But why? What good will any of this practically do?a small voice grounds me back in reality. We’re still trapped, prisoners of the Ironhold, unless Selen plans to free us now. But even then, how long would it be before we’re caught again? It’s impossible to hide from the empire’s grip forever. There is no part of these lands it does not reach. And surrounding the Thalyrian continent is the Dusken Deep, waters I’ve heard even the most hardened seafarers fear to navigate.
“It's time to move on,” Selen says after a long pause. “Orphara.”
The void drake, who has been circling the spire, glides back to our platform. We mount her carefully, in the same formation as before. My body settles into the drake's massive palm with more ease this time, while Byron takes his place in the opposite claw.
“Where are you taking us now?” Talyra asks Selen, her voice tight.
Selen doesn't answer. A moment later, Orphara’s massive wings unfurl, lifting us into the air once more.
I expect us to turn back toward the Ironhold, our illicit excursion complete. Instead, Orphara banks west, her pace slower now, deliberate, as she glides over a different section of the palace complex.
Below us spreads a vast garden of strange perfection: geometric patterns of hedges and flowering trees, interspersed with fountains that catch the light. The garden is walled off from the rest of the complex, clearly private and exclusive. I squint down at it, noticing a small gathering at its center. Perhaps two dozen figures in elaborate court dress, clustered around some kind of structure.
A ceremony?
Orphara descends slightly, bringing us close enough to see more details. What comes into focus makes my breath catch.
In the center of the garden stands an altar, not of stone or marble, but something pale and organic. It takes me a moment to recognize it for what it is: fused dragonbone, hundreds of vertebrae and ribs melded together into a sweeping, strangely beautiful monument.
Before the altar, a line of nobles kneel, heads bowed. One by one, they rise and step forward, each carrying a small vessel: an ornate vial or goblet, the contents dark.
They pour the liquid into a basin set atop the bone-carved structure, their movements slow, almost ritualistic. The figure who stands behind the altar observes each in turn, never speaking, never shifting.
A figure I can now see quite clearly.
The emperor.
I’ve seen his likeness before, pressed into coins, embroidered in imperial thread, but none of it captures the stillness of him. He stands at the center of the gathering like a fixed point, unmoving while the rest of the world seems to tilt around him. His posture iseffortless, seeming almost absent of breath, and yet everything about him demands attention.
I can’t make out every line of his face from this height, but the impression alone is enough to chill me. His hair gleams with the white-silver of winter’s frost, colder than snow, sharper than ice. His gaze—though too far to pierce—seems to press against the air itself, heavy, glacial.
Even from above, I feel the hush ripple outward. Nobles bow their heads in awe, or fear. The way silence falls over a frozen lake.
They say his line descends from the Frostcourts. If so, he has inherited something of their traits: the power to still a room.To freeze rebellion before it can even take breath.
He is mortal, yet not merely so. His line rose in the aftermath of the Hollow Wars, when it was said a single mortal fae seized the vacuum the warring fae courts had created: a man with hunger rather than a gift, who carved his claim from the ruins. He bound the shattered courts with oaths written in blood, claimed dominion over what the fae themselves had broken, and crowned himself the first emperor. His descendants have ruled ever since.A dynasty defined not by its own power, but by the silence left in the wake of the magic they perpetually banish.
And this one—this emperor—seems to embody that inheritance perfectly. Emperor Sylthan. He does not look young. He does not look old. He looks… untouched. As though even time itself refuses to lay a hand on him. Not mercy. Not grace. Something colder.
The nobles step back, and the emperor approaches the basin. Whatever happens next, I don’t truly see, for it’s too far.
But I see what follows.
Some of the nearby flower bushes—lush, brilliant things—begin to curl inward, folding like they’ve aged a decade in a breath. It feels like the garden flinches, though nothing visibly moves through it. And the emperor stands straighter.
I hardly breathe as I stare at the scene. I swear I see a faint luminescence ripple beneath his skin—and then it is gone.
Was that… some kind of magic?My mind scrambles for another explanation, but finds nothing.
My stomach twists in on itself.Magic.Not parlor tricks or street illusions, but real magic, worked openly and deliberately within the heart of the Crown City, not only tolerated but revered?
I look toward Byron, searching for confirmation that I haven’t imagined it, that this isn’t some delirious waking dream. His gaze is frozen on the scene.
Of course the emperor would be above the rules. Of course the world is built on lies.
The emperor, standing at the center of his world, apparently dealing in some kind of power through ritual while the nobility look on, complicit or numb to the blasphemy of it. The very thing they claim to hate, to suppress out of necessity in order to maintain law and order, at the root of their own authority.
Perhaps I should have expected it. But the truth is new to me, raw and electric. I can feel it crawling up the inside of my skin. Not just the hypocrisy, but the sheer scale of the lie. How many must have died for things a thousandth as bold as what we just witnessed? How many broken bodies in the pits, how many children vanished into the Collectors’ nets, how many fae burned or hanged or left to rot for the crime of inheriting something… the empire wants to keep for itself?
