Chapter 45
CHAPTER
Azrian
Azrian reviewed the plan four times before he allowed himself to believe in it.
For all the cycles spent orchestrating executions, counter-rebellions, and elaborate diplomatic betrayals, nothing had ever required the same exactness as to ambush and subdue an assassin who’d lived, undetected, under his own roof.
That the target was a girl who served his wife with unwavering devotion only heightened his focus.
He permitted himself no sentiment about it.
Not for the victim, and certainly not for himself. Rage could be indulged later, when the operation was complete.
He waited in the cellar, standing by the heavy oak door.
Every muscle in his body was at parade rest, not a line out of place.
Caelen had taken his place beside a rack of casks by the North wall, his posture indolent, his gaze anything but.
Next to him, Virelle was cloaked in his shadows lazily, as if in a lover’s embrace.
Azrian lifted a brow. “You ought to do better than that when they get here.”
“You needn’t worry,” Caelen said, and as if to prove his point, weaved his shadows thicker, erasing Virelle from view. “I’m barely warming up.”
Footsteps, then—a whisper of slippers over marble. Sabine’s voice drifted down the stairwell, light and purposeful. “Ellie, the bottle we want is at the very back, I’m afraid. Top rack, if you can manage it. Azrian’s collection is nothing if not intimidating.”
A reply, softer. “I’m quite nimble, my lady. I can fetch anything.”
Sabine entered without a glance at him. Ellie trailed two steps behind.
Before the maid could notice him, Azrian slipped between her and the door, and in a single breath caught her by the shoulder. She froze. Only the frantic pulse in her throat betrayed her.
Sabine was a statue in human skin. She sidestepped, clearing the path for Virelle, who spilled from Caelen’s shadows with her hands wreathed in silver threads.
Ellie tried to twist away, but Azrian’s grip was iron.
Virelle looped her hands, weaving quickly. The delicate filaments of her Light affinity, fine as spider silk, wrapped Ellie’s arms, chest, and neck in an instant.
Ellie’s mouth opened, as if to scream, but no sound emerged.
“You’re under a truth-binding,” Virelle said. “It will not harm you, unless you lie.”
Sabine was marble, but Azrian, who had mapped every flicker of her spirit, saw the tremor in her finger, the faint tap of her foot.
“Ellie,” she said gently, “we don’t want to hurt you. But you must tell us everything.”
For a moment, Azrian thought the girl might simply collapse. Instead, she straightened, shoulders squared, chin tilted up in an almost proud gesture.
“Ask.”
Sabine’s voice cut through the charged air. “Did you kill Marianne and her husband?”
A violent shudder ran through Ellie’s body. Her lips cracked open. “I did.”
The silver weave around her flared brighter, illuminating every jagged edge of her confession.
Sabine softened. “And the Bennetts?”
“Yes.” Ellie’s answer was strangled, yanked from her by the truth-binding, her body wracked by the effort of confession.
Azrian leaned forward, heart pounding. He realized he was gripping Ellie’s arms far too tightly only when she whimpered, and loosened his hold marginally. “What of the debutante at Braythar Gallery?”
In his mind, he already knew the answer.
But he needed to hear it. Needed to hear Ellie say she’d betrayed her lady, the same she’d served for over a decade, offered her on a silver platter for the Empire’s machine to devour—so that he’d feel justified in whatever punishment he’d already decided he’d bestow onto her for endangering his wife.
“Yes.” The admission was a whisper, but it carried the weight of a thousand secrets.
Virelle pressed further. “Why?”
Ellie’s breath caught. “Because the Registry told me to. They said…” The words rushed out, a river breaking its banks. All of it for Sabine, as if she alone could offer absolution.
Azrian would not allow it.
“You don’t understand, my lady. He’s going to die. If I didn’t do it, Petyr would die. And I can’t let that happen.”
Sabine’s face blanched. “Petyr? You mean your brother?”
“He’s not…” Tears spilled from Ellie, but her gaze never wavered from Sabine. “He’s my partner. And he’s Fading.”
Sabine’s hand flew to her mouth to catch her own gasp. “Ellie, I… you told us you were widowed.”
“I had to, my lady, because we had an unsanctioned union. Our affinities were not compatible, and the Registry wouldn’t have allowed—” The maid’s words escaped in a ragged sob. “If they’d found out what we’d done, we’d have both been thrown in the dungeons.”
“Why bond, if your affinities were not compatible?” Virelle asked. “Surely, you knew the risks.”
“We were young, and the Fade was not known. Back then, the Registry simply told you that incompatible affinities ran counter to their magical design. But we were in love.”
Azrian exchanged a glance with Caelen, who shifted against the wine barrels, silent but watchful.
“What did the Registry promise you, if you complied?” Azrian asked.
Ellie’s face twisted in shame. “They said they’d pardon our crime and dissolve our bond. Save his life.”
Azrian clenched his jaw so hard he might’ve chipped a tooth. Of course, the Registry tossed out vow dissolutions when it suited them. For Evara, dissolving the vow had been an impossibility. Apparently, a few dead bodies were all it took to turn the impossible, possible.
Seeing a ghost of his own desperation back then reflected in Ellie now softened Azrian’s indignation towards the maid only as much as it stoked his rage towards the Registry.
The Empire cared little about the shape of the suffering, so long as it served their ends.
If body count mattered to having wishes granted, his own would dwarf Ellie’s.
And yet, somehow, rules applied differently to the Emperor’s Hand.
Caelen pushed off the barrels, eyes narrowed. “And what exactly were their orders?”
“Kill the marked. Use my magic, but make them look… unremarkable, and most importantly, unrelated.”
Virelle’s Light did not waver. “Then why orchestrate the last murder so gruesomely? Slice her throat? Leave the bracelet?”
Ellie’s sobs turned into wails. If not for Azrian’s arms, she would’ve collapsed onto the cellar’s floor. “I begged them not to do it, my lady,” she choked. “I asked for it to be anybody but you. But they said it needed to be done. To discredit you. Make sure you did not step out of line.”
Sabine twisted away from her maid as though she’d been slapped, but the set of her jaw and line of her lips remained straight, cutting. “At least we know they do not wish me dead.”
“No,” Azrian scoffed. “Simply charged with a crime you didn’t commit.”
Ellie’s gaze found his. “You know what it’s like,” she said, the words rough as gravel. “To watch someone die and not be able to stop it.”
He nodded once. “I do.”
Sabine found her voice. “Is Petyr dying now?”
Caelen approached the center of the scene, coming to stand between Azrian and Sabine.
Ellie’s chin dropped. “He’s in the Spire infirmary. They say he won’t live another month, unless…”
Azrian watched the play of light and shadow on the cellar walls, the web of Virelle’s magic, and the girl at its heart.
Calculations stacked in his mind, the moral arithmetic of mercy, justice, and necessity.
The old part of him, the Hand of the Empire, would’ve executed her here, buried the body, and burned the memory.
But he was no longer that man.
He let go of Ellie’s shoulder. “There is a way,” he said, and the words surprised even him.
Ellie blinked up at him.
“We don’t understand much about the Fade, but we’ve theorized that when only one partner suffers from it, it’s because the healthy partner has a significantly stronger affinity.
Petyr has your blood in him, and your more powerful magic is Fading him.
The Registry could undo the blood vow, remove your blood from him.
Alternatively, I can… erase your magic completely. It will have the same effect.”
In all the cycles since Evara’s death, he’d wished many times he could’ve saved her life that way, too.
But he could not unmake his own affinity.
He’d tried once, when he was younger, grief-stricken enough to wish himself free of his role as the Hand.
It had left him writhing and fevered for days.
After that, he accepted his fate and hardened into the weapon the Emperor required.
Until his life had collided with a maddening woman’s in the Registry corridors, and she had been unmaking him ever since.
Sabine looked at him, now, and inhaled sharply. “Azrian, are you sure—”
“It’s not pleasant,” he told Ellie. “You’ll lose your affinity forever. And if you resist, it could kill you.”
Ellie nodded, tears running unchecked. “Please. Please, just… save him.”
Azrian looked at the rest of his friends. “If I do this, she leaves Ilvarenne forever. She doesn’t speak of this place or what happened here until summoned to testify in our defense. Agreed?”
Sabine pressed her lips together, then nodded. “Agreed.”
Virelle, still holding the compulsion, added, “If you attempt to harm anyone again, or betray us, I will track you down myself.” There was no bravado in it. Only a statement of fact.
Ellie closed her eyes. “I accept the terms.”
They moved her to the stone table in the center of the cellar, clearing away the decanters and old wine labels. Azrian rolled up his sleeves.
“Remember not to fight it.”
She nodded, her breath coming in shallow, rapid bursts.
Azrian summoned his affinity, weaving it into figure eights, each loop a battle against the entropy in his veins.
The threads began to unravel, slipping out of his grip, fraying into nothingness.
He swore under his breath. Undoing an affinity was heavy lifting, and with his magic so volatile… he was not sure he could do it.
Sabine touched his shoulder, feather-light but warm as sunrise.
He met her gaze, and in that silent exchange, found the resolve to try again.
This time, his magic remained far more stable.
Still uneasy, still restless, but through sheer will and long training, Azrian forced it to order.
When the weave was stable, he pressed it into Ellie’s chest.
The ashen threads became extensions of his will, searching for the seat of her magic, engulfing it. At first, it felt cold against his own power. Then, slowly, as he unraveled it, the cold dissipated.
Ozone filled the cellar. Ellie’s body arched, then went rigid, but she did not scream.
When the last thread snapped, silence fell, so deep it seemed to echo.
Ellie slumped, boneless, against the table.
Virelle’s threads released her, and Sabine caught her before she hit the floor, lowering her gently.
Azrian reeled, vision swimming, until Caelen steadied him.
Sabine cradled Ellie, brushing damp hair from her face. “It’s done,” Sabine whispered. “You’re free.”
Ellie’s eyes opened, vast and hollowed by exhaustion. “Thank you,” she said, and then darkness claimed her, and she slipped away in Sabine’s arms. Panic rushed into Sabine’s face.
“She will live,” Azrian said. “So will her partner, as long as the Fade hasn’t already claimed him.”
Sabine brushed sweat-soaked hair from her maid’s face. “She’s been in my life nearly as long as I can remember. I could’ve never imagined…”
Virelle leaned against the wall, the light guttering in her hands before she snuffed it out. “Love and desperation make a dangerous infusion. Deadly, in this case. She’s as much a victim as the rest of us.”
Caelen’s voice was low. “The rest of us didn’t kill half a dozen innocent people.”
“Maybe not this time,” Azrian said. “But I cannot claim I’d have acted much differently, in her place. It doesn’t make us heroes nor her a villain. Still simply pawns.” The knowledge made him feel tired, and old, and more human than he cared to admit.
“We have the upper hand,” Sabine said. “We know the truth. We have proof. And the Registry has no idea we possess either.”
“You’re right. It’s our turn to make a move on the board.”