Domb!
The heavy, bone-deep sound of the throne room doors closing echoed like a coffin lid sealing shut.
"I warned you." Isabelle's laugh was a clean, silver sound in the sudden, suffocating quiet. Her smile was no longer hidden—it was a blade fully unsheathed, gleaming as she watched the guards drag Camilla and Tiberius forward. Her dark eyes didn't blink; they tracked them like a hawk sighting wounded prey.
"Stop… sto—" Camilla's voice shattered into a choked, wet gasp.
The vanadium collar around her neck didn't just restrain—it burned. A low, magic-smothering heat seared her throat with every ragged pull, branding her with the King's own brutal signature etched into the alloy.
Her fingers, white-knuckled and trembling, clawed at the smooth, unforgiving metal. Her nails scraped uselessly, finding no clasp, no weakness, only her own panicked pulse hammering against the trap.
Beside her, Tiberius was a statue of forced calm. His jaw was a hard, locked line, his eyes fixed straight ahead on the distant dais. He didn't struggle.
His mind was a whirlwind of calculation—the number of guards (twelve), the width of the doors (too wide to barricade), the cold, telling absence of his own sword at his hip. But his right hand, bound tightly behind his back, twitched. A single, spasmodic jerk of the fingers toward where Camilla knelt, as if his body, against all his discipline, reflexively tried to reach for her through the empty, charged air.
Isabelle fell into step beside the grim procession. She moved with a predator's grace, close enough that Camilla could smell her perfume—cloying jasmine undercut by something sharper, colder, like frost on a grave. Her lips brushed near Camilla's ear.
"I told you," she whispered, the words a venomous secret. "You would die."
In the throne room, the air was thick with the scent of incense, illness, and fear.
They were forced to their knees on the cold, polished stone floor. The impact jarred up Camilla's spine. Tiberius went down with a controlled stiffness, his shoulders tensed, refusing to bow his head fully.
"You have disgraced this court, Camilla."
King Mortifer's voice was a ruin of its former power, shaking with a rage that his body could no longer contain.
He tried to lean forward from his obsidian throne, but the motion triggered a wracking, deep cough that convulsed his entire frame. One of his two attending wives—her face a mask of practiced concern—rushed forward with a square of black silk.
He seized it, coughing into the fabric, his knuckles blanching. When he pulled it away, the center was bloomed with a wet, shocking crimson.
THICK BLOOD.
The king's illness wasn't just present; it was painting its victory on the symbols of his reign.
"Father, you have to hear me—" Tiberius's voice was a low, urgent whisper, his forehead nearly touching the cold floor in a desperate show of submission.
"SHUT UP!" Mortifer tried to roar, but it dissolved into another hacking, breath-stealing cough.
His free hand, skeletal and speckled with age, gripped the throne's armrest so tightly the tendons stood out like wires.
His two wives hovered, one dabbing his brow with a cloth, the other supporting his shuddering back, their eyes darting nervously between their king and the prisoners.
Camilla's eyes were wide, her blue irises swimming with tears of pain, shame, and a dawning, absolute terror.
She wasn't looking at the king. Her gaze was locked on the blood-darkened silk in his hand, understanding that the man who held her life in his grasp was already halfway to the grave—and that made him more unpredictable, more dangerous than ever.
"I have called your brother," the king rasped, each word a struggle that echoed in the silent hall. He waved the stained cloth weakly toward the great doors. "Your judgment… will be his alone to handle."
A ripple of unease passed through the court. To defer judgment was to show weakness. To defer to Tenebrarum was to unleash a storm.
As if summoned by the king's fading authority, the massive doors groaned open once more.
Tenebrarum entered.
His arrival was not an entrance; it was an occupation. The darkness of the hall seemed to deepen, to pull toward him. His black cape flowed behind him like liquid shadow, undisturbed by any breeze. He walked with a silent, purposeful grace that made the armed guards seem like statues.
He stopped several paces inside, his faceless mask scanning the scene. His head tilted slightly—a predator noting an anomaly. His gaze swept over the kneeling forms of Camilla and Tiberius, the tense court, and the satisfied gleam in Isabelle's eyes.
His head turned, a slow, deliberate pivot toward his father. The question hung in the air, unspoken but screaming from the stillness of his posture.
"Father." The single word cut through the thick silence, stripped of its usual cold edge. In two long strides, Tenebrarum was at the dais, his dark cape settling around him like folding wings. He ignored the kneeling prisoners, the watching court, even Isabelle. His focus tunneled to the man on the throne.
"Are you okay?" His voice was lower, a private rumble meant only for the king's ear, yet it carried in the dead quiet. His gaze—behind the mask—locked onto the bloodied silk clutched in his father's trembling hand.
Yes. All his life he had been told he would rule the kingdom. He had been groomed for the crown, hardened for the throne, his destiny a weight he had learned to carry without question.
But maybe they had forgotten to add the clause: his father must die.
He had envisioned seizing power from a king, not catching a fading ghost. He had prepared for a challenge, a victory… not this slow, bloody unraveling. Seeing the proof of decay so starkly in his father's hand, he felt not triumph, but a cold, hollow revulsion. He never wished to see him like this again.
"It is my time," the king whispered, the words a frayed thread of sound. He let the bloodied cloth fall to the dais, as he continued coughing. "What you should care about… is these fools."
Fools.
The word was a key, turning in the lock of Tenebrarum's understanding. His gaze—a palpable force even through the mask—snapped from his father to the two figures kneeling on the stone.
It wasn't just disobedience. It wasn't mere scandal.
They had done things they shouldn't have.
The hollow feeling inside him crystallized into something sharp, focused, and utterly cold. The dying king had just handed him a blade and pointed it at the perfect target. The storm of his anger, momentarily paused by pity, now had a direction.
And it was aimed straight at Camilla and Tiberius.
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To be continued...