kinder. He had trailed after her in the palace gardens with that open, admiring look she found at once infuriating and strangely disarming. She remembered how she had dismissed him then with casual cruelty - sharp words, a turned back, humiliation served like a lesson. She could still feel the small, hot shame of those moments.
After childhood came the long, bitter competition for power. Factions formed behind each of them: some supported Elara because of her mother's family and political weight; others supported Elliott because he represented gentler rule and because of the promise of escape from their father's cruelty. In the end it was Elliott who won - by luck, by fate, by the strange misalignment of courts - and Gabriella, ruthless and clever, had ensured Elliott's safety by marrying her off to a distant foreign king. She had been sent away. The palace moved on without her.
Elara had hated Elliott then. She hated what he represented: everything she did not have. Kindness, empathy, a contentment she had never known. She hated that he seemed to have it all without the struggle she thought he deserved. He was the mirror that reflected her own ruthless hunger back at her. She resented his coronation as if the world owed her some balance. To her mind, his rise was an affront - an injustice - a reward for softness and mediocrity. So she had planned. She had aligned, bargained, pushed her husband to trust her, to trust her plans - because she wanted more than a quiet and comfortable life. She wanted power. She wanted consequence. She told herself it was only fair. She told herself it was necessary.
And now - now everything had come full circle. Her plan had spiraled inward and snapped like a brittle bone. Elliott had brought her home. He had honored her mother. He had welcomed her with sympathy and respect. He had shown her mercy - and she was here to repay that mercy with a treacherous, painful death.
It's for my children, she repeated to herself, a thin, desperate mantra circling her mind, trying to smother the guilt. For my children and my husband. I have to do it.
The final prayer was spoken. Sydney was laid to rest. The ceremony wound down. Elara drew a small breath and met Elliott's eyes again. He looked at her - the warmth in his gaze opened a wound inside her - and the entire crypt seemed to hold its breath.
She remembered more: the nights she had watched him from afar, the small mercies he'd offered strangers that later turned into political capital. Those tiny, human things built up into a reputation she had grown to despise because they showed her what she lacked. He loved life's quietness; she loved its possibility. He wanted to rule with benevolence; she wanted to rule with force. Their differences had set them at odds long before the throne did.
Once he had given her a small flower he had found in the palace garden. She had been twelve and furious and ashamed to accept such a thing from someone she considered low born and a bastard. She'd refused- crushing the flower in front of him and humiliating him in front of the other noble children present there. He'd looked sad. Even now the memory made her throat tighten.
Her hands shook. She wanted, for an instant, to tell him everything - to confess the small cruelties, the planning, the bargain and finally, the fact that Cyrus had sent her. She wanted to beg for forgiveness. She wanted to tell him she had misread herself all along. But confession would not undo the path she'd chosen, or the vial burning in the back of her throat. The past had a gravity all its own and it dragged her toward an end she'd sealed with her own cruel, foolish decisions.
Elliott moved, gently, as if to offer consolation. He looked weary and small beneath the crown and the robes, and her heart - traitorous thing - folded. The guilt lanced sharper.
The torches threw long, thin shadows over the stone. A low murmur of priests rearranging ceremonial cloths filled the gaps between prayers. The high priest closed his book with a measured thud. The crypt felt like a throat closing.
Elara stayed where she was. She had nothing left but the promise she'd whispered to herself: for my children. For their safety. For the one hope she would not let go.
Elliott took a step closer, offering a hand at last - not to accuse, not to force, but simply to reach. The world narrowed to that small movement, and in that narrowing she saw, with a clarity that hurt, that all her schemes would only shatter what he had tried to hold together.
But she had no choice now, did she?
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