Chapter 3 - Blood on the Hearth
The air in the chamber vanished. Aeva felt the room tilt violently around her, the marble floor turning to water beneath her boots.
"Gone?" Aeva’s voice was barely a breath, a fragile sound that threatened to shatter entirely. "What do you mean... gone?"
"The Vanguard arrived at dawn," Dara said, choking back a sob as she clutched a torn, soot-blackened piece of cloth in her trembling hands. "The houses... reduced to ash. The villagers... none survived. Cassian’s private mercenaries must have beaten our men there by a matter of hours. They left this pinned to the charred remains of your old doorway."
Dara held out the cloth. Aeva recognized it instantly—it was the hem of Myra’s favorite tunic, the one she had patched with blue thread just before the imperial collectors arrived. Stained across the fabric was a crude, mocking symbol: the seal of the Grand Chancellor.
Aeva didn't scream. She didn't cry. Instead, a cold, unnatural stillness washed over her, freezing the blood in her veins. The warmth of the golden mark on her chest flared into a scorching, blinding heat, as if the ancient fire within her was waking up to match her fury.
Vaelen stepped forward, his face twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated slaughter. The temperature in the room skyrocketed instantly, the heavy velvet curtains near the window beginning to char at the edges.
"Cassian," Vaelen whispered, the name sounding like a death sentence hissed by a demon. "He has crossed a line that even a thousand years of law cannot protect."
"He didn't just cross a line," Aeva said, her voice terrifyingly calm as she stood up from the bed. She walked over to the heavy oak table where a ceremonial dagger rested—a gift from the armory that she had previously ignored. She picked it up, testing its weight in her hand. "He declared war."
"Aeva, listen to me," Vaelen said, placing a heavy hand on her shoulder. "You cannot walk into the council chamber and slaughter them. That is what Cassian wants. He wants to paint you as a savage, to turn the entire empire against you—"
"I don't care about the empire, Vaelen!" Aeva snapped, turning on him with eyes blazing with the same copper fury that burned in his own. "My sister is gone! A twelve-year-old girl who never asked for any of this, who spent her short life shivering in the cold, was murdered because of a political game between you and your corrupt lords! If I sit here and play the delicate, trembling pet, Myra died for nothing."
Vaelen stared at her, stunned not by her defiance, but by the sheer magnitude of her resolve. In her eyes, he saw no trace of the peasant girl from the pit; he saw an empress forged in the crucible of absolute grief.
"Then we don't wait for them to come to us," Vaelen said slowly, a dark, terrible smile touching his lips. "We take the fight to them."
Within the hour, the palace was in total chaos. News of the destruction of Aeva’s village spread through the corridors like wildfire. The nobles, who had spent the morning plotting her downfall, suddenly found themselves facing an enraged emperor whose bond with the ancient dragon was no longer just a political inconvenience, but an active, breathing terror.
Vaelen and Aeva walked side by side down the grand corridor leading to the Imperial Senate chamber. Guards parted before them like wheat before a scythe, terrified to even look the emperor in the eye.
When the massive gilded doors of the Senate chamber swung open, the fifty high lords seated around the obsidian table fell instantly silent.
Lord Cassian sat at the head of the table, his expression a mask of arrogant confidence—until he saw who was walking beside the emperor. Aeva’s face was stone. In her right hand, she carried the soot-stained cloth of her sister’s tunic; in her left, the polished steel dagger gleamed under the chandeliers.
"My liege," Cassian began, standing up with a smooth, practiced bow. "We were just discussing the unfortunate incident in the outer province. It appears some rogue bandits—"
"Silence, Cassian," Vaelen’s voice cut through the hall like a razor.
The emperor didn't stop walking until he reached the head of the table. With a single, casual motion of his hand, Vaelen grabbed the back of Cassian’s ornate chair and hurled it backward, sending the Grand Chancellor crashing hard onto the marble floor.
"My—My liege! What is the meaning of this outrage?!" Cassian sputtered, scrambling backward, his robes tangling around his legs as he looked up in sheer terror.
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Aeva walked forward, dropping the blood-and-soot-stained fabric directly onto Cassian’s chest.
"You missed one detail, Chancellor," Aeva said, her voice echoing coldly through the silent, packed hall. "Bandits don't leave the seal of the High Council carved into the hearth."
