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My father descended from the high obsidian dais. He did not react to our exchange, his total attention fixed solely on the five kneeling prisoners. The edges of the room seemed to physically adjust around his frame as he moved, everyone understanding that the second the Konungr spoke, the room belonged to him.

“I will grant one of you your life,” the King said, his voice level and ice-cold.

The man at the center of the line slowly lifted his head, his dark hair matted with sweat and dried blood. His gaze anchored first on the King before snapping directly to me, dragging up and down my body, lingering on the dirt caked onto my Converse.

“You are not our king,” the prisoner hissed, his voice scraping like broken flint.

Aerynn shifted his weight beside me. The residual humor drained out of my brother’s posture, his face freezing over into a rigid, defensive block.

The prisoner’s mouth curled into a feral sneer. “Your mongrel bloodline will not rule us.”

There it was. Spoken aloud in the light of the afternoon. Not hidden beneath courtly concern or softened behind diplomatic language.

Mongrel.

I refused to give the traitor the satisfaction of seeing his venom hit its mark, but something deep inside my chest went perfectly, dangerously still.

Aerynn took a hard, aggressive step forward, his hand moving automatically for his hilt.

“Careful, Prince,” Manem warned lightly, his gaze remaining locked on the prisoner’s throat. “If your steel kills him before he finishes his declaration, we won’t learn a single thing.”

“I’m not going to kill him,” Aerynn said, his voice a low, dangerous murmur.

“Good,” Manem replied smoothly. “Because that would be my job.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, the silver links of the hidden chainmail beneath my shirt shifting. “I’m glad we’ve assigned traditional roles so early in the afternoon.”

Manem glanced sideways at me. “Try observing, Tauriel. What is wrong with this picture?”

I forced myself to study the five kneeling men, pulling back my personal anger to analyze the physical reality. I noted the straightness of their backs. The slow, steady rhythm of their breathing. There was a complete absence of pleading, panic, or desperate bargaining.

They were too calm.

“They’re not afraid,” I said, the realization settling like lead in my stomach. “They aren’t trying to survive.”

Manem nodded once. “Good.”

The man at the center of the line smiled wider, his teeth stained with copper. His jaw locked, his chest expanding as he chanted two words in an ancient, corrupted dialect that grated against the air:

“Tarracóir báis.”

The sacrificial rune burned through the center of his chest.

I felt the physical pressure of the magic before I even saw the visual light. The spell twisted through the air like a sudden sickness, scraping violently against something hidden deep beneath my skin. The markings on my wrists flared with a blinding heat that made me gasp.

Jagged, bleeding red lines spread across the prisoner’s torso, glowing beneath his flesh like fire under thin glass. Then, the curse consumed him from the inside out.

He did not scream. One breath he was sitting there, a solid enemy given flesh; the next, a heavy cascade of dark gray ash fell onto the flagstones where his body had been.

The others followed instantly. One by one, the rune ignited through each of their chests in a rapid, synchronized succession.

Dark, soft ash scattered across the pale granite, settling into the fresh pools of blood.

That was the part that stayed with me as the guards stepped back, lowering their useless blades. They had walked into Enlathaes Kastali knowing they would never leave alive. And they had done it gladly, just to look me in the eye and tell me I didn’t belong.

I didn’t even get a chance to wipe the drying blood off my cheek before my father called the court to assemble. We were marched straight from the ash and bodies into the assembly hall—a space engineered to remind everyone what truly mattered in Elfain: power, territory, and who held the leash.

A colossal, inscribed map of the continent of Nymeria stretched beneath our boots, etched so deeply into the solid granite floor that it felt like a permanent, bleeding warning. The borders were sliced with impossible precision, marking the territories of More Alora, Ilasari, Amnethys, Ulfadell, and Nyelmelle. Centuries of bloodshed, bound tightly under my father’s absolute rule. And right now, every single province was watching me.