Chapter 2
CHAPTER
Azrian
Azrian Vaelros scratched the persistent itch in hiS neck he’d woken with.
The Registry halls were busy today. When he passed by the Weighing chamber, its doors hanging wide open like a beast’s maw, he realized why and scowled.
At least one of those unfortunate souls being Weighed would surely manifest Shadow affinity and be dumped at his doorstep to be trained as one of the Empire’s spies by day’s end.
He allowed himself only one moment to linger and watch. The child currently standing on the dais was dressed in a canary-yellow gown that swallowed her whole, flanked by who must’ve been her governess, judging by the lack of any resemblance in their coloring and features.
Suddenly, the itch at his neck sharpened, turning into a deep burn.
No .
He did not have time for this right now, whatever in the threads this even was. He had orders to execute. A prisoner to interrogate.
He rushed away from the Weighing hall, deeper and deeper into the Registry’s belly, down several flights of stairs.
The more space he put between himself and that room, the more the feeling subsided.
He pressed his fingers against his neck, and while his skin felt warm, it didn’t pulse or hurt.
He made sure to pull his collar higher and stepped into the cell.
The prisoner stood upright, spine pressed against the wall, hands flat upon his thighs. Azrian tipped his head to him, and the man gave him a mild-mannered smile.
“Ah, they sent the Emperor’s Hand himself. What an honor,” the prisoner said, sounding anything but honored. His voice had a softness that belonged to study halls, not battlefields.
In his days as the Emperor’s Hand, Azrian had seized, interrogated, and eliminated twenty-one heretical fanatics like this one. Still, their eyes never failed to unsettle him: one pale, almost colorless, and the other so dark it consumed the light.
They called themselves the Children of the First Flame. And if Azrian could not stop them, they’d bring the Empire to its knees.
“I’m afraid you won’t believe it to be much of an honor, once we’re done.”
Azrian found the rhythm of the prisoner’s body: pulse flickering along his throat, breath stuttering in his chest. The human form, laid bare by a thousand repetitions.
He drew a thread of Destruction magic into a tight knot and wove it into the man’s muscle memory.
The prisoner’s left hand spasmed, then went limp.
The man looked down at the useless appendage with mild interest. “Is that all?”
Veins of blackness branched from the grout lines on the walls, whorls of stone boiled into fissures, and the signature scent of Azrian’s magic, ozone and smoke, clung to the air like the aftermath of a storm.
The prisoner sagged forward, head bowed so that the stubble on his scalp shone in the guttering lamp.
In the time Azrian had spent interrogating the man, the thumbprint of ash on his brow had streaked downward in a gray river.
He regarded the prisoner. “Tell me where you came from, and how you made it into Ilvarenne without being found.”
The prisoner’s mouth curled in a slow smile. “How does one usually reach a place? My feet brought me here.”
Azrian made a sound low in his throat. No Child had ever broken quickly, and this one was no different. Fortunately—for Azrian, not for the man—the Emperor’s Hand had been trained his whole life to destroy.
“Very well. If not how, then tell me why you are in the capital.”
“Can a man not simply be paying his respects to our almighty Emperor and his unfailing Registry?”
For the briefest instant, Azrian’s mouth quirked. “So you do wish for pain, then.”
He slipped another thread into the man’s nerves—a quick, precise stitch, pain sharp as a cracked tooth and then gone. The Child’s jaw tightened. A shiver ran through him, but he did not cry out.
The lamp guttered, and a coil of shadow sank over the cell. Azrian closed the gap between them until only a breath separated his lips from the crown of the Child’s head. He placed his thumb and forefinger at the hinge of the prisoner’s jaw and forced his head up.
“Tell me about the Fade. Why is magic unstable? Why do the blood vows unravel?”
“I wouldn’t know,” the Child said, but the words came out thinner, the bravado starting to splinter. “Perhaps the Registry’s work was never as perfect as you believed.”
Azrian lashed another woven spiral of magic through the Child’s musculature and watched him ride the pain. “Speak plainly, now. How did your people manage to infect the Empire with such a blight?”
The Child’s whisper was nearly lost to the stone.
“We are not responsible for what you accuse us of. Your Emperors have built their throne on sand. They have been choking the magic, forcing it into bonds it was never meant to bear. And you wonder why it sickens? The First Flame burns in every soul. The more you try to smother it with your Registry contracts, the more toxic the smoke becomes.”
Azrian clenched his jaw. It was always the same story—same circular answers, same cryptic proclamations. He’d been chasing Children for over a cycle and had nothing to show for it but more questions. The Gilt was no less Fading. “What are you, then, if not the traitors we seek?”
“You want to believe there is an enemy you can blame, to pacify your people when they demand justice. But you’re breaking your own kingdom trying to find one.” The Child’s lips twisted, bloodless. “What happens when there’s nothing left for you to destroy, Lord Death?”
Azrian stepped back, the movement crisp. “That is not an answer.”
“What answer would suffice? A confession you can parade? A name you can silence?”
Azrian forced himself to breathe. He’d been at this for hours; the man would not yield. The Hand was a patient man by necessity, but patience was not the same as mercy.
“You’re not the first to think yourself immune to pain.
You won’t be the last. But I assure you,”—he wove a knot of magic against the Child’s shoulder, sending a slow, deliberate pulse of Destruction through the bone, just enough to sting the marrow and grind the joint against itself—”there are thresholds even zealots respect. ”
The man’s head lolled back. Azrian caught the faintest twitch in his jaw, as if amused by the futility of the exercise.
“You can break every bone in my body, but the Fade cannot be stopped by culling the Children. Every blood vow your Registry performs widens the hole. It allows fertile ground for the disease to spread.”
Azrian let the silence stretch, let the words settle like soot. “This is heresy.”
“And yet…” The Child’s tongue darted across his lip. “You could have killed me by now, but you’re not certain I’m lying.”
Even though Azrian would never admit it, the Child had a point; Azrian knew more than most how the Registry’s work served none but themselves.
“The Empire built its machinery.” The Child flashed his teeth. “Bound the world in vows and contracts. Forced magic into order. But they can’t contain what was born for freedom.”
“You are not the first to attempt a revolution. The Empire has withstood worse.”
“It has not. You’re running out of time. The more you tighten your grip—”
Azrian wove another knot and, this time, targeted the Child’s skin, slowly rotting the flesh away from his bones.
Finally, the man screamed. The echo filled the cell, and for a moment, there was nothing else.
But even in agony, the Child gave no new answers.
Azrian had wasted enough time. He wove an intricate pattern of figure eights and pushed it into the man’s chest. The ash-like threads probed the Child’s soul, finding the seat of his magic and engulfing it.
It was wild and uncontrolled, whipping Azrian’s threads like a tempest with sails.
Azrian dug deeper, feeling the Child’s will spiral outward, desperate and frantic, like the final bucking of a wild creature.
Magic, even in its rawest form, was a lattice—a geometry of will and memory, tangled with the essence of a person. Azrian’s own affinity had always been surgical, a scalpel in a world of hammers. He sank it into the Child’s open wound of a soul and began to unravel.
The effect was immediate. The prisoner’s back arched, eyes rolling until only the whites showed, mouth stretched in a rictus of unvoiced agony. The air thickened with ozone. Azrian wove faster, tighter, hands precise, each cut a clean severance. The wild magic fought, but Azrian’s will was iron.
The man collapsed, boneless, sweat and snot pooling on the stone. His breathing was ragged, each inhale a shallow, watery gasp. The room felt smaller, suddenly. Azrian let the last of the threads dissolve, and the Child’s aura guttered out, leaving a hollow where once there had been a storm.
Azrian exhaled, the taste of copper sharp in his mouth.
Sweat stung his eyes. He smoothed his hair, composing the mask he’d wear for the next audience.
The scent of ozone lingered. Then the Hand locked the cell behind him and ascended the stairs with measured steps, already rehearsing the words he would use to explain to the Emperor and the High Binder another dead end.
In the Registry’s corridors, Azrian’s footfalls echoed in time with the thrum of his own pulse—a thing he’d trained himself, long ago, to ignore. Control was everything. The body was a vessel; the mind, a blade. In the main hall, the scent of old parchment and wax assaulted him.
Movement caught his eye. A woman crouched at the juncture of the private halls.
Her dress was plain, almost severe, but it could not disguise the tension in her shoulders or the way she hugged the wall, like she hoped to disappear into the stone.
Her hair fell in loose, golden waves. He almost dismissed her.
Almost. Then subtle recognition brushed the edges of his memory.
She was the governess from earlier, the one who’d stood by the young debutante on the dais.
Why was she still here? The woman rounded the corner and nearly collided with a Registry attendant.
The man dropped his papers. She bent to help, hands wobbly.
The attendant mumbled and vanished, leaving her alone, exposed.
That was when she sensed him. Her head snapped up.
Their gazes met. Her eyes were the most startling blue, the waters of the Corven Strait on a sunny day.
For the briefest instant, the world narrowed to the two of them.
Golden light erupted from beneath her gown, so bright and sudden it seemed to sear the very air.
It poured from her collarbone and spilled down her chest in molten waves, gilding her skin, catching in the hollow of her throat.
Azrian felt the answering flare once again, even stronger now, and this time he couldn’t stop it from breaking out—a cold, obsidian fire igniting at the base of his own neck, burning through flesh and bone.
He could not breathe. He could not look away.
A searing realization slashed through the haze. These marks the Registry had so liberally unleashed on the Gilt this Season—the flaring must’ve been how they found each other.
And if anyone saw, if any witness reported even a flicker of what had just transpired, the consequences to his personal life would be catastrophic.
It’d taken Azrian cycles to carve out some semblance of autonomy from the shackles of his role. He couldn’t allow the Empire to subjugate him with another match.
So, with singular focus, he rushed toward her.