The High Chamber was no longer a place of order.
It was a battlefield.
Steel clanged against marble. Cries of panic rang out as nobles fled from the gallery, their silks billowing like frightened ghosts. Black-armored soldiers surged forward with practiced precision, their orders clear:
Seize the traitor. Kill the vampire.
Cassius moved like a storm given shape—his blade a blur of midnight, cutting down two guards before the others even registered he had drawn. His cloak split at the seams, revealing the dark sigils inked into his skin, each one pulsing with a forbidden magic he had sworn never to use again.
But some oaths, like kingdoms, were made to be broken.
Aerin stood at the center of the maelstrom, untouched. Not because they spared her, but because Cassius did not let them close enough.
"Run," he snarled, fangs bared, eyes blazing crimson. "Get to Thorne. The tunnels—"
"I'm not leaving you—"
Cassius spun, catching a soldier's blade with his own, twisting the weapon from his grip with inhuman strength. "This isn't about me, Aerin. They'll use you as a symbol. If you fall now, everything falls."
Another soldier lunged. Cassius drove his elbow into the man's throat, then flung him into the Council lectern, which shattered on impact.
Aerin's pulse roared in her ears. Her mind screamed move, go, survive—but her feet were leaden, her gaze locked on the man who had just declared war for her.
Cassius would die here.
Unless she made it mean something.
She turned—and ran.
The inner corridors of the High Chamber were a maze, gilded and claustrophobic. Every footstep echoed like thunder, every corner held the promise of death. But Aerin knew these halls. She had studied them in her first weeks at court, memorizing exits like lifelines.
Now, those lifelines were fraying.
Footsteps pounded behind her.
A shout: "She's heading for the eastern vault!"
She didn't slow.
Through a side door, past the Hall of Heralds, down a servant's passage slick with condensation and panic. Paintings of long-dead kings watched her with hollow eyes as she sprinted beneath their silent judgment.
She reached the vault stairwell just as Thorne emerged, flanked by Lys and two masked rebels. They froze at the sight of her blood-spattered gown and wild eyes.
"Cassius—" she gasped.
"He's holding them off," she said. "We need to go. Now."
Thorne didn't argue. He grabbed her hand and pulled her down the spiral stairs, deeper into the bowels of the palace, where no sunlight reached and the walls smelled of rot and memory.
The tunnels beneath the palace were older than the kingdom itself, carved during the first vampire wars when even kings feared the light. Here, the stone whispered secrets, and the very air carried the weight of a thousand buried sins.
Here, the rebellion would be reborn.
Back in the High Chamber, Cassius bled.
His blade dripped with the lives of men who had once sworn to follow him.
He was a blur of fury and precision, but even immortality had limits. A spear pierced his side. Another sliced across his cheek. He bled black and silver, the ichor of his kind. His breath came ragged.
And still they came.
Veylin stood at the far end of the chamber, untouched, unmoved. He watched Cassius with the detached curiosity of a man examining a broken clock. His voice, when it finally came, cut through the noise like a guillotine.
"You disappoint me, Cassius."
Cassius spat blood onto the marble. "The feeling's mutual."
"You were supposed to lead them."
"I did."
Veylin smiled. "Then you led them straight to their deaths."
He raised one hand.
The runes along the chamber walls ignited in red flame.
Cassius staggered. The magic hit him like ice poured into his bones—binding, choking, commanding. He dropped to one knee, his sword clattering beside him. Chains of arcane fire snaked from the walls, coiling around his limbs.
"Do you remember," Veylin said, approaching, "what you were before I gave you this life?"
Cassius didn't answer. He couldn't.
"You were a shadow. A starving wretch. A man who begged for the gift of eternity and whimpered under the weight of it."
The flames tightened.
"And now you betray your crown… for a mortal?"
Cassius raised his head.
His eyes—still blazing—met Veylin's.
"She's more than that," he rasped. "She's more than you'll ever understand."
Then he screamed.
The magic seared through him, burning away centuries of strength. His knees buckled fully. His fangs retracted. His heart—a thing he had thought long since dead—shuddered in pain.
Veylin crouched beside him, almost tender. "You will live, Cassius. But you will watch. Every rebel, every whisper of dissent—they will suffer. And you will kneel while they burn."
Then darkness claimed him.
Beneath the palace, in the damp breath of the undercity, Aerin felt a shudder pass through the stone. Magic. Old. Cruel.
She stopped.
"Something's happened," she said.
Thorne turned. "What?"
She didn't know how to explain it—the way her skin prickled, the way her lungs refused to draw full breath. The bond. The one she hadn't asked for, but could no longer deny.
"Cassius…" she whispered. "He's still alive."
But barely.
Lys stepped forward. "We can't go back."
"I'm not leaving him," Aerin snapped.
Thorne gritted his teeth. "If you go now, you'll die. And everything he just did—everything you've built—it'll be for nothing."
She clenched her fists.
The image of Cassius on his knees, of his blood on the marble, of Veylin's cold smile—burned behind her eyelids.
Then she turned.
"Then we save him," she said. "Not today. But soon."
She looked at each of them in turn.
"We save him, and then we burn this kingdom to the ground."