It started with a dream.

Cyran jerked upright, breath caught in his throat, sweat slicking his skin like oil. The silk sheets tangled around his waist were suffocating, and his hand went blindly for the sword that waited beside him. Habit. Instinct. The illusion of safety.

The dream clung like ash: the rebel leader in the burning courtyard, lips parted, firelight crawling over his skin. "We did it," he'd said, voice shaking with relief. "Now we run."

Cyran had kissed him. Fiercely. Desperately. But his hands had still been wet with their king's blood.

He rose now, half-stumbling to the mirror set into the far wall—gilded and monstrous in its opulence. It stared back cold and unflinching. He gripped the carved frame, knuckles bone-white, and studied the man within—one eye rimmed in sleepless red, jaw clenched, a monarch coiled tight with fury and the ghosts he couldn't silence.

"You had to die."

It came out hoarse. Not to his reflection. Not really.

"It was the only way."

He laughed, bitter and low. No one heard it but ghosts. "The only way. The only way." It had sounded noble once. Strategic. Now the words scraped him raw from the inside. Love had been a softness he couldn't carve out. A flaw that festered.

He dressed in silence. Dark leathers. Obsidian plating. Gloves pulled tight. The crown was already waiting. So were the lies.

The throne room roared with heat and reverence. Iron Guard flanked the marble aisle, motionless, breathing steel. Above them, the high vault arched like the mouth of a beast, shadows licking between the banners of the new regime—House Raskir's sunburst long since extinguished, now replaced by Cyran's sigil: a coiled serpent, silver on black.

He stood beneath it, gaze level, boots echoing on the dais as he raised a single hand. The chamber fell silent.

"The traitor who lit the pyre of House Raskir still walks this realm."

His voice cracked like frost on glass. Controlled. Deadly. The torches flickered as he descended the steps, gloved fingers steepled at his front.

"Bring me his head," he said, low and deliberate, "and I will carve your name into history."

The Iron Guard answered with thunder. Nobles cried oaths. Cups were raised. But Cyran wasn't listening. His gaze had snagged—just for a breath—on a figure near the rear of the crowd. Not one of the rebels. Not recognizable at all. A new face, perhaps. Iron Guard leathers, but a finer cut than most. Eyes that refused to yield. A mouth made for beautiful lies.

"It meant nothing."

"It meant too much."

He turned sharply. The feast began behind him. Laughter rang out across polished stone. A bard struck up a victory song. Cyran sat at the head of it all, wine untouched, staring into its red surface like it might show him something other than loss.

And still—that man's hands flexed at his sides. A soldier's callouses. A noble's idle grace. Wrong. But when he lifted his goblet, Cyran's throat tightened at the angle of his wrist—delicate, defiant. A phantom touch still seared into his mouth. Gone.

He stood. Smoothly. Deliberately. Took his goblet in hand and descended the steps.

"You."

The word escaped before he could cage it. A gamble. An unraveling. The stranger's head lifted, and Cyran's stomach plunged. Not him. Never him. But...

"Come," he said, ice masking the fracture in his voice. "A word."

He turned toward the halls before he could see the man's reaction. Before he could beg for it. This was recklessness. Sentiment. But the man's presence was a splinter under his skin—a familiar ache wearing a stranger's face.

An invitation. Or a trap.