She’s Viori. These are her people.
It wasn’t just Seth and Darya who were leading me here.
She was one of them.
I couldn’t even trust her enough to tell her who I really was … could I? Even Lucia had warned me not to.
Seth and Darya exchanged a glance, unreadable, their unease disquieting. Who waited for us beyond those doors?
Whatever confidence Seren had shown earlier was gone, too.
The doors swung open, revealing an opulent, breathtaking throne room packed with onlookers.
Nearly the opposite of the throne room in Suomelin in colors, but no less impressive, the room shimmered with dark, decadent splendor.
I’d expected to be deep in the mountain but, instead, the throne room was cut into the rock face, a row of floor-to-ceiling glass doors at the far side, open to the crisp mountain air. Golden sunset light streamed in, gleaming on the polished obsidian walls, where more green, silver, and black pendants hung. Silver thread embroidered the dragon sigil, its eyes sparkling with emeralds.
Massive black stone pillars veined with silver flanked the chamber, rising to a vaulted ceiling where chandeliers hung like constellations, each crystal shard gleaming like starlight. And yet the Viori in the Dreadwood live so primitively.
Most stunning of all, perhaps, was the majesty of the throne itself, carved from onyx inlaid with diamonds and perched atop a polished marble dais.
The man seated on the throne looked so much like my father that my breath caught, my pulse hammering in my ears.
“Kneel before Lord Haldron,” a sentinel declared.
The name struck me like a blade.
Haldron.
The ground seemed to sink below my feet as Seth, Darya, and Seren knelt. A thick, oppressive silence settled over the chamber, all eyes turning toward me.
I hadn’t seen Haldron since I was eight, but I remembered him well. Once, he’d been my favorite uncle, my father’s youngest brother—until he’d became a traitor.
He had tried to kill my father. Had left his own wife in a coma. My father had barely survived the knife wounds my uncle had plunged into his torso.
The Regulation had hunted him down, chased him to Ibarra, where he was supposed to have died—trapped in a temple they’d burned to the ground.
But here he was, seated on a throne, alive and in power. Holding the fate of the Viori in his hands. Seren’s and my fate in his hands. If I wasn’t so shocked, anger would be flooding all my senses.
Like a lock sliding into place, the precision of the strike against my family suddenly made sense. Haldron hadn’t just survived—he’d plotted, waited, and now seized power in a way none of us had seen coming.
He was behind their deaths.
With my nephew too young to be a legitimate heir, Haldron’s claim to Lirien’s throne was stronger than anyone’s.
Except mine.
I tried to shield the surge of rage and dread, but it leaked through the bond, too strong to hide. Seren flinched, a ripple of unease echoing back at me. Her eyes shot to mine, concern flickering before she quickly looked away, as if sensing this was something I couldn’t yet share.
It had been twenty years since the man on the throne had seen me, and given he thought I was dead, he wouldn’t be looking too closely. But would he see the color of my eyes and see his brother? Would he see the shape of my nose and see my mother?
He’ll kill me on sight if he recognizes me.
I had to survive this meeting.
I was the only one—the only Warrick—left to stop him.
And now my true purpose was clear.
