The final echoes of the ceremony had faded. The Stone-Gardens stood empty, save for the silent crypt and the scent of trampled lilies.
The nobles, their duty performed and their loyalties loudly proclaimed, had retreated to the palace to begin the real work of the day: calculating their positions under the new, shadowed king.
In the vast, echoing silence of the throne room, Tenebrarum lowered himself onto the Seat of Shadows. The ancient obsystone was cold, even through the layers of his robes.
He could not fathom that this day—the day he had both dreaded and been groomed for since birth—had arrived. His father was ash and memory. The crown was a permanent, chilling weight. And the throne felt less like a seat of power and more like the heart of a gargantuan, intricate trap.
But one thought burned through the numbness, sharper than grief, more urgent than duty.
Where is Flavia?
The question was a live wire in his blood. The guard's whispered news at the crypt side had been a spark; now, sitting in the consuming quiet, it erupted into a blaze.
She was gone. She had fled. While he was being interred with his father, she was slipping through his fingers.
A cold, meticulous fury settled over him. He did not shout. He did not pace. He simply raised a hand, and from the deeper shadows at the edges of the hall, seven figures detached themselves. They were not guards.
They were wraiths in dark leather, their movements silent, their faces obscured by deep hoods—his personal cadre, the Veiled Blades.
"Find her," Tenebrarum commanded, his voice a low, resonant scrape in the stillness. "Bring her to me. Unharmed." The last word held a particular, threatening emphasis. "You will be rewarded beyond measure."
A ripple passed through them. A reward from Tenebrarum was not mere gold; it was land, title, a permanent erasure of a past crime, a favour that could shape a dynasty.
One of them, a tall figure with a serpent's grace, let out a low, eager sound. "She is just a human, my king. We will find her before the moon is full." His smile was a faint, cruel curve in the gloom.
"Leave," Tenebrarum ordered, the single word final.
They melted back into the shadows, their departure soundless.
Alone again, Tenebrarum's fist clenched, still hidden in the folds of his robe, tightened until his bones ached. The phantom sensation of her skin, the memory of her scent, twisted into a knot of betrayal and possession.
I will punish you for this flight, he thought, the vow a dark current in his mind. Just pray I do not find you.
But before the silence could fully reclaim the room, the great doors sighed open.
Isabelle stood framed in the entrance, backlit by the torches of the hall. She had changed from her mourning silks.
"My lord," she said, her voice a soft, deliberate intrusion. "I thought you might desire… company. Tomorrow is, after all, our wedding day." She stepped inside, letting the heavy ceremonial door coat she wore slide from her shoulders. It pooled at her feet like a discarded shadow.
Beneath it, she was clad in a gown of the finest, thinnest linen.
It was not a dress of court, but a statement. The material clung to every curve, translucent where the torchlight caught it, leaving little to the imagination.
It was cut savagely low, pressing and presenting the full, round swell of her breasts, the smooth slope of her stomach. The hem ended high on her thighs.
It was less a garment and more a suggestion—an audacious, calculated offer.
She took a few steps forward, the whisper of the linen the only sound. "The burdens you carry are heavy," she murmured, her gaze fixed on his masked face, trying to pierce the obsidian to find the man beneath. "One should not bear them alone."
"And of what help," Tenebrarum's voice cut through the intimate silence, colder than the throne stone, "What do you think you are to me? You are only a waste of my time."
The words landed like physical blows. Isabelle flinched, a tremor she couldn't suppress running through her. She forced a slow breath, schooling her features into a mask of serene indifference, as if she hadn't heard the venom in his tone. The act was brittle.
"I could make you forget about her," she pressed on, her voice a husky whisper laced with a promise she didn't feel.
She took another step, the thin linen brushing against the carved arm of the throne. "I could give you what she did not." She leaned in, her body a hair's breadth from his robed arm, her scent—jasmine and ambition—filling the space between them.
"My father gave you as a suggestion to me," Tenebrarum stated, not moving an inch, his masked head turning slowly to face her. The void of his gaze was more terrible than any glare. "That does not mean I cannot disapprove of the gift."
He let the words hang, letting her feel the sheer, dismissive weight of them. Then his gloved hand lifted, not to touch her, but to gesture vaguely at her form.
"You come here, showing me a slackened body that has been… used by age. You make me regret tomorrow's wedding before the day has even dawned."
Isabelle's breath hitched.
The insult was so precise, so cruel, it stole the air from her lungs. She had scrutinized her reflection for an hour, painting and powdering her face, choosing the fabric that would highlight every curve she believed to be her advantage.
But this, he even done with her.
"Look at your face...After all this your still ugly," he continued, his voice devoid of anything but cold observation.
His black-gloved finger reached out and, with a touch that was neither gentle nor rough, swiped a line across her cheekbone. It came away smudged with the thick, pearlescent powder she had applied to hide the faint lines of stress.
He held the stained fingertip before the torchlight, a silent, damning indictment.
"Why are you doing this?" The question left Isabelle's lips not as a demand, but as a wounded plea, shredding the last pretense of her seductive performance.
Tenebrarum did not move from the shadowed hollow of his throne. The obsidian mask gave nothing away, but his voice was a blade honed to a cruel, precise edge.
"You are of no use to me, Matrona. The alliance alone is enough. I do not need you."
The word you was not a pronoun. It was a dismissal of her entire being—her body, her mind, the calculated charm she had wielded as a weapon. It declared her essence superfluous.
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. A wave of humiliation, so intense it was physical, scorched through her veins, incinerating the last fragments of her act.
The psychic slap she had braced for landed, not on her cheek, but directly on her spirit, leaving a sting that resonated in her bones. She had offered herself as a queen, a comfort, a strategic replacement.
He had seen only a painted, aging commodity.
She took a stumbling step back, the stone cold beneath her bare feet.
The thin linen, which moments before had felt like a second skin of power, now seemed to cling with the ridiculous, exposed vulnerability of a shroud.
The beautiful, treacherous gown was a joke, and she was the punchline.
Every minute spent painting her face, every strategic thought that had led her here, was reduced to nothing.
All that remained was the smudge of powder on his black glove and the echo of his ice-cold words.
She stood there, utterly still.
He had not touched her, yet she felt stripped of every illusion of influence, every fantasy of control she had carried into the room.
She was naked in her defeat before the unmovable shadow on the throne, her offered power revealed as powerlessness, her seduction as mere desperation.
The silence that followed was his victory, absolute and complete.
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To be continued...