Chapter 15
CHAPTER
Azrian
The summons came at midnight, and Azrian knew before he reached the Registry that something had gone awry. They only called the Emperor’s Hand at this hour when they needed something buried.
This late, the Registry resembled a sepulcher, all cold grandeur and perfect symmetry.
Rain hammered outside as Azrian’s steps echoed on the corridors’ polished marble.
The High Binder awaited him in their office atop the Spire, the ritual veil hanging motionless despite the drafts that stirred the tapestries along the walls.
“The Hand arrives,” they observed, not bothering to turn. “His Majesty grows restless with the delay.”
“I came once I received the summons,” Azrian said. “How may I be of service?”
The High Binder arranged documents upon the table, imperial seal glinting in the chamber’s diffuse light. “Time carries particular significance tonight. The Bennetts died.”
The Bennetts. Azrian scanned his memory. They were the first marked couple of the Season to match, the first to undergo a blood vow. “How?”
“You ought to leave those considerations to the Registry, Hand,” was the sharp reprimand. Then, the High Binder flipped through the documents. “Though it would be a lie to say I do not believe those heretics to be involved.”
They spat the word, and Azrian didn’t need to ask whom they meant.
“If they can conjure something wicked like the Fade, surely, they are not above using it to dissolve a freshly forged bond,” they continued. “We have reason to believe they are threatened by this Season’s most brilliant innovation… its very success would unravel their schemes.”
The Binder’s tone was clipped, certain. Did they realize they’d, perhaps indirectly, given Azrian the cause of death? Azrian saw, vividly, the Bennetts at the Symphony Ball, marks displayed with all the confidence of the newly chosen, the Gilt in awe.
Marks like his. Like Miss Almarien’s.
If even marked couples could be subject to the Fade, was there truly no escape from the Children’s curse?
Something tightened in his throat the longer he thought about it.
A freshly forged bond. The Fade was a slow, inexorable disease.
That the Bennetts had died so quickly meant either that the Children had found a way to accelerate its progression, or that the Registry had indeed miscalculated something in the magic of the marks, and they provided not immunity from the Fade, but kindling for it. Both options were deeply troubling.
“A tragedy.” The words tasted hollow. “Their marks were witnessed throughout the Gilt.”
The High Binder gestured to a ledger bound in pale leather. “Indeed. This creates complications the Registry cannot tolerate.”
It became clear, in that moment, what would be required of him. “You wish for the Gilt’s memories to be altered.”
“His Majesty demands it.” The command brooked no argument. “The funeral provides optimal conditions for your… talents .”
The ledger lay open to a list of names. Azrian scanned it, committing each entry to memory. When he saw Miss Almarien’s name nestled among the others, something in him recoiled—a bright, jagged resistance, unwelcome and dangerous.
“The operation carries complexities.” Azrian’s voice remained steady even as his spirit was anything but.
“Complexities the Empire deems acceptable.” The High Binder closed the ledger with a decisive snap. “Knowledge of their marks would breed questions, and questions would benefit the Children in their rebellious pursuits. You might imagine that the Registry cannot tolerate this.”
It was all so clear, so logical, and yet the implication hung between them, heavy and unspoken. If the Bennetts’ fate became known, others might question the vows themselves. Others might resist.
Though perhaps, resistance was not so unreasonable, if the marks carried such dangers, whatever the reasons for them. Who was Azrian, to deprive the Gilt of that choice?
Not that he hadn’t done similar—and perhaps worse—things, in his cycles of service. He wasn’t certain why he now cared to explore the morality of his actions.
“Deploy your weavers with discretion,” the High Binder finished, already turning away, sure of the outcome. “His Majesty will await your report. You are dismissed.”
When he stepped out into the storm, the city had become a labyrinth of wet shadow. Lightning fractured the sky above the Registry Spire, illuminating the twelve-pointed star crest with momentary, merciless clarity.
Each step felt heavier than the last, weighed by a choice he had not yet made but could feel forming like a storm on the horizon of his consciousness.
By morning, rain had softened to mist, shrouding Ilvarenne like a mourner’s veil. The chill of early morning seeped through even Azrian’s heavy uniform.
The Registry’s Chamber of Remembrance rose through the fog.
Inside, the Gilt gathered like a murder of crows in their mourning attire.
At the center, the Bennetts’ bodies lay on their biers, shrouded in pale silk, hands folded, faces composed by someone else’s design.
Their marks, once vibrant with promise, had been conveniently covered with powder.
When Azrian and his Shadows were done, no one would remember the marks at all.
“Tragic business,” an elderly countess said. “They seemed so perfectly matched.”
“Indeed,” replied her companion. “I thought the marks were meant to prevent such failures.”
They fell silent when they noticed the Emperor’s Hand. He nodded, nothing more.
Near the western alcove, sheltered by ornamental columns, Azrian’s Shadow weavers awaited instruction. Six of his most trusted operatives, dressed in formal attire indistinguishable from the mourners.
“The arrangements have been made, Commander,” his senior operative reported, handing him a parchment with the Chamber mapped in precise detail. “All witnesses from the Symphony Ball have been positioned and grouped accordingly.”
Azrian scanned the document, committing the assignments to memory. “And the priority targets?”
The spy pointed to a cluster of names. “These.”
One name burned through all the others: Miss Almarien.
Azrian’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on the parchment. “I shall handle them. Proceed per the plan with the rest. Remember: subtle, continuous weaving. Nothing obvious. Nothing traceable.”
The Shadows melted into the crowd. A bell tolled, quieting every conversation.
The High Binder glided to the center, robes trailing. “We gather to witness the return of Lord and Lady Bennett to the Eternal Registry.”
While the High Binder continued the ritual phrases, Azrian approached his first target: a marquess’s daughter who bore a mark.
He reached for his magic, black threads so fine they might have been dust motes, weaving them into her mind with surgical precision, targeting specific memories to unravel.
The Symphony Ball. The Bennetts’ marks. The suspicion that anything nefarious might’ve been behind their deaths at all.
The lady showed no awareness of the invasion, only the slightest tension around her eyes as crucial memories dissolved like sugar in hot tea, leaving behind nothing but the vague impression of a lovely evening and a tragic young couple whose death was best left to the Registry’s Inspectors to investigate.
Across the Chamber, Azrian’s operatives performed similar work with Shadow magic—not erasing memories but obscuring them, wrapping them in veils of doubt and confusion until witnesses questioned their own recollections.
“Their union reminds us that magic demands discipline,” the High Binder continued. “That affinity without control leads only to dissolution.”
Azrian moved systematically through his assignments: a duchess’s niece who also bore a mark.
A valen who had stood closest to the Bennetts during their announcement.
With each intervention, he felt a growing hollowness behind his ribs, tasted copper in his mouth, smelled ozone lingering on his fingers.
“We commit their essences to imperial memory, their names to the Eternal Ledger, their affinity patterns to Registry study.” The High Binder drew all attention forward, leaving Azrian at the edges, working unseen.
Then—a flicker, just beyond the crowd. A gleam of dark gold hair.
Miss Almarien.
She stood apart, tucked into a shadowed alcove, mourning in deep indigo rather than traditional black. Her skin caught the light, her grief unvarnished, a dignity so sincere it made the rest of the Chamber’s sorrow seem hollow, staged.
Azrian forced himself to look away, continuing his appointed task with the fourth target. Yet his awareness remained split, part of him attending to his duty, another part hyperconscious of her presence.
Azrian completed his fourth and fifth targets before approaching her. Her hands shook, the rim of her eyes lined with redness. This was not the sharp-tongued adversary he’d come to expect. He positioned himself beside her.
“Miss Almarien.”
She startled, then steeled her expression. “If you’re about to mock my reaction, my lord, please spare me.” Her familiar rasp scratched against his ears. “Not all of us are dauntless in the face of death.”
Vulnerability—especially hers , real and raw—was a weapon he’d never trained against. This brand of sincerity, one that made him want to answer it in kind, was more dangerous than any blade.
“Must you always expect the worst of me?” he asked, then immediately regretted it, because mocking her would’ve been a more honorable pursuit than his true purpose.
So instead, he offered something honest in return, the only currency he had left.
“I promise you, Miss Almarien, from someone with Death at his fingertips—those who claim to be dauntless in its face are either liars or lunatics.”
“They were so young,” she murmured, gaze returning to the biers. “I only met them at the ball, but they seemed... happy.”
Azrian found himself studying her profile, hoping that memorizing every detail might render her less dangerous.
The careful sweep of her hair, with strands of copper hidden near the roots.
The straight line of her mouth. Her hands, clasped too tightly for comfort.
His own body echoed her tension, a phantom ache in the muscles of his forearms.
The High Binder’s speech swelled towards its ceremonial peak.
Now was the time. With the assembly’s attention fixed forward, Azrian could complete his final assignment unobserved.
His hands began to form the initial patterns of his weaving, the familiar magic gathering at his fingertips, ready to slip into her memory and unmake what she’d seen.
This was his assignment, after all. And she, merely another target.
The Emperor had issued an order, and Azrian would see it through, as he had in all his cycles of service.
“Why did you come, my lord?” she asked, though she didn’t turn to him, and he had to cut himself off.
“I cannot imagine you mourn for these poor souls.”
“It’s my duty,” he said, then paused, and added, “which doesn’t mean I’m unaffected by their passing.”
Perhaps looking for a lie, she glanced at him, then swept her gaze across the assembled Gilt. “Most of these people wouldn’t know grief if it hit them in the gut. They gather to reinforce the illusion of unity, to see and be seen, and ensure their manners cannot be found lacking.”
“Is that why you came, then?”
“I don’t know why I came.” Her eyes wouldn’t leave the dais. He attempted to summon his threads again. “When my parents died, we had twin biers just like these. Though Liora insisted they should hold hands one last time. So we had them hold hands.”
A single tear streaked down her cheek. She brushed it away with heartbreaking dignity.
His weaving faltered once more, dissipated, undone by a single, pathetic tear.
It would have been foolish, Azrian told himself, to erase her memories when they still needed to escape their forced courtship. Then, Azrian would have to lie to her, and… the thought was unreasonably unwelcome.
They both had marks. They shared the misfortune of whatever was wrong with the magic in them.
Evara would be so disappointed if I went through with this.
The High Binder’s voice rose. “Let their lives serve as a reminder that proper guidance and imperial wisdom protect us all from the chaos of unchecked emotion.”
Miss Almarien stiffened. Before he could reconsider, Azrian shifted closer, allowing the edge of his hand to rest against the cool marble of the ledge, not quite touching, but close enough that the warmth of her skin radiated through the mist of separation.
A risk, a small rebellion. For an instant, Azrian imagined she would recoil.
He let his smallest finger extend, a hair’s breadth of movement, until it hovered beside hers. She hesitated. Then, almost imperceptibly, she moved her finger so it brushed, just barely, against his. The contact was infinitesimal. Their magic didn’t care.
It was a brush of skin, nothing more, and yet his mark seared so fiercely that for a moment he could not see, could not breathe, could not remember what he was meant to do here today, besides this very thing.
Across the brief gulf of marble, their hands became the axis around which the entire chamber spun.
He heard, very distantly, her sharp intake of breath, the way she tried to disguise it behind a swallow.
She glanced up at him. In that moment, Azrian made his choice.
His hands never resumed their weaving. Instead, he let the one remain on the ledge, the merest pressure of his finger against hers anchoring him to the present.
“So it is written. So it shall remain,” the High Binder said.
Miss Almarien did not speak. Neither did he. A silent acknowledgment passed between them. Even if it lasted only a second, Azrian feared it might be enough to poison his loyalty for the rest of his days.
So it shall remain, indeed.