The Hall of the Lion Throne was not built for silence, though silence now filled it—vast and gilded and waiting. Sitting upon the Lion throne of Vrorn sat the emperor. Gregor looked out over the vast audience who had come to witness this son being named and taking his rightful place as his successor. On his left, as always was the lord protector. Ernesto's eyes shifted from side to side, taking in everything. The massive chamber was filled to capacity. Ernesto had lobbied for allowing less people to attend the ceremony, but he was turned down. The emperor did not want to offend anyone unnecessarily. The politics involved in everything had always annoyed him. He had done his best to prepare to keep order. The chamber was lined with his knights. At the first sign of trouble, he knew they would not hesitate. It was the best he could do given the circumstances. There were way too many swords in the chamber for his liking. Every noble house and merchant had brought a small contingent of guards with them.

  "Relax old friend," said Gregor noticing his discomfort. "This is supposed to be a happy occasion after all." "I for one will be happy when it is over and we clear the chamber lord," he replied. Gregor chuckled. "From now on I will have to call you Ernesto the vigilant." Now it was Ernesto's turn to chuckle.

  Sunlight, filtered through the stained-glass windows, bathed the massive chamber in hues of crimson, amber, and gold. The walls gleamed with polished lion-headed sconces, each flanked by towering banners of the old imperial houses.

  A thousand candles burned in golden braziers suspended by thick chains, their flames dancing in the airless heat. The ceiling arched high above like the ribs of a great beast, painted with scenes of Vrorn’s ascension and the sundering of the heaven-gates. Along the polished walls, between towering lion-pillars of obsidian and gold-veined marble, long tables were stacked high with roast boar, lemon-drizzled quail, pomegranate jellies, and towering flasks of cherry wine. Chairs lined the perimeter, elegant thrones of carved bonewood for nobility and velvet-cushioned benches for lesser lords and rich merchants. In the center of the hall, rows of ivory pews faced a great golden basin, shaped like two cupped hands rising from the earth—Vrorn’s Blessing.

  The basin shimmered.

  Before it stood Archbishop Luc de Presti, clad in his immaculate vestments of moon-white and sun-gold, a scepter of sanctified silver in his hand. His voice echoed through the chamber, rich and theatrical. Behind him stood a small gathering of his bishops and a small detachment of his orders holy knights led by commander Henri Lancome.

  “By the light of the godking, and in the name of he who gave the first breath to all mortal flesh, we gather,” Luc proclaimed, his wide arms casting long shadows. “This child—born of royal womb and given breath by divine providence—shall be named this day and marked with the salt of the Basin. Today, a child becomes a Son of Vrorn.”

  The gathered elite murmured approval. Lords clapped softly. Ladies dabbed at teary eyes. Even the merchants smiled, hoping for favor.

  "Let the Empress enter, and Vrorn bare witness."

  Three great bronze bells suspended from the arch above were struck by hidden pulleys. Their call was deep and commanding, shivering the bones of those present.

  “Let the Empress’s procession enter,” Luc announced, bowing his head reverently.

  A hush fell as the far door—tall, whitewood bound with brass—began to open. The echo of bootheels on polished stone followed.

  Empress Cristina Willinghelm moved with the slow, measured grace of royalty, though her arms trembled slightly. Her gown was a deep royal blue, layered in satin and stiffened with whalebone at the waist, the color of dusk on the high seas. Around her neck hung the Opal of Trelgor, a relic said to grant strength in times of need. In her arms, she cradled the infant prince, swaddled in gold-threaded cloth.

  Around her came guards—dozens of them, adorned in Imperial white and silver. Several lords and highborn ladies trailed in ceremonial escort.

  The moment shimmered. It should have been remembered for a thousand years.

  Instead, it was remembered for blood.

  Then without warning:

  The doors slammed shut behind the Empress with a deafening boom.

  Every head in the hall turned.

  A moment later, a second sound echoed—the unmistakable chorus of steel rasping from scabbards. Not two, or ten. But many. Too many.

  From behind the giant pillars, shadows moved-black shapes springing like wolves from the dark. Cloaks of soot, swords glinting like fangs. The first attacker drove his blade towards the empress's mid-section, but steel met steel in a flash.

  The captain of her guard was there at once. He turned the blade aside and then his return swing took the attacker across the neck. He then pulled Cristina behind him, as the rest of her guard formed a semi-circle around her and some of the freighted nobles.

  Her guards, clad in white and silver livery, screamed oaths of loyalty as their blades met the assassins in a screeching collision. One man fell immediately, his throat opened, blood spraying like wine across the marble.

  Emperor Gregor Willinghelm, seated upon the Lion Throne of Old Vrorn, stood. His face had drained of all color.

  “Ernesto,” he whispered, as the first screams began.

  But the Lord Protector was already in motion, tearing down the side aisle, cloak snapping behind him, voice booming orders. “Protect the Emperor!” he bellowed. “Seal the inner doors!”

  Guards surged to obey, and with a thunderous boom, the iron-banded doors of the inner throne room slammed shut. Drawing a shout from the emperor.

  At the same instant, Lord Lucien Greystone, seated among the high seats, bolted from his chair ripping his blade from its scabbard.

  He saw his daughter-the empress-turn her head at the noise. He saw the fear flash in her eyes.

  "Cristina!", he bellowed, racing across the marbled floor.

  The inner doors slammed shut before him. He was a heartbeat too late.

  "Open them!', Lucien screamed. "My daughter is in there!"

  The guards held fast. Lucien's bodyguard was now at his back, and a small standoff ensued.

  "We have our orders, my lord," one of the guards said, sympathy evident in his voice.

  Lucien turned on them like a bear cornered. "You think duty will shield you if she dies?! Open the bloody doors!"

  They did not.

  And then another sound echoed throughout the chamber. This time from the back of the room.

  Stone grinding on stone.

  Behind a tapestry of a saintly king, the wall itself opened—a secret passage, ancient and forgotten by most. The tapestry tore as the door swung inwards. Dust and a cold draught rolled into the hall. And through it stepped large groups of dark clad assassins. More and more poured into the chamber. The emperor's guard formed a protective line in front of the throne. Gregor himself stopped halfway down the dais, Kings Vengeance heavy in his grip. For an instant he stared in horror as he spotted his son Alucarde standing to the side of the now open doorway.

  His voice was raw. "Alucarde. My son. What have you done?"

  The prince tilted his head, expression empty. "What you never had the courage to, father."

  Gregor descended another step, voice rising. "You open my hall to murderers on the day of your brother's naming? You would see your bloodline slaughtered?"

  The first wave of assassins launched themselves at the emperor's guard with a loud clash of steel.

  Alucarde's lip curled. "Bloodline? You mean your line. The bastard's crown you forged with other men's lives. This is not my bloodline. This is my curse."

  "You are my flesh," Gregor barked. "I gave you everything. And this is how you repay me?"

  Alucarde's eyes glinted like wet stone. "Everything? I was always second, always silenced. You never saw me. When you looked upon me you only saw the ghost of the son you always wanted."

  Gregor's grip tightened until his knuckles whitened, as the screams of the dying surrounded him. "This is what you have become? A knife in the dark for coward's" A boy in a man's cloak who sells his soul to butchers?"

  Alucarde stepped forward, drawing a sword etched in black runes. "A boy who will no longer kneel."

  Gregor raised King's Vengeance and pointed it at his son's chest. "I will not ask again. Stand down and call off these dogs. If there is one drop of the blood that we share left in you, then stand down."

  Alucarde's return smile was a wound. "There's no blood of yours in me worth saving."

  And with that, the slaughter began.

  Chaos exploded like a dam broken.

  Guards rushed to form walls, but the assassins were too many. Merchants died screaming, their perfumed robes painted red. Their bodyguards fell beside them, outnumbered and overwhelmed. A man from Zantar lost his head to a sickle while searching for a place to hide.

  Steel shrieked on marble as assassins and the emperor's guards clashed all around the chamber. Gregor had already cut down three men in as many heartbeats, blood slicking his gauntlets.

  Queen Arendriel of the Silver Vales radiant even in the face of death, drew her blade and shouted in Elvish. In front of her, her honor guards formed a line, led by Vaeil and Liluth, blades drawn and already dripping. Together, they moved like one creature of death.

  Assassins surged forward. One after another. The sisters became fury incarnate.

  Vaeil spun and severed a wrist before driving her blade through the man's throat. Liluth caught two blades on her guard, twisted, and opened a man from hip to spine. Arendriel watched with ancient eyes-ice behind fire-as her daughters of the blade struck down all who approached.

  At the heart of the battle a group of mages stood amidst the carnage, conjuring lances of wind and fire that tore cloaks from bodies and flayed flesh from bone. Archmage Spendal had just released a giant array of magic missiles aimed at a group of assassins heading their way. The large group was torn apart in a dazzling display of light. He dropped to one knee and tried desperately to catch his breath. Nylla reached down with one arm as she cast a spell of vines at another group and pulled him up. She shouted to two nearby mages. "Take him over there," she pointed towards an alcove where many nobles had formed up with their bodyguards in a defensive formation, "and protect him." The two younger mages did as they were told without hesitation.

  Lutheon stepped up beside Nylla taking the archmages place. He unleashed a series of mini fireballs at the attackers. Helena Stormbringer sent a wave of ice into the same group. Between the two attacks the small group stood no chance and were down in an instant. Nylla turned to them. "I must go protect the archmage." "We have this, go," said Lutheon. Helena merely smirked. Nylla rolled her eyes and was off. Lutheon shook his head at Helena. "You really don't like her." Helena shouted, "look out," and pointed over his shoulder. As Lutheon spun around, he felt a sharp pain in his side. He glanced down confused and saw blood bleeding through his robes.

  "Helena?" he wheezed, disbelief drowning his voice.

  She leaned in close, lips brushing his ear.

  "You were always too kind, dear Lutheon," she whispered. "Too loyal. Too predictable."

  He collapsed to the floor, magic leaking from his fingers as his spell dissipated. Helena stepped over his dying body, icy orbs searching the room to make sure none saw what transpired. Once satisfied she moved on.

  Meanwhile. In the long waiting chamber, Ernesto sprinted towards the assassins like a tiger loosed from its cage. His sword cleaved one man from shoulder to thigh. His boot shattered another's sternum. A third he dispatched with a blade to the throat, spinning to engage a towering figure with a battleaxe.

  The large man swung high. Ernesto ducked low, sweeping the legs out from under him, and rose with a dagger in one hand and his sword in the other burying both of them in the man's chest and neck.

  Further down the chamber he could see the empress's guards being hard-pressed by their attackers. They had formed a semi-circle around her. Cristina stood behind them, cradling the child, eyes wide with terror. Around her, nobles huddled in fear, several clutching knives of their own.

  "Hold the line!" barked Sir Cedran. "Protect the Empress."

  But he could see it was all falling apart. And fast.

  Ernesto barreled through the flank and crashed into three attackers. His blade, Lion's Ward, sang through flesh. One lost his arm. Another had his spine severed. The third met death as Ernesto smashed his face into a marble pillar, caving it in with a sickening crunch.

  He didn't pause.

  Two more came. One with twin sickles, the other with a curved glaive. Ernesto danced between them, took a cut to his shoulder, and returned the favor with death from the hip up.

  The line was thinning. Cristina's guard had lost several already. Sir Cedran bled from the leg, still fighting.

  "ERNESTO!" Cristina cried out.

  He heard her-roared-and plunged forward, cutting down two more. He shoved aside a dying knight and stepped into the breech. Blades met. Flesh split. Bone cracked.

  THE BLOOD ON THE COBBLES:

  Midday found Struttsburg cruelly bright.

  The sun hammered the slate roofs and whitewashed walls until they shone like blades. Heat rose from the cobbles in wavering curtains, bending the world. Bells beat from a dozen towers—clang, clang, clang—each strike a hammer to the heart. Smoke, incense, and horse-sweat braided into a single breath the whole quarter seemed to take together and hold.

  General Evangeline Rell drove her column like a nail through the city’s grain—one hundred riders thick, helms gleaming, lances up, hooves shattering puddles left from the noon wash. The people parted before them, the way wheat parts before the scythe: fast, fearful, stumbling. A fishmonger spilled a crate—silver bellies skittered and slapped in filth. A child froze under the nostrils of her charger; a mother screamed; Evangeline’s reins cut left, and the big warhorse leapt aside, iron shoes sparking on stone.

  “Clear the lane!” she bellowed, voice hard as the ring of the bells. “Make way for the Empire!”

  Baraten bled elsewhere—she had left him where he fell, not a league from here, no doubt in the incense gloom of Saint Severin’s, thrust onto a blood-slick table while white-robed priests clucked and cut and chanted.

  She had obeyed his orders and left. There were things a sword could do that a prayer could not.

  The castle’s pale heights shouldered the sky ahead, close enough that the pennons could be counted—lion, sunburst, the emperor’s crown—in red and gold. One last turn, one last tight knot of streets to pull free—

  The first bolt hissed like a striking adder.

  It hit a rider two lengths to her right and quivered from the back of his throat before he toppled, still gripping the reins, boots sliding from the stirrups as his horse ran on without him. The second bolt slammed into a destrier’s eye and buried to the fletching; the horse reared, screaming, and threw its man into a fruit-seller’s stall in a crash of timber and pears.

  “AMBUSH!” someone roared, and then the world became a box full of knives.

  They were everywhere at once, as if spat from the city’s pores: dark figures uncoiling from shadowed doorways, dropping from eaves, unfolding from under draped canvases. Faces bound in black, eyes dead and bright. Short recurved bows on the roofs; crossbows in the windows. The first volley took eight men from their saddles. The second took ten. The air filled with a sleet of wood and iron, the whick-whick-whick of death.

  “Shields! Raise! Forward—FORWARD!” Evangeline’s throat caught fire as she screamed it. “Drive the lane! Break them!”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  She put the spurs in so hard her mount bellowed. The charger lunged, and she went with it, low behind the cantle, sword tucked tight. A masked man stepped into her path with a hook-bladed spear. She took his right leg at the knee without breaking stride. The next came in under her guard with a knife; she caught his wrist on the upswing, turned it, heard bone pop, and fed him steel through the eye-slit. A bolt struck her pauldron with a meaty thunk that numbed her arm to the elbow. She did not look, did not slow.

  “Sergeant Welkman!” she shouted. “Roofs—take the gods-damned roofs!”

  Sergeant Welkman was already moving, a bull-shouldered man whose beard grew like wire through a map of old scars. “Dismount!” he bellowed, voice rolling down the line. “First and second files with me—smash the doors, clear to the tiles! Third file—shields up and anchor the street!”

  Men tumbled from saddles, threw their reins to the nearest hand, and became infantry between one heartbeat and the next. A boot to a latch, a shoulder to an oaken plank, and the tailor’s shop split open like a chest. Welkman’s wedge poured inside, kicking counters aside, trampling bolts of cloth, scattering a family that screamed. The sergeant swung his shield into a stairwell like a second door and drove upward.

  Evangeline saw none of it in whole—only pieces, bright as glass shards. A man in black rolling under a horse’s belly and cutting the girth, horse and rider pitching apart. One of her lancers decapitating an attacker and then catching a bolt through his open mouth mid-cheer. A boy with palms over his ears gasping silent sobs in a doorway as blood crept to his bare feet like a tide.

  The street cinched down to a choke-point—wagons, market stalls, alley mouths vomiting blades. No room for spears now. " Draw steel!” Evangeline kicked free the lance and went to work with the longsword—blued steel, crown stamp at its base.

  A grapnel snagged her reins and dragged the bit cruelly across the horse’s gums. Three men hit the bridle, another stabbing for her thigh. Evangeline rose in the stirrups and cut the grapnel rope, back-cut the stab, felt the blade jar on bone. Hands found her boot, her cuisse, the saddle flap. A jerk—one, two—and the world flipped. She went off the back of the horse, hit hard, rolled, her helm ringing a bell inside her skull.

  They came like dogs who’d tasted blood.

  She met the first with a cut that went collarbone to navel. The second caught her on the vambrace; she stepped into him so the bite skidded and he was too close to stab again, then drove the point up through the meat under his jaw until the blade stuck in his tongue. She wrenched it free with a wet crack and kicked him into the third man. The third had two knives and knew what to do with them—fast wrists, street style. He nicked her across the cheek, the blood running hot into her mouth, copper-salt. She chopped his hand off and put his own knife in his ear while he screamed.

  “RALLY TO ME!” she roared, mouth red.

  They did. The survivors folded around her like ribs around a heart—shields up, blades out, boots grinding on fruit pulp and bow-splinters and severed fingers. A shield wall born ragged and ugly but born. Bolts clattered from the high stone and skittered underfoot. A black-garbed archer on an eave raised his bow to loose again and his skull burst in a blossom of dark mist—Welkmans’s men had reached the rooftops.

  For a dozen heartbeats the battle existed in two skins: the street, all crush and grunt and iron; the roofs, all wind and span and light, men hopping chimneypots and clawing ridge-tiles, bows popping, blades flashing bright as fish. Welkman led from the front, a squat avalanche in mail, spine bent to the pitch of the roof, shield held like a door against the sky. He shouldered an assassin over the gutter with a sound like a butcher’s block falling. The man’s scream broke in the middle when he hit the street twenty feet below.

  “Take the eaves!” Welkman snarled. “Shoot the windows! You—Holt—close that godforsaken alley with bodies if you have to!”

  Below, Evangeline gave ground by inches and bled for each one. She fought in the tight places—between barrel and wall, between horse corpse and toppled cart—where a long blade becomes a short truth. A masked woman snaked in low, dagger for the femoral; Evangeline felt the intent before the steel, pivoted, trapped the wrist in her greave, and stamped until she felt the wrist crumble like stale bread. She reversed and took the head, the mask sloughing away in two halves like peeled fruit.

  A cloud of black smoke bloomed in the lane ahead—pitch pots. Someone had the sense to roll a barrel into it, and the fire caught with a whoof!, heat throwing itself into her face. The assassins leaned into that fire, silhouettes tall as devils for a blink. She cut them down by their shadows as they tried to come through.

  A crossbow string sang close enough to pluck hairs from her neck. She turned, saw the shooter at a second-story casement, and threw her sword as if it were a javelin. It spun once, struck hilt-deep, and the man disappeared backward altogether. She went to a knee among bodies, took another blade from another dead hand, and rose again already cutting.

  “Push!” she snarled, teeth pink. “Push, push, push!”

  They pushed. A shield braced to her left felt a hit that rang through her spine; the man behind it vomited and held anyway. On the right, a riderless horse became a barricade: they rolled it against the alley mouth, hooves locked like beams. Bolts came fewer, thinner; on the roofline the dark shapes were thinning. Welkman’s men had turned that war.

  “Street’s ours in ten!” someone roared from the tiles.

  “Make it five!” Welkman answered, and threw himself into a knot of three, bowling one over the ridge and taking the fingers off another’s bow hand with a short, mean chop.

  The assassins below felt the sky go bad and the ground go worse. The edge of their attack frayed and then tore. They loosed smoke and scatter seed, they lobbed glass globes that shattered in pools of oil-slick flame, but their center had lost its teeth. A horn blew down the lane behind them—short, frantic, twice repeated: withdraw. The masked faces broke apart like a flock, each man and woman for themselves.

  “Hold!” Evangeline rasped to the soldiers who surged, hungry for blood. “Hold your gods-cursed feet!”

  One trooper, young, all pupils and panting, darted past her with his blade up. She caught his harness at the plate seam and yanked him so hard he slammed into her hip. “You chase into their alleys and they feed you to the dogs,” she snarled into his face. “We’re not dying in the cracks like rats.”

  He blushed through his grime and nodded, and she shoved him back into the half-circle. Around them the masked killers melted—down gutters, through shutters, across lines strung between roofs like spider silk. A last desperate volley peppered the lane and thudded shields and meat; a last brave fool charged and died for it within a yard of her boots.

  “Street secured!” Welkman called from above. “Roofs swept!”

  “Then get down,” Evangeline said, and swallowed blood. Now that the fight had bled past them, the sound came in—the moans with words in them, the kinder voices trying to baffle pain with soft nonsense, the crackle of burning oil, the pop-pop-pop of something small and alive dying in a fire. She tasted salt and iron. Midday light made it all too clear. Blood looked almost black in shade; in the direct sun it shone a vicious red, bright as lacquer.

  “Count,” she said.

  “Forty-five standing,” someone answered, too quick.

  “Count.”

  They counted. Sixty-one left breathing and moving. Of those, more than half marked, pierced, cracked, or cut. Evangeline stood and let her head tilt back, sending a fine spray of blood off her chin onto the sky. In the bright light the bells’ clanging sounded far away, like a river falling over stone.

  Welkman dropped beside her, boots slapping cobble, beard singed at the ends. “You wear death like a cloak, General,” he said, half a grin split into a grimace as the words pulled a cut on his lip

  “Aye.”

  She turned to the lane’s survivors, to the face's masks of paint and the hands that trembled and tried to hide it. “Listen,” she said, too tired to shout and too stubborn to speak soft. “We don’t chase ghosts into holes. We continue. The emperor needs us.”

  She pointed the borrowed sword at the castle’s white height where the sun glared. “We go.”

  They went.

  No one cheered now. Hooves picked their careful way over ruin. A rider led each riderless horse. The wounded rode in the middle, eyes glassed, a few singing the soft soldier songs that came when shock came—child songs, campfire songs, tunes with the edges sanded off by years. A woman in a second-story window, hands and arms raw to the elbows from making bread, unpinned her apron and flapped it like a poor flag as they passed. A man in a butcher’s apron came from a doorway with a pail and threw water on the burning oil, was rewarded with a belch of flame that took his brows and sent him reeling. Two of Evangeline’s men stopped long enough to kick a burning cart away from a doorway so the people inside could come out coughing.

  They caught a second fight two streets on—smaller, pettier, mean as a dogfight in an alley. Four masked men had mistaken a side lane for escape and found a dead end and then found Evangeline. She let her rankers have it, and they took it savage, all grunts and boots and the wet percussion of steel meeting throat. One of the masked men tried to kneel and lift his hands and they killed him kneeling, and there it was—the thing no one spoke of and everyone carried. War is a barrel that rolls downhill. She did not say stop. She did not say good. She said, “Move.”

  At the last bend before the castle gate, the street widened into a little square. A dry fountain held pigeons and ash. High above, the gatehouse spit noonlight off gold leaf, and guards in the emperor’s colors leant out for a better look.

  And at the square’s far end, death tried one last time.

  They came in a switchback rush from the side lanes, a pincer snapping hard—fewer now, but spiteful, desperate, quick. A pair with hooked glaives tried to hamstring the whole column at once, blades flashing for tendons. Evangeline’s horse took a line of sparks across its pastern and staggered; she swung down before it fell and met the glaives in a ringing cross that knocked her wrists numb. A third came for her back and got Welkman’s shield boss in the mouth instead, teeth jetted like corn from a mill. A fourth planted a knee on a fallen trooper’s chest and sawed for the throat; Evangeline kicked him so hard in the temple the toe of her sabaton dented and the man’s head made a noise like fruit thrown against a wall.

  “Make a square!” she shouted. “Spears front! Cut them on the points!”

  They made a hedgehog of iron and hate and let the assassins throw themselves on it. Men screamed and slid down shafts, hands scrabbling at the ash-wood like lovers clinging. A masked woman leapt the points and landed inside the square—light as a cat, mean as a wolverine. She killed a trooper before her boots stopped skidding, then turned and met Evangeline like two flints struck together. The woman was quick and beautiful as a blade thrown by someone who loved it. Evangeline was not quick. Evangeline was correct. She let the woman clang off her guard twice, took the third hit on the thickest plate of her chest, and rewarded it by breaking the woman’s knee with a low cut and then splitting her from hairline to heart with a straight, ugly chop.

  That was the spirit snapping. The assassins felt it go—a string cut, a tent pole kicked—and they broke, each one suddenly alone in his or her skin and wanting it. Two tried to climb the fountain and slipped on pigeon shit and fell and were spitted like boar. Another sprang for a windowsill and got a butcher’s hook in the back from a man with singed brows, who hung there grunting and swearing until Welkman relieved him of the duty with a short thrust.

  “Do not pursue,” Evangeline said, quieter now, because it was midday and the sun was already turning the blood sticky and dark and the city had seen enough. “There’s the gate. There’s the reason.”

  They turned their faces to the wall with the emperor’s sigil bright as coins in a moneylender’s eyes. The portcullis yawned like a jaw full of iron teeth. A runner pelted from the gatehouse to meet them, breath pumping like a bellows, calling names that got lost in the heat and the ringing and the human noise of pain.

  Evangeline paused once—only once—and looked back the way they had come. The lane was a string of red beads and black plumes of smoke, the rooftops combed flat where men had danced and killed and fallen.

  Then she put her shoulder under the weight again, lifted her sword—borrowed, blood-wet, true—and led what remained of her hundred beneath the teeth of the gate and into the castle’s shadow, where the next killing waited wearing silk and rank and the smell of ink.

  Inside the chaos still raged on.

  King Zansabar let out a battle cry and surged forward, his warhammer singing. He cracked skulls like eggshells. “Stone and steel!” he roared, shattering an assassin’s breastplate like it was paper. Everywhere his warhammer fell blood and bone flew. All around him his kin were laying waste to the black clad attackers. Two of his dwarves died with axes buried in their backs. A third bled out from the throat, gurgling prayers. But they pressed on yelling curses at their foes.

  In a corner of the hall, standing and waiting, Lord Chronos Chessire looked on.

  His two son Manfred, stood at attention. Behind them stood the Templar Wizard Malcom, the steel-faced Captain Hrulk, and the stone-like Sir Rourke the Anvil—named for his unmovable stance in battle.

  But Chronos lifted no blade.

  He folded his hands, voice calm. “Wait.”

  “They’ll falter,” said Manfred.

  “Or succeed,” Chronos said, eyes narrowing. The outcome is not yet determined. Our master’s orders were clear. Only move… if the outcome is certain. To move too soon would seal our fate in the overall outcome."

  Archmage Spendal stood shakily. Once the greatest mind of the Empire, now leaned heavily on a staff carved from starlight wood.

  A black-cloaked killer came sprinting toward him.

  “Mistake,” Stewart muttered, lifting a trembling hand.

  The air rippled. The assassin exploded into ash mid-stride.

  Another came. Stewart flicked his fingers. The man’s sword turned to rust, his skin melted from his face.

  He began to cough violently, blood staining his white beard.

  “You old fool,” came a voice beside him.

  Nylla the Green, clad in spider-silk robes, raised both arms. Her mouth opened—no words came, only a hiss of ancient syllables.

  A dozen black-cloaks were lifted off the ground—their bones wrenched backward by unseen gravity before they imploded into a storm of gore. Next, she lifted her staff, and a gust of emerald wind tore through the air. Vines burst from the marble floor, entangling limbs, dragging assassins down. She muttered several phrases, green wards flashed before her as roots twisted around throats, snapping them like twigs.

  At her side, Isemberd, another elder of the Wizard’s Council, raised his staff. A storm of lightning cracked across the pews, frying assassins where they stood.

  Archbishop Luc de Presti had not moved from the golden basin. Four holy paladins formed a wall around him; their shields carved with the sunburst of Vrorn.

  “Strike them down, in the name of the Godking!” Luc shouted. “Let none who trespass live."

  One of his knights died shielding him from a thrown dagger. Another caught fire from a misfired spell and screamed as he fell.

  Knight commander Henri was dealing death with every blow. He was off to the side pressing the fight.

  A Crown Earned:

  Below the throne, Emperor Gregor fought like a man half his age. His sword glowed with each strike. He killed two more assassins, as he was trying to reach Alucarde. He did not see the assassin behind him. He turned too slow to block the strike aimed at his back, and at the last second Captain Ellerd's blade was there, deflecting it before stabbing the attacker through the chest. Gregor nodded his thanks, as a fountain of blood sprayed him in the face, from the blade protruding from Ellerd's throat.

  Standing behind him, smiling faintly, was General Zavian.

  For a moment, neither spoke. All around them the hall thundered with battle cries, spells, and the screams of the dying. But here, at the foot of the lion throne, the air between them was cold and still.

  Zavian's solders turned and joined the assassins. Pushing the emperor's guard into dire circumstances, as many were cut down unawares. But king Brambor and his wolves were quick to react and helped them steady the line. He swung his axe in wide arcs keeping the traitors at bay. Any that strayed too close felt its bite.

  Gregor lowered his blade a fraction, his voice a rasp of disbelief. "Zavian...why?'

  The general wiped Ellerd's blood from his sword, his eyes hard as iron. "Why? Because the oaths you forced from us were shackles. Because the crown you wear is a thief's trinket."

  Gregor stepped down a couple more stairs, the lion throne now looming above him. "I fought and bled beside you. In the River Realms. At Frostvale. I gave you title and land. You swore loyalty to me. Your emperor. And to the empire."

  Zavian laughed with mirth. "You were never my emperor. You killed my emperor. You call this an empire? It's a carcass draped in banners. You hold it together with press-gangs and taxes while even the gods have turned their backs on us."

  Gregor's grip tightened even more on his sword. "I bled for this empire when nobles like you hid behind their walls. I earned this crown with steel, not birthright."

  Zavian's eyes narrowed. "Earned? You murdered the rightful heir in this very throne room. You butchered the brothers and called it justice."

  Gregor's jaw clenched. "I ended a civil war that had killed thousands. One that would have killed many more. The brothers tore these lands apart. I gave it peace."

  Zavian's voice rose, cutting through the din. "You gave it chains! Pressed our sons and daughters into your wars, stripped our houses of their oaths, took everything from those who opposed you. You call it peace. I call it conquest."

  Gregor took another step, rage creeping into his tone. "And for that you open the gates to cutthroats and assassins. You bring blades into a naming ceremony? For what? To see a babe die?"

  Zavian tilted his head. "For a future where this empire is more than your lion's cage."

  Gregor spat onto the marble at his feet. "You did not dream this up on your own. Who whispered it into your ear? Who gave you the nerve to poison my son against me.?"

  Zavian's lips curled. "Ah. You finally ask the right question."

  Gregor's eyes narrowed. "Name them."

  Zavian straightened, voice suddenly low and reverent. "The master. The rightful ruler of all the realms. The returned king. He who was locked away."

  Gregor blinked. A flicker of confusion broke through his fury. "Who is this master you speak of?"

  Zavian smiled once more, and for the first time his eyes held something like awe. "Malekith. He walks upon the realms once more, and he has offered me a place under him when the empire you stole burns."

  Gregor actually recoiled a step back. His voice, when it came, was almost a whisper. "No. That cannot be..."

  "It is, " Zavian hissed. "While you kneel to your little godking who ignores you. He sits upon his throne of bones gathering his armies to move against you. And now even your own blood opens the gates for him."

  Gregor's face was red now. "You kneel to a lich!"

  "I kneel to destiny. A true king, not a sellsword with a stolen crown!"

  "Then your destiny will end upon my sword. You will not live to serve him."

  Zavian raised his sword into guard. "Then show me, Lion of the Empire, if your claws are as sharp as your boasts."

  Gregors knuckles cracked as he squeezed his blade. "I will send him your head so he may look upon it and know what it means to stand before the lion."

  They circled, boots splashing through blood. Around them the fighting still raged-mages hurling spells, Brambor bellowing as he cut down more assassins, and now standing in front of the bastard prince smiling. But here, time slowed.

  Zavian lunged first, their blades meeting with a clang, that shook both of them. Gregor shoved him backwards snarling. "You were my brother in arms."

  Zavian twisted, parried, riposted. "Let us finish what you began in this room all those years ago."

  Steel clashed again and again, sparks fountaining from every blow. Gregor's fury lent him strength; Zavian's devotion lent him speed. They cut, blocked, hammered. One stumbled, the other surged. Around them, a ring of kings, knights, and mages held the chaos at bay. The attackers were all but done now. The assault had failed. Gregor saw his son, lying unconscious at king Brambor's feet as a circle now formed around the two titans.

  Gregor roared: "For every oath you break, for every lie you fed my son, for every innocent killed here today-this ends now!'

  Zavian spat blood upon the floor and smiled. He looked around the room, staring into the faces of pure hatred. He could see that they had lost the day. The only thing he had left was to kill the emperor. There would be no escape for him. So be it he thought. "Come lion, show me your roar!"

  Their blades clashed once more, in a storm of strikes and parries, each fueled by old hatreds. Gregor was stronger, Zavian faster-but it was the emperor's fury that proved greater. He feinted, then struck clean through Zavian's chest.

  Gregor stood over the dying general. "You serve your master poorly," he said coldly.

  "You've already lost," Zavian croaked, and then Gregor's blade silenced him forever.

  Salvation in the Corridor:

  In the entrance hall, Ernesto had reached the Empress.

  He was a whirlwind of steel, cutting down all in his path. But this was a battle of attrition. And as he looked out amongst the chaos. It was one he knew that they would lose.

  Then-

  the doors burst open behind them.

  General Evangaline had arrived.

  Red-haired and roaring, her Crimson Knights poured in behind her like a wall of fire. They hit the enemy's rear line with thunderous violence.

  Ernesto surged forward. "With me!" he bellowed.

  Moments later, it was ended.

  The toll was heavy. The empress clutched her child and wept, her lips whispering prayers. Of her personal guard only five now stood. Most of the nobility around her except for a few now lay dead at her feet.

  Gregor stood on the bloodied steps, chest heaving.

  He turned as the doors to the waiting chamber were thrown open.

  He saw his lord protector enter. He was bloodied but still lived. And behind him....

  His heart dropped to his stomach. Cristina was holding his son close to her chest as they approached.

  He pushed past his guards, sword clanging loudly upon the steps as he dropped it and walked towards his family.

  Lord Lucien took a deep breath and said a prayer as he saw his daughter and grandson enter the chamber unharmed.

  Gregor's eyes met Ernesto's.

  "They're fine, my lord," Ernesto said softly.

  Gregor exhaled. "Thank you."

  Ernesto walked past the emperor towards the fallen prince. As Gregor reached his wife and child.

  Gregor stared into Cristina's teary eyes and hugged her close.

  Ernesto looked down upon the prince in disgust.

  At his feet Alucarde began to stir.

  King Zansabar kicked him hard in the face.

  The boy collapsed again.

  "Family," Zansabar muttered, shaking his head as he walked off.

  "Take him," Ernesto ordered.

  Two soldiers dragged the unconscious prince from the chamber. To the dungeons.

  Aftermath:

  The Hall of the Lion Throne stank of blood and fire.

  The traitors were dead or dying. The throne was safe—for now.

  But countless bodies lay on the floor of the Lion Hall.

  Among them: merchants, council members, dozens of guards, and two of the Empress’s handmaidens.

  Stewart Spendal coughed blood on the marble, as Nylla and Isemberd lent him aid.

  Lord Lucien Greystone stood amid the corpses, face pale with fury. His cloak was torn, his blade bloodied.

  Queen Arendriel wiped her blood clean and whispered to Liluth, "The emperor is shaken. That will not bode well for any of us.'

  King Brambor, his armor split and bloodied, howled in frustration and kicked a corpse out of his way. King Zansabar looked upon the man and chuckled as he walked past.

  And behind them all...

  Lord Chronos watched.

  His sword dripping blood as he and his templars slaughterd assassins trying to make their escape.

  He had done as he was instructed. Truth be told he was not even sure if the coup would have succeeded even with his help. The battle was fierce, but Gregor's forces proved their worth. That would have to be taken into consideration before any more attacks were made.