Vanished Heirs

The morning audience began late.

The Emperor had to be helped to the throne, two attendants steadying him by the elbows as he climbed the dais steps with deliberate and cautious footfalls. His hair had gone completely white, his hands trembling as he gripped the armrests, and when he finally settled into his seat he did not speak, simply stared at the assembled court with eyes that didn’t seem to register faces anymore, as though he looked through them to some distant horizon only he could see.

The Empress took her seat beside him without assistance, spine rigid and jaw set, her fingers pressing white against the throne’s edge. She had always been the hard one, the strong one, but now she looked like stone worn smooth by water, all the detail eroded away, reduced to an essential shape without character. Ilyra stood to the left of the dais, positioned there instinctively the way one learned to position oneself in a court - close enough to observe, far enough not to intrude - with Evander beside her, his presence steady and unobtrusive, his attention on the proceedings yet reassuring in his unwavering stance. Alistair was absent, military inspections in the northern provinces the chamberlain had announced, expected to return within the week.

Minor grievances, mostly. A boundary dispute between two baronies, a complaint about tariffs on river trade. The Emperor nodded at appropriate intervals. The Empress’s expression did not change. Ministers murmured and took notes. The court observed with the practised boredom of people who had seen this ritual a thousand times.

Then the Duchess of Valmere was announced.

The Duchess did not kneel, standing instead at the base of the dais with straight spine and level gaze, silver hair pinned beneath a dark veil, meeting the Emperor’s vacant stare without flinching, with a strength of one that had widowed twice and outlived her only son, yet still continues on. “Your Imperial Majesty,” she said, her voice carrying through the hall with the clarity of someone who had rehearsed this moment many times, “I come seeking truth about my son.”

The Emperor blinked slowly, as if waking. “Your son.”

“Edric Valmere. He served in the Ninth Regiment under Crown Prince Alistair’s command. Two years ago, I was told he died in a border skirmish. I was told he died with honour.”

A pause. The court shifted. Ilyra felt Evander’s attention sharpen beside her, though his posture did not change.

“I have new information,” the Duchess continued, “that suggests otherwise.”

The Empress leaned forward. “What information?”

The Duchess drew a folded document from her sleeve and held it up. “A letter from a man who served with my son. He writes that Edric did not die in battle, that Edric was taken. Detained on suspicion of sedition. Held in a facility near the eastern border, a place with no name and no record.”

She unfolded the letter. Her hands were steady.

“The letter provides names. Dates. A location that matches no official garrison on any map I have seen. My son did not die in a skirmish, Your Imperial Majesty. He was taken by order of the Crown Prince. And I wish to know why.”

Silence spread through the hall like frost.

The Emperor’s hands trembled on the armrests. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked to his wife.

The Empress stared at the Duchess with an expression Ilyra could not read. Not anger. Not sympathy. Something hollowed out and exhausted.

“We will look into this,” the Empress said.

“With respect, Your Imperial Majesty, that is not an answer.”

“It is the answer you will receive.”

The Duchess held her ground a moment longer. Then she bowed, stiffly, and withdrew.

The court remained silent.

The next petition was called, a baron whose estates neighboured Valmere lands, who had received a similar letter about his nephew with different details but the same essential story - taken, not killed, held without trial, no record. Then a third petitioner, a countess from the southern provinces with a letter about her youngest son, all of them offering names and dates and locations so precise, so specific, so consistent in their impossible claims that they could not be dismissed as rumour or grief-madness.

Ilyra watched from her position beside Evander and felt nothing at all.

She knew where those letters had come from. She had helped compile the intelligence that made them possible, the names and dates and locations Alistair had shared with her when he asked for help containing the blackmail threat, all of it given to Evander and now returned here, transformed into weapons in the hands of grieving mothers and furious lords. The truth is coming out, she thought. That’s what matters.

The petitions concluded with the Emperor rising with assistance, leaving the hall without dismissing the court, his silence since the Duchess’s withdrawal now stretching into absence. The Empress remained seated a moment longer, staring at the empty space where the petitioners had stood, before she too rose and departed with her ladies following in silence behind her.

Ilyra turned to leave. Evander’s hand brushed her elbow lightly.

“Walk with me,” he said quietly.

They moved through the corridors away from the dispersing crowd, Evander silent until they reached a gallery overlooking the inner courtyard where servants cleared snow from the stones below, their breath misting in the cold morning air. “Three families,” he said. “That’s only the beginning. More will come.”

“I know.”

“The council will demand answers. The court is already whispering.”

She looked down at the courtyard where the servants worked in their methodical silence. “Alistair will deny it. He’ll claim the letters are fabrications.”

“Will he?” Evander’s expression was thoughtful, assessing, not worried but simply observing the way he always did, cataloguing possibilities.

“The information is too specific,” she said. “He’ll know someone with access leaked it, know he needs to investigate, to contain it before more families come forward.”

“And what will you do when he asks for your help again?”

The question sat heavy with her. She turned back to the courtyard and watched the servants finish their work and retreat indoors, leaving the stones clean and white.

“Help him,” she said. “What else can I do? He’s my brother. He asked me.”

Evander was silent a moment. Then: “Of course. Family should support each other.”

She heard the acknowledgement in his voice and found it steadying, the two of them standing together in the gallery watching the now-empty courtyard while Ilyra told herself that the truth was finally emerging, that it mattered more than how it had come to light. She believed it, or she told herself she did, which amounted to the same thing.

The salon was on the eastern side of the palace, far from the main corridors and the morning’s disruption. Ilyra had chosen it for precisely that reason. Small. Private. Easy to overlook.

Cecilia arrived exactly when expected, announced by a soft knock and the quiet murmur of a servant. She entered without ceremony, dressed in grey wool that made her nearly invisible against the winter light. Her face was pleasant in an unremarkable way. The sort of face one forgot moments after looking away.

“Your Imperial Highness.” Cecilia curtsied, brief and correct. She took the seat across from Ilyra without being invited. They had dispensed with formality after the first meeting, Ilyra waving it away since they’re family.

Evander had suggested the approach a week past. The wife no one watches is the wife who sees everything. He had been right.

Ilyra poured tea. The ritual gave her hands something to do. “You heard about the petitions this morning.”

“The entire palace has heard.” Cecilia accepted the cup with steady hands. “My husband is expected back within days. He will not be pleased.”

“No.”

“The families are only just beginning. More letters will arrive.” Ilyra sipped her tea and said nothing, the silence itself an invitation.

“I have new information.” She drew a folded paper from her sleeve and placed it on the table between them, describing another facility in the northern mountains near the border garrison at Thornridge, a Captain Gerris who handled transfers between sites. Ilyra unfolded the paper to find names and dates, a list of nobles whose heirs had vanished on campaign while their families believed them honourably dead, some entries annotated in Cecilia’s neat handwriting - Still detained. Died in custody. Released but sworn to silence.

“This matches two of the families who petitioned today,” Ilyra said.

“I thought it might.”

Their exchange remained practical, transactional, Cecilia not asking what Ilyra would do with the information and Ilyra not explaining, an understanding between them that what happened after was not discussed. Ilyra folded the paper and set it aside, studying the woman across from her who sat with hands folded and spine straight, expression pleasant and empty, a woman who had learned to survive by being forgettable. Recognition passed between them. Two women who had made themselves small, one by choice for protection, one by circumstance since no one had cared to notice. The moment faded as Ilyra reached for another sheet. “Is there anything else?”

Cecilia hesitated, the pause barely perceptible in the way she reached for her teacup, the barest change in her shoulders, but Ilyra had learned from Evander how to notice such things now.

“What is it?”

Cecilia set her cup down and slid another paper across the table, smaller this time, a single entry copied from a transfer log: Matthias Brennan. Age fifteen. Clerk to the quartermaster’s office. Detained on suspicion of copying sensitive documents. Transferred to northern facility, eighth month of the second year. No record after transfer. Ilyra read it twice, the details arranging themselves into a story - fifteen years old, a clerk’s son, not a conspirator or a threat but a boy who saw something he should not have and paid for it.

Cecilia’s voice, which had been flat and measured throughout their meeting, changed pitch slightly on her next words. “Fifteen when he was taken. I found his name two years ago. There is no record of him after the transfer.”

Ilyra had to swallow the lump forming in her throat before she could ask her next question. “Do you know if he’s still alive?”

“No.”

Ilyra took the paper and filed it with the others, aware that she should feel something specific about this - a fifteen-year-old clerk’s son was not seditious or political or even relevant to anything that mattered, just a boy - and she did have a pressure behind her ribs, the beginnings of a feeling she did not want to form. She pushed it aside. There was work to do, information to process, feelings could be examined later, if at all.

“Thank you,” she said. “This is useful.”

Cecilia watched her with eyes that gave nothing away before speaking again, unprompted, as if Ilyra’s reaction had opened some door between them. “He talks about you, you know. At night, when he cannot sleep.” Ilyra looked up sharply. “He paces, and he talks, saying you are the only one in this family worth anything, that the two of you will fix what the others broke.” A pause, her voice returning to its usual flatness. “He has never spoken about anyone like that - not me, not the officers, not your parents.”

The words landed wrong, not as intelligence, but as confession, intimate and unwanted, the phrase the only one worth anything settling uncomfortably. What she had was his trust. That was all. All it could be. “I thought you should know what you have,” Cecilia added.

Ilyra did not answer immediately, finally saying, “I am sorry for what you have had to endure,” meaning it partly, at least.

Cecilia’s expression did not change. “I have endured eight years, Your Imperial Highness. A few more weeks will not break me.”

“What will you do after?”

“Leave. Go somewhere he is not. Live quietly.” She said it with the certainty of someone who had been planning for a long time. Someone who had a reason to always wear long sleeves and high collars. “That is all I want - to be somewhere he cannot find me.”

Out. Not revenge or justice but escape, and she would help destroy her husband for the chance to walk away. That was something Ilyra understood intimately, having wanted out once herself before wanting the crown, then wanting to fix the empire, and now… she hadn’t had time to think about now, taking things one step at a time.

“Evander will ensure you are provided for,” Ilyra said. “You will have enough to start over.”

“Thank you.”

They finished their tea in silence. When Cecilia rose to leave, she paused at the door.

“Your Imperial Highness. The boy. Matthias Brennan.” She did not look back. “If you mention him to your husband, tell him you found the name yourself. Do not say I gave it to you.”

“I will not mention him at all.”

Cecilia nodded and left without another word.

Ilyra gathered the papers and folded them carefully, planning to give them all to Evander tonight except for the boy’s name, which she would keep to herself, telling herself it was an oversight, an unimportant detail not worth mentioning.

She was lying, and she knew it.

Three days later, the palace decided on a show of normalcy.

A courtyard gathering, meant to reassure. After the morning’s disruption, a garden reception seemed wise, though the gardens were buried under snow. Braziers burned at intervals along the colonnade. Servants moved through the crowd with mulled wine and winter pastries. The court assembled in their furs and velvets, performing the ritual of polite conversation as though nothing had happened.

Alistair had returned, standing near the centre of the courtyard surrounded by his officers with uniform buttoned to the throat and posture rigid, word of the petitions having reached him within hours of his arrival, Ilyra watching from across the throne room as his jaw tightened in the only visible sign of fury contained behind military discipline. She stood with Evander near the colonnade now, a cup of mulled wine warming her gloved hands while the cold bit through her cloak, listening to the courtiers speaking in careful voices about nothing important - the weather, the upcoming festival, anything but the accusations hanging over the gathering like smoke.

Evander was at her side. Calm. Observant. His presence steadied her the way it always did.

Then the first scream.

Ilyra’s head snapped up. A bolt struck the stonework three paces from where the Empress stood. Chips of stone exploded outward. Another bolt whistled past the Emperor’s shoulder and buried itself in a wooden post.

Chaos erupted - people running and shouting, a guard going down with a bolt through his shoulder, a lady stumbling with skirts torn where a bolt had grazed the fabric, courtiers scattering like starlings towards the covered walkways and doorways, anywhere away from the open air. Ilyra froze while Evander did not.

His arm came around her waist, and he pulled her down, shielding her body with his own as another bolt cracked against the column behind them. His weight pressed her into the cold stone. She could not breathe. Could not think. Her heart slammed against her ribs.

“Stay down,” he said. His voice was steady. Absolutely steady.

More bolts. More screams. She heard the thrum of crossbows releasing from the rooftop across the courtyard. The clatter of metal on stone. Boots running. Orders being shouted.

Alistair’s voice cut through the chaos. “Fourth regiment, secure the rooftop! Second regiment, shields around the imperial family! Move!”

His soldiers responded instantly. Shields up. Formation tight. Half a dozen men surrounded the Emperor and Empress, creating a wall of armour and discipline. Another group peeled off and sprinted towards the building where the attackers were positioned.

It happened fast.

Too fast.

Within moments, soldiers were dragging three men down from the rooftop. They wore the insignia of the Seventh Regiment. Army uniforms. Standard-issue crossbows. One of them fought, shouting something about tyranny and the people’s rights. The others went quietly, blank-faced, as though they had expected to be caught.

Ilyra’s breath came in short gasps. Evander’s hand was on her shoulder, grounding her.

“It’s over,” he said quietly.

She looked up. The courtyard was a mess of scattered braziers and overturned tables. A guard was being carried away, clutching his shoulder. Blood darkened the snow. The lady with the torn skirts sat against a column, weeping. But no one was dead. The bolts had struck stonework, fabric, a shoulder. Nothing vital. Nothing fatal.

Evander helped her to her feet while her legs shook, her hands trembling so badly she could barely hold her cloak closed, hating the weakness even as Alistair strode past barking orders to officers who moved like a machine - secure the perimeter, identify the attackers, search for accomplices - the court watching him and Ilyra saw what they saw.

A military commander whose own soldiers had just tried to kill the royal family. A Crown Prince whose army had turned on the throne. Alistair’s men, wearing Alistair’s insignia, firing Alistair’s weapons at the people he was meant to protect.

It did not matter that he stopped the attack. It did not matter that his response was flawless. What mattered was the optics. The army surrounding the court with shields and steel. The efficiency with which armed men moved to obey his commands. The naturalness of it.

They saw a man who could command an army to do anything. Including this.

Evander’s hand was still on her shoulder. She turned into him, needing the steadiness. He held her gently, one winter-cool hand cradling the back of her head.

“I have you,” he murmured.

She was shaking. Her body had not received the message that the danger was past. The adrenaline still flooded her veins, making her heart race and her breath catch. She had known it was coming. She had helped position the evidence that would be found on the attackers. But her body had not known. Her body thought she had nearly died.

“Breathe,” Evander said, and she did - in, out, in, out - while around them the court recovered, servants appearing to right overturned furniture, guards escorting shaken nobles indoors, the Emperor and Empress led away by their attendants moving like people in a dream. Alistair remained in the courtyard interrogating the captured men himself, his voice carrying across the space sharp and unforgiving.

Ilyra pulled back from Evander and watched her brother work.

The attack was manufactured, the bolts aimed to miss, the attackers positioned to be caught. The timing, the targets, the army insignia, all of it calculated for maximum fear with zero casualties.

But Alistair’s response was real.

This was what he did. This was who he was. When violence came, he answered with force. With soldiers. With military control. And it worked. The attack had been stopped. Order had been restored.

But at what cost?

She thought of the courtiers’ faces as they watched armed men surround them. The way they had flinched from the soldiers meant to protect them. The fear in their eyes when Alistair shouted orders and men obeyed without question.

The lie had revealed a truth. Alistair’s first instinct was command.

“Come,” Evander said with a gentle voice. “Let’s get you inside.”

She let him guide her towards the palace, her hands having stopped shaking, her breath steadied, the fear drained away and her mind clear again because there was work to do - Alistair would want answers about the attack, the council would demand investigation, the families who had petitioned that morning would see this as proof of exactly what they feared. Everything was proceeding as it should, all she had to do was keep walking forward.

The emergency council session convened within the hour.

The chamber was cold despite the fire. Ministers filed in with grim faces, wrapping cloaks tight against the chill. The attack had rattled them. An assassination attempt in the palace courtyard. Soldiers turning on the throne. The unthinkable made real.

The Emperor and Empress sat at the head of the table. The Emperor’s hands shook as he reached for his water glass. The Empress stared straight ahead, steel in her gaze.

Alistair stood rather than sat, his uniform still dusty because he had not taken time to change, addressing the council with the clipped precision of a military briefing.

“Three men. All from the Seventh Regiment under my direct command. They had access to the armoury. They knew the patrol schedules. This was not opportunistic. This was planned.”

A minister cleared his throat, mentioning the families who had petitioned that morning, the accusations about detained nobles, the court’s fear, to which Alistair responded that they should be frightened because there was clearly a conspiracy against the throne, someone coordinating these attacks with petitions meant to destabilise followed by an assassination attempt while they were distracted. “Or,” another minister said carefully, “the soldiers acted because of the petitions, because they believe the accusations are true.”

Alistair’s jaw tightened. “The accusations are lies designed to—”

“Are they?” The minister did not raise his voice. “I have known the Duchess of Valmere for thirty years. She is not a liar, and if she says she received evidence about her son with names of three captains who served under you, locations that match no official garrison, dates that align with when these heirs vanished—”

“Evidence can be fabricated, letters forged,” Alistair said, but the room had gone very quiet.

Alistair looked around the table. His gaze landed on each minister in turn. Assessing. Calculating. Finding allies and enemies in the set of their jaws, the angle of their shoulders.

He found fewer allies than Ilyra suspected he had hoped for.

“I am asking for authority to investigate this conspiracy,” he said. “Expand military patrols in the capital. Arrest suspects connected to the attack. Interrogate the captured men to find who is directing them. Give me the tools to protect this family and I will use them.”

“More soldiers in the streets,” a minister said. “More arrests. More interrogations.”

“Yes.”

“Your Imperial Highness. Forgive me. But the court is already afraid of your soldiers. After today—”

“After today they should be grateful my soldiers stopped the attack before anyone died.”

“Who would be grateful over being attacked by the same people that were supposed to protect them?”

Alistair’s hands flattened on the table. “Then what would you have me do? Sit idle while conspirators move against the throne? Wait for the next attack and hope it is as poorly executed as this one?”

No one answered.

The Empress spoke for the first time. “You have the authority you are asking for.” Her voice was flat. Exhausted. “Do what you must.”

The Emperor did not respond. He stared at the table, hand still trembling on his glass.

The council voted. The motion passed. Alistair got what he wanted. More patrols. More arrests. More soldiers in the streets and in the palace.

Every action to protect the throne would make the court fear and suspect him more.

The council adjourned. Ministers filed out, murmuring in clusters. The Emperor was helped to his feet by attendants. The Empress rose and left without a word to anyone.

Ilyra moved towards the door, wanting to discuss the meeting with Evander, when Alistair’s voice stopped her. “Ilyra.” She turned to find him standing in the emptying chamber, his officers having stepped into the corridor to give them privacy, looking tired and older than twenty-eight, the fury from earlier banked now but not gone. “Walk with me.” It was not a request.

They moved through the corridors side by side. Not speaking. Just walking. He led her away from the main halls, into a quieter wing where the afternoon light slanted through tall windows and pooled on the stone floors.

He stopped in an alcove overlooking the snow-covered gardens.

“The captured men are from my regiment,” he said. “Men I have commanded for three years. One of them I promoted myself last summer.”

“I am sorry.”

“Someone turned them. Someone convinced them that attacking the royal family was justified. That I was the threat.” He was not looking at her. His gaze was fixed on the gardens below. “The petitions this morning. The prison information. I have been thinking about who had access to those details.”

Ilyra’s pulse quickened. She kept her expression neutral. Concerned. Attentive.

“It is a small list,” Alistair continued. “My senior staff. The officers who manage the facilities. My wife.” A pause. “You.”

The corridor was very quiet.

“You think someone in your household is leaking information,” she said, her voice steady with appropriate confusion and an undercurrent of concern. Alistair turned to look at her the way he looked at terrain before a battle, searching for weaknesses, for hidden dangers.

“I shared those details with very few people. When you helped me investigate the blackmail, I gave you names. Locations. Dates. The same information that appeared in the petitions.”

“You think I—” She let the sentence trail off. Let the implication hang between them, too absurd to finish.

“I think someone close to one of us is feeding information to our enemies. It could be anyone. A servant. An aide. Someone we trust who we should not.”

He was giving her an exit. A way to explain the leaks without accusing her directly.

She could take it. Blame a servant. Suggest her household had been infiltrated. He would believe it because he wanted to believe it.

“Or,” she said carefully, “you are under enormous pressure. Three siblings lost. Parents who barely speak. A court that questions your every move. And now this attack. It would be easy to start seeing conspiracies everywhere. To suspect everyone.”

“Including you?”

“Including me. But I am your sister. I helped you because you asked me to. Because we are family. Because we are all that is left.”

She held his gaze. Did not flinch. Did not look away.

He studied her. She could see the calculation happening behind his eyes. The weighing of evidence against instinct. The pattern was there if he looked hard enough. Three siblings down since she became politically active. Every piece of leaked intelligence traceable to their conversations. The timing too convenient.

But the alternative was unbearable. That the only sibling who had ever trusted him, who had helped him, who had understood the burden of ruling, was his enemy. That he was completely alone.

He did not want to believe it. And so he would not.

“You are right,” he said finally. “I am becoming paranoid. That is what they want, is it not? For me to suspect everyone. To isolate myself.”

“Yes,” she said gently. “That is exactly what they want.”

“I am sorry. For even suggesting—”

“You do not need to apologise. You are under attack. It is natural to question everything.” She reached out and touched his arm. The touch meant nothing and everything. “But do not let them make you see enemies where there are none.”

He nodded slowly. Exhaled. Some of the tension left his shoulders.

“Thank you,” he said. “For understanding. For not—” He stopped. Started again. “You are the only one I can talk to anymore. The only one who does not look at me like I am already a tyrant.”

The words landed like stones.

“We have all made hard choices,” she said. It was all she could offer.

“Yes. We have.”

He walked away. Back towards the council chambers, towards his waiting officers, towards the crisis that was consuming him.

Ilyra remained in the alcove, watching him go.

He is suspicious.

The thought arrived without emotion. A fact. An observation. Something to note and report.

She would tell Evander tonight. They would need to account for this. Adjust the approach. Ensure no more information traced back to her directly.

The calculation came easily now. No hesitation. No moral weight. Just strategy.

She turned and walked back towards her chambers, hands warm in the soft gloves Evander gave her just this morning, mind already moving to the next step.

The throne room was nearly dark.

Ilyra had not meant to return. But the route from the council chambers passed by the main hall, and she had seen the doors standing open. Heard the silence within. And she had stopped.

The council had ended a while ago, everyone dispersed, and the servants had begun extinguishing the candles along the far walls working their way down the hall in the failing light, not yet reaching the dais where the Emperor still sat on the throne, unmoved, the room undismissed, simply sitting and staring at nothing with hands resting flat on the armrests. Ilyra stood in the doorway uncertain, unable to remember the last real conversation they had shared - something at a state dinner years ago, a compliment about her dress, polite and distant, the sort of thing one said to a minor guest. She stepped into the hall, her footsteps echoing while he did not look up. She climbed the dais steps slowly, the way one approached something breakable, seeing how old he looked with his hair gone white. Not grey or silver but white, while his hands laid on the armrests without gripping, as though he had forgotten they were there.

“Father.”

She was not sure why she addressed him informally, as if they were close. Perhaps because there were no witnesses. Perhaps because he looked like someone who needed to be spoken to as a person, not an institution.

He looked at her. Through her, for a moment, as though he could not quite place her face. Then he focused.

“Ilyra.” A pause. His voice was hoarse, as if from disuse. “You look like your mother. When she was young. Before all this.”

The comparison landed strangely. She did not know what to do with it.

“Father, what will you do?” The question came out before she could stop it. Not about Alistair specifically. About anything. “About the petitions. The attack. What will you do?”

He did not answer for a long time. The silence stretched. One of the servants finished a row of candles and moved to the next. The shadows deepened.

“Your mother always knew what to do,” he said finally. “Even when she was wrong, she knew.” His gaze drifted past her, to the half-dark hall, to the empty space where councillors had stood that morning. “I never did.”

He rose slowly, gripping the armrest for support, not looking at her as he stood, not acknowledging her presence, walking down the dais steps and across the hall, out through the doors, leaving his own throne room like a guest who had overstayed. She stood alone on the dais with the half-dark hall stretching before her and the throne empty behind her.

They have given up. Not today, not because of the attack or the petitions, but months ago, maybe years, and she was only seeing it now because she was only now looking. Her parents had stopped governing, stopped engaging, stopped caring, and they were waiting now - for death perhaps, or for the empire to collapse, or for someone else to take the weight they could no longer carry. They had given up, and in giving up they had left a void.

Someone had to fill it.

The thought should have felt heavier than it did, or perhaps elating in the opportunity it provided, but she simply descended from the dais and left the throne room behind her, the empty throne receding into darkness as the last candles were snuffed.

Evander was waiting in the corridor.

He was leaning against a pillar with his arms crossed, watching the door she had not yet come through because he knew she would linger, the thought sending a flutter through Ilyra’s heart. “Walk with me,” he said quietly.

They moved through the empty corridors in the late evening when most of the court had retreated to their chambers or to the smaller salons where wine and gossip flowed more freely, the palace feeling hollow around them, just footsteps and firelight.

“The council session went as expected,” Evander said.

“Alistair got what he wanted. More soldiers. More arrests. More authority.”

“And the court?”

“Frightened. They gave him what he asked for because they do not know what else to do. But they are afraid of him. Today made it worse.”

Evander nodded, confirming to her that he had come to the same conclusions.

“Your father,” he said. “You spoke with him.”

“Briefly. In the throne room. He was…” She trailed off, searching for the word. “Empty. Hollow. He does not govern anymore. Neither of them do. They have given up.”

“They are exhausted.”

“They are broken.”

They walked in silence for a moment, their footsteps echoing in the stone corridor, before Evander stated, “The council will not act against Alistair without someone to push them - your parents will not push, the ministers will not push, and even if the petitions continue, even if more families learn what happened to their heirs, the pressure will build. Someone has to direct it.” He paused, and she knew what he was saying, who he meant. “The choice is yours,” he said, his voice gentle, simply acknowledging reality - the only capable person in the room was her, the only person with the information, the position, and the will to act.

She looked back down the corridor towards the throne room where the doors were closed now, the empty throne behind them waiting in darkness.

She should feel doubt. Dread. The weight of what he was asking her to consider.

She felt clarity instead. Cold. Clean. Precise. Like the moment before a lightning strike. She had felt this before, with Seraine. The calculation. The necessity. The path forward illuminated by logic rather than emotion.

“What do I need to do?”

The question came out calm and measured, as though she were asking for the next step in a familiar dance rather than the next move in destroying her brother.

Evander looked at her, and answered simply, “Continue.”

They reached their chambers. Evander opened the door and guided her inside. The fire was already burning. Someone had laid out her evening clothes. The room was warm and familiar and safe.

Once inside, Evander explained that the council must see the full scope of the prisons with evidence that cannot be dismissed, names and locations and proof that this was systematic.

“I have that information,- Cecilia provided more this afternoon.”

“Good. The assassination attempt must be connected to Alistair’s command structure, the court must see that his own soldiers acted because they believe he has become a threat to the throne, or the throne has become a threat to him, not foreign agents or conspirators but his own men.”

“The attackers were from his regiment and will say as much when interrogated. And then I do what I have always done.” She heard the words as if from a distance. “I speak truth that no one else will speak.”

He took her hand, his touch cool through the gloves, steadying, the only thing in the world that meant anything anymore.

“You are the only one brave enough to do this,” he said quietly. “The only one who sees clearly. The only one willing to make the hard choice.”

“I will be ready,” she said.

“I know you will.” Her hand stayed in his, her mind already turning over the logistics - which ministers to approach, how to frame the evidence, what tone to strike when she stood before the council and opposed her brother publicly. The pieces were in place, all she had to do was continue walking forward, she was so close to the last step. To the crown.

A thought flittered past her mind, that she had become someone who could calculate her brother’s destruction with the same methodic approach she once applied to library catalogues, who could tell herself it was necessary and feel nothing but clarity. She decided that this made her stronger.

He poured her wine as she sat by the fire, letting the warmth seep into her bones while he settled into the chair across from her. “Whatever happens, we face it together.” She looked at him across the firelight, the man who had taught her everything, who had been beside her through every step of journey, who had never wavered or judged or left her to face anything alone. “I do not know what I would do without you,” she said, the words coming from somewhere deep and true.

He smiled and reached across the space between them to caress her cheek, his touch gentle and soft.

“You will never have to find out,” he said. She smiled in response, unbidden. She wanted him to never leave her side.

They sat together by the fire as the night deepened and the palace settled into silence, Ilyra thinking about the empty throne waiting in the dark and how simple it would be to fill it.

The choice was hers.

It was not hard to make it.