It was time.
Elara swayed — a careful, calculated sway, a delicate, measured motion that looked like faintness from grief. Her hand fluttered to her brow, dabbing dry eyes with a handkerchief she didn't even need. She painted the perfect picture of a grieving daughter overcome by sorrow, fragile on her feet. And Elliott, of course, was the closest to her. By protocol, since she was a married woman and he was her only blood relative here, he is the one who should steady her.
Elliott, as expected, stepped forward. His heart ached at the sight. To him, she looked like grief itself was about to topple her. He was the emperor, yes, but right then he didn't seem to care for titles. He wanted only to be her brother.
"Elara," he said softly, his voice weighted with concern. His hand closed around her elbow- steady, reassuring. He leaned closer, his mouth already shaping whispered words of comfort. "The Empress Dowager is in a better place now—"
She looked up at him with eyes wide and wet, stormy grey swimming with tears. Her grip on his arm tightened. Not to steady herself. No — it was a desperate, final clutch.
"I'm so sorry..." she whispered. Her voice cracked, begging in a way she had never begged before. "Please... forgive me in the afterlife if you can. I have to do it... for my children."
Before Elliott could process the strange, fractured apology, before he could even question it — she spoke the words. The incantation. Not loud, not shouted. Just two small words. But they cracked through the air with an unnatural, shattering force.
The effect was instantaneous.
Elara's hand — the one clutching Elliott — began to liquefy. Flesh sloughed from bone like melting wax, her screams tearing through the crypt. The sound was ragged, more animal than human. Where skin dissolved, there was no muscle, no blood — only a swirling, writhing darkness, claws of void pushing through her as her body collapsed in on itself.
She hadn't walked into the crypt as a living woman. She hadn't been alive at all. She had walked in already a corpse, a vessel stuffed with necrotic magic, a shell waiting to be torn apart. The poison wasn't on her.
She was the poison.
The darkness didn't burst outward in wild chaos. No — it concentrated. It lunged toward the one figure beside her. Elliott.
It latched onto him with claws like black death, snaking up his arm. Tendrils of annihilation seeped beneath his skin. His eyes went wide, confusion and terror flashing across his face — he didn't even have enough time to fully register what was happening before the corruption started to take hold.
Two minutes. That was all the magic needed. Two minutes to consume him. To reduce Elliott Lancaster to nothing but rot and memory.
But it never got that far.
Aiden's gaze had been locked on her from the moment she swayed. His chest had been heavy with dread, the pounding anticipation of a man who lived in paranoia, whose entire soul was bound to protecting Elliott. When she whispered her frantic apology, Aiden knew. His body moved before thought could form.
Cyrus had gambled that vigilance would wane. That the grief and formality of the crypt would soften suspicion. That surprise would be enough to buy the seconds needed for Elliott to die.
Cyrus had gambled wrong.
Because Aiden's worry wasn't something that flickered on and off. It was a state of being. His paranoia was not caution — it was a way of life.
He didn't shout. He didn't hesitate. He didn't even care if he was wrong and would be seen as a madman who drew a blade on a grieving queen in a crypt.
The moment he heard the apology, he moved.
The moon-forged sword thrummed warm in his grip, the sacred metal alive with power. As Elara dissolved into darkness, the certainty crashed into him. He was right.
The blade cut through the air, as Aiden rushed forward. It gleamed faintly, almost eagerly, like it too had waited for this moment.
Had it been steel, it would have been useless. But this was moon-forged. And it was the only hope they had.
Aiden lunged, every thought condensed into one frantic, screaming mantra: Elliott, Elliott, Elliott.
The celestial blade drove straight into Elara's collapsing chest, piercing through to the heart — the core of the curse.
The shrieks twisted. The darkness didn't howl in triumph anymore. It screamed in agony, its writhing shadows curling, thrashing, unraveling.
And then, with a sickening collapse of flesh, blood, and bone, Elara fell. She was nothing but a mangled mass now. The darkness dissipated. The spell was broken.
But the damage was already done.
The poison had touched Elliott.
Aiden turned just in time to see it spreading, his heart cracking in his chest. Elliott's knees buckled, a choked gasp forcing its way out of his throat. His right arm was already blackening — veins turned into spiderwebs of writhing shadow over silver scars. His skin drained pale, deathly pale, his body trembling violently. Fingers twitched helplessly. He couldn't fight it, not alone.
Aiden had been fast enough to stop the annihilation. But not fast enough to stop the poison's grip. Elliott wasn't dead, but he wasn't safe. He wasn't out of danger. He was still in grave danger.
The sword clattered from Aiden's hands, the sound echoing like thunder in the now-silent crypt. He dropped to his knees beside Elliott, gathering him in his arms. His hands hovered, shaking, afraid to touch. Not because he feared infection. Never that.
He was afraid of making it worse. Afraid of causing Elliott even a flicker of more pain.
"Elliott," Aiden breathed. His voice cracked, breaking under its own weight. "Elliott. Elliott. Look at me. Please, look at me."
Elliott couldn't answer. His eyes fluttered, heavy-lidded, hazy with pain.
Aiden's mind — usually sharp, calculating, strategic — was blank. Wiped white with screaming panic. He felt Elliott's body go slack against him, saw the blood trickling from his lips.
This wasn't real. It couldn't be real.
This was a nightmare. One of the countless ones that stalked Aiden's sleep. He had seen this so many times before — Elliott poisoned, Elliott collapsing, Elliott slipping from his grasp in a dozen different ways. And always, always, he woke. Breathless, sweat-soaked, heart pounding. He would roll over and see Elliott sleeping beside him, safe. Warm. Alive. He'd brush his fingers against him and remind himself it was just a dream.
But this... this wasn't a dream.
This was a nightmare he couldn't wake from.
There was no Elliott safe beside him. No comfort waiting in the dark.
There was only Elliott in his arms now, fading, trembling, his breath shallow, his body cold.
And the crushing, choking reality that Elliott might die.
That possibility — staggering, unthinkable, unbearable — was suddenly real.
Just now. Just when Aiden thought they had everything. Just when they had found balance. Just when they'd found love. All of it could be stolen because of one man's hatred and ambition. Just like that.
Aiden couldn't think. He couldn't shout for healers. He couldn't bark orders. His voice, his thoughts, his entire body was frozen.
All he could do was hold Elliott. All he could do was choke on the sight of the man he loved more than life itself, withering in his arms, because maybe — just maybe — he had been a second too late.
And that second might cost him everything.
A deafening sort of silence followed — one more morbid than any scream, any wail of agony could have been. It wasn't just silence, it was a vacuum, sucking the air out of the crypt, leaving behind something cold and unbearable.
Then, suddenly, chaos.
One of the nobles broke free of the stupor, their voice cracking from the sheer horror of what had happened in the span of seconds.
"HEALERS! NOW! The emperor — the emperor has been poisoned!"
The single shout was like a spark. It tore the room from its haze, shattering the frozen moment into frantic motion. People stumbled back in horror, skirts and cloaks brushing the stone floor as they recoiled. Guards scrambled in, their boots striking like thunder against the crypt's stone. Whispers cut sharp through the air. A few nobles turned pale, some swayed as if faint, their gazes darting again and again to the mangled ruin of blood and bone that had been Elara only moments before.
But Aiden didn't move.
He didn't speak.
He was already gone — swept into some numb, empty headspace where sound and movement did not reach him. He remained on his knees, cradling Elliott's shuddering form as though he were holding the most precious, fragile treasure in the world.
And mentally... something inside him broke. Shattered.
His mind — usually sharp, calculating, a fortress of instinct and strategy — was utterly silent. For once, there was no plan, no tactic, no order to bark. There was nothing.
The obsessive love that drove him, that lived at the core of his very being — the love that had kept him alive through everything — it had splintered under the sheer magnitude of worry and terror. It was too much. It was far, far too much.
Aiden could only stare. The world moved around him, blurred and frantic, but he stayed locked in place. The healers rushed in. Their voices, raised and frantic, sounded like muffled echoes to him, like shouts from under deep water. He barely registered them as they worked, as they pried at Elliott's sleeve, uncovering the blackened flesh of his arm.
He didn't even react as Elliott was lifted, carried out, his body limp in their arms.
Aiden knew — he knew — he should have been moving with them. He should have been looming by their side, the silent, watchful shadow ensuring every action was precise, flawless. He should have been following, ready to rip the world apart if even one healer faltered.
But he didn't move.
He couldn't.
His body refused to obey. His legs felt carved from stone, his lungs heavy as lead. A deep, primal terror had rooted him to the cold floor.
Because he was afraid.
Afraid of what he would see if he followed. Afraid that the faint, flickering hope in the healer's eyes would extinguish the moment they looked closer. Afraid that if he stepped into that chamber, if he dared to watch too closely, he would see the light fade from Elliott's eyes — and he wouldn't be able to stop it.
He was terrified of the reality pressing down on him, the reality he couldn't push away: that losing Elliott wasn't just a fear anymore. It was possible. It was happening.
At last, his voice broke the haze. Hollow. Quiet.
"Everyone... out."
The words dropped heavy into the air, leaving no room for argument.
The crypt emptied. Nobles filed out in a hush of rustling robes and whispered prayers. Some guards hesitated, glancing at Aiden as though waiting for a counter-order, but in the end, they obeyed. Even the high priest, pale and stiff, lingered only a moment.
"Your highness—" he tried, his voice trembling.
"Out."
The single word, soft but unyielding, cut him off. And so the priest obeyed.
Finally, the crypt was empty.
Only the heavy sweetness of funeral lilies remained, mixed now with the acrid tang of ash from Elara's corpse. The air smelled of decay, of endings. Of death.
And then, in the echoing silence, the tears came.
Not the sharp, dignified moisture he had sometimes allowed in solitude. No — these were raw, uncontrolled. They fell in uneven streaks, carving clean tracks down his pale face. His chest heaved with a sound he couldn't quite control, a quiet sob choking in his throat.
Aiden had never cried like this. Not after he'd grown up. These were the sort of tears that broke the body as much as the heart. He had thought himself beyond it, he thought of himself as hardened, incapable of such weakness. But now the grief ripped out of him like it had been waiting his whole life to be freed.
His eyes stayed wide, unblinking, as if frozen in disbelief, as if his body hadn't yet learned how to comprehend the weight of what had just happened.
And so he wept.
Alone in the crypt, where no one could see.
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