37. Chapter 37
AMARIA
We didn’t knock on the palace doors. I blew them off their hinges.
Wood and iron exploded inward, scattering across marble floors polished to a mirror shine. Nobles screamed. Guards drew weapons. Somewhere in the chaos, a string quartet stopped mid-note, their bows frozen above their instruments.
I walked through the smoke and debris like I belonged there.
Eryndor stumbled ahead of me, my grip iron on his hair. His wrists were still bound—I'd made sure of that. My family flanked me: Maxx on my left, sword drawn; Serenya on my right, mirror at the ready; Dreadscale at our backs, an executioner waiting on a formality.
The throne room stretched before us, impossibly vast. Vaulted ceilings dripping with crystal chandeliers. Pillars of white stone veined with gold. And at the far end, elevated on a dais of black marble—
The King.
He sat on a throne carved from a single piece of obsidian, its edges sharp enough to cut. Gold armor gleamed in the chandelier light, and even seated, even still, his presence pressed against me. Suffocating. Ancient.
He remained perfectly motionless and silent on his throne while the room around him erupted into carnage and screams. And those eyes—
Grey. The same grey as Eryndor's. Cold and calculating and utterly unsurprised by the turmoil unfolding before him.
He watched me approach with the patience of a spider who'd felt something brush against its web.
I dragged Eryndor up the center aisle, past courtiers who shrank back against pillars to avoid me, past guards who raised weapons and then hesitated when they saw who I was dragging.
Ten feet from the dais, I threw the prince at his father's feet.
Eryndor hit the marble hard. He didn't try to catch himself. Just lay there, breathing, his bound hands shoved against the cold stone.
"Your son." I let my voice carry. "The one you told the realm was dead."
Murmurs rippled through the court. The fae's faces shifted—confusion, shock, the rapid calculations of nobles reassessing everything they thought they knew.
Eryndor shifted on the cold stone. A subtle adjustment of weight. His head tilted toward the court's whispers, mapping the room like a battlefield.
The King said nothing.
"Call off the hunt." I stepped over Eryndor's inert form. "Me and mine walk free. No more Hunters. No more soldiers. No more shadows. Or I tell every person in this kingdom exactly who's been wearing the Crownforged mask."
I held his gaze. Waited.
Your move, old man.
Silence stretched.
Then the King smiled.
"Seize them."
Guards poured down the stairs, from behind the pillars. Twenty. Thirty. More appearing from doorways and alcoves, blades drawn, forming a ring of steel around us.
I smiled back.
Voidbringer and Dawnrender sang free. Beside me, Maxx's flail materialized—solid, weighted, real. Serenya raised her mirror, its surface catching the chandelier light. Dreadscale didn't bother drawing his blade. He just cracked his neck and waited.
The first guard reached me.
He died before he finished his swing. Voidbringer opened his throat; Dawnrender took the one behind him in the gut.
Two more broke from the left—I flicked my wrist and two stars left the vambrace, burying in throats before the guards finished their second step.
The stars snapped back to my forearm, still wet.
Blood sprayed across marble, and then there was no more thinking—only the dance.
The throne room became a slaughterhouse.
Maxx's flail caved in a helmet, the skull beneath it crumpling like wet paper. He spun, caught another guard across the temple, sent him spinning into a pillar.
Serenya's mirror flashed. A guard's sword wrenched itself from his grip and turned on him—driving through his own chest with a move he'd probably practiced a thousand times.
Dreadscale was a force of nature. He moved through the guards like they were made of straw—snapping necks, breaking spines, tossing bodies aside. Three came at him together. Three went down in as many heartbeats.
On the dais, Eryndor wrenched against his bindings. Leather groaned. His shoulders torqued, straining toward the violence, halted by inches. Useless.
But then he went still—the way he went still before a fight, when the Crownforged mask used to do the thinking for him.
His head tracked the battle, but his eyes weren't on the violence.
They were moving across the edges of the room.
The alcoves. The positions of guards who hadn't yet drawn weapons.
Mapping.
I didn't have time to wonder what he was counting.
Because my people were still standing. Still fighting.
Good. Let him see. Let him watch his guards fall and know he'd underestimated us.
I cut down another soldier—Voidbringer through the chest, elbow blade across the next one's temple on the spin. Turned toward the throne—
The King hadn't moved.
His guards were dying. His throne room was drowning in blood. And he sat there, still as stone, watching the carnage unfold with the patience of a man who had already seen how this ended.
Still smiling.
Why is he still smiling?
"Enough."
The King's voice again. Still calm. Still soft. He raised his hand and twelve figures stepped from the shadows at the edges of the throne room. Men and women in slate-grey robes, moving with the synchronized precision of a single organism. Metal cuffs gleamed at their wrists.
"Suppressors." Eryndor's voice, low and urgent. His eyes moved from figure to figure, counting. "Every one in the realm, from the look of it. And those cuffs are magnifiers."
I reached for my power.
Nothing.
The magic beneath my skin went dead, smothered in a single instant.
"No."
The Suppressors formed a net around us. Their Marks pressed down on my power like a hand over a flame. Smothering it.
"Fight anyway," Maxx snarled, raising his sword.
Dreadscale moved.
He was faster than the guards. Faster than the Suppressors. His blade found the nearest grey-robed figure before they could raise a hand—opening their throat in a spray of crimson that painted the marble beneath their feet.
He spun for the next one. And the next.
"Dragonborn."
The King's voice cut through the chaos. He was standing now, risen from his obsidian throne for the first time.
"Halt."
Dreadscale didn't halt. But he slowed. Turned. His blade dripped red onto white stone as he met the King's eyes.
"You will pause," the King ground out, "if you value your companions' lives. I extend immunity to you within my kingdom—if you will hear my terms before you resume your... bloodbath."
The throne room held its breath.
Something passed between them. Old magic. Older than Marks or thrones. I felt it like a pressure change in the air—Dreadscale's power reaching out, wrapping around the King's words, binding them to bone and blood.
The King's jaw tightened.
But he nodded. Curt. Forced.
Only then did Dreadscale lower his blade. Only then did he nod back.
Whatever had just passed between them, the King had lost.
Good.
The King turned his attention to me.
For a long moment, he simply looked. At the blood on my blades. At the bodies of his guards scattered across the marble. At me.
Then he stepped down from the dais. Unhurried and deliberate.
"You came into my home." His voice was soft. Conversational. "Destroyed my doors. Killed my men. Threw my son at my feet like a sack of grain."
He stopped at the bottom of the steps.
"And you think you have leverage?"
I lifted my chin.
"I think your dead son is breathing on your floor and your entire court just watched me drag him in. So yes—I think I have leverage."
Silence stretched between us.
Then the King smiled.
The triumph died in my chest.
"Is that all?"
"You heard me. Your son. Alive. The heir you told everyone was dead. That's not a small secret."
"No," he agreed pleasantly. "It's not."
"Then we have a deal. Our freedom for my silence."
"Ah." He steepled his fingers. "You seem to be operating under a misunderstanding."
He descended the final step. Close now. Close enough that I could see the grey of his eyes. The same grey as his son's.
"Let me clarify."
He brushed invisible dust from his robes.
"You believe you've discovered something I wished to keep hidden. A secret that gives you power over me." He stalked towards me, each footfall deliberate. "Tell me—when you imagined this moment, did you picture me begging? Bargaining? Offering you anything you wanted to keep my shame buried?"
My grip tightened on my blades.
"The truth, Amaria, is far less satisfying." He stopped on the last step, looking down at me with pity. "I was going to announce him anyway."
"You're lying."
"Am I?" He tilted his head. "Think about it. A kingdom dying of Veil rot. Citizens watching their neighbors age and warp and vanish. Fear spreading faster than any plague." He spread his hands. "What does a dying kingdom need, girl? Another executioner? Another masked soldier following orders?"
He smiled.
"No. It needs a Savior."
Shit.
He paused, glancing toward Eryndor with pride.
"Do you have any idea how many assassination attempts there were on my heir before his 'death'?
Rival kingdoms, ambitious nobles, fanatics who believed his Mark made him an abomination.
" The King's lip curled. "A prince is a target.
A symbol to be destroyed. But a masked soldier?
No one wastes resources hunting a shadow. "
A muscle jumped in Eryndor’s jaw. His knuckles scraped the marble. A weapon has a purpose. A prop just fills a costume.
He resumed his circling.
"I gave him time to grow strong. Time to build a reputation that preceded him—a name that enemies feared without knowing whose face wore it. The Crownforged became legend. And legends don't need protecting."
His eyes found mine again.
"But shadows can't perform miracles. Shadows can't stand on balconies and promise hope."
He stopped in front of me.
"Saviors can. And saviors must have names."
"So you were going to—"