"You overestimate , My Dawn." Damian said.
"Oh, but I estimate you just right, Prince of Darkness." Lorraine’s smirk was slow, her lips glistening with wine.
She knew how "close" Prince Damian was with the lord chamberlain of the Emperor, the sa chamberlain who had so conveniently replaced Hadrian Arvand in the duty of pouring the Emperor’s drinks. Once she’d learned that, the rest had been child’s play to piece together.
"What is it? Missing your royal father already?" she asked, voice light but blade-sharp. She knew his father had no love for him. She had never understood why the n who sent their sons as hostages ended up resenting them. Guilt, perhaps. Or cowardice.
They despise their sons for how they chose to survive. What was wrong with them surviving? Why should they forfeit their life? That was not fair. They were already paying for the mistakes of their fathers.
Damian’s smile didn’t falter at once, only a small flicker in his eyes betrayed that her words had landed. He hid the hurt well, shaking his head as though the barb had missed entirely.
More than her words, it was her eyes that hurt him more. The last thing he would want from her was pity.
Lorraine leaned forward, refusing to let him retreat. "Are you planning to kill the Emperor? Is it your own plan—or is there soone behind it? Lystheria, perhaps?"
His smile vanished. The sharpening of his gaze was subtle but unmistakable—the eyes of a prince carrying the weight of his kingdom’s survival.
"Killing him is not the plan," Damian said. Danger curled around his voice. The accusations she’d thrown were enough to see him, and his entire kingdom, burned if they ever slipped beyond these walls.
And yet... Lorraine observed that he hadn’t denied that sothing was planned. Sothing that required this ceremony to be public.
"Then," she asked softly, "what is your plan?"
Damian’s smile returned, faint and unreadable, as he rolled the stem of the wine glass between his fingers. "My plan, My Dawn?" His laugh was quiet, almost pitying. "Plans are for n who believe the ga is still worth playing."
He leaned back, gaze drifting toward the tall windows, as if the night might answer in his place. "Tell , Lorraine... did you know your Emperor had the kitchens throw out an entire banquet last month because the roast swan was a shade too pale? While the people in the outer quarter starved?" His voice cooled, sharpening into steel. "A man like that doesn’t need poison in his wine. The rot’s already in his soul."
"I’ve heard about the siege of Kaltharion’s capital," Lorraine said. "How he built the dam that cut off the river entirely, destroying their fields—their spine. How the Emperor starved them for two years before they surrendered, sending their prince as a hostage." She pressed her lips. "And Lystheria..."
If Kaltharion was the breadbasket of the continent, Lystheria was its mind. A jewel of art, philosophy, dicine, and literature, small in size but guarded by mountains and seas like a fortress of ideas. They were richer, wiser, and more refined than most kingdoms dared to dream. And they knew it. Their pride was a blade they polished daily, noses tilted so high they barely saw the ground beneath their feet.
They dismissed the forge and the barracks, believing the strength of mind outweighed brute force. But their arrogance cost them allies, and when war ca, they found their lofty ideals and poetic words could not stop steel.
Damian’s jaw tightened.
When he looked away, it wasn’t to hide weakness; it was to leash sothing far more dangerous. "He destroyed our libraries and temples," Damian said at last, voice low, almost reverent, as though speaking over graves. "I was a boy, standing in the ashes. I slled our pride burning. And our won..."
Lorraine stayed silent. She could see it—the flicker of a mory too heavy to look at for long.
But she also knew there was more. Everyone knew.
The Emperor had not stopped with fire and stone. Lystherian won were fad for their beauty, and when Vaelorian soldiers, bone-weary from years of conquest, hungered for spoils, the Emperor "gifted" them won torn from their hos. Mothers, wives, daughters—dragged into the streets while their n were cut down or made to watch. Babies dashed against walls so the won could be taken without "interruption."
Even now, fifteen years later, the red-light district still held won stolen in that war. So had forgotten their holand. None had forgotten the Emperor.
Even Damian’s mother and his sister had been forced to serve the Emperor. Rumor claid the Emperor had made the King of Lystheria watch as his wife and daughter attended their conqueror’s whims.
They were rumors. How much was the truth? She didn’t know. But Damian’s sister had ended her own life.
The man thrived on the humiliation of royals and nobles, breaking them piece by piece until they knelt in the dust. And he treated the serfs worse than he treated the nobles, like dust.
Lorraine had seen fragnts of that lost world in the Arvand family’s library. Her father had brought back so of the remnants of the conquests. Those slim, hand-bound Lystherian volus were inked with strange diagrams and precise formulas. In the quiet, forgotten corners where no one disturbed her, she had taught herself the language of poisons.
When she looked back at Damian, his expression was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm forged in the silence after a vow of vengeance, a vow that had never been broken, and never would be.
"Pride always precedes the fall," Damian said.
Lorraine let out a short, incredulous laugh. "You’re arranging this ceremony for that?" She pressed a hand to her abdon, the laughter spilling brighter. "That is the stupidest thing I’ve heard."
"It will happen," Damian replied, unflinching. "I’ve seen it happen."
It had happened in his own kingdom. His father’s pride had brought it to its knees.
"Whatever," Lorraine said, still wearing her smile. How childish—a kingdom was not toppled by pride alone. No door opens by itself; either you have the key, or you break it down.
"The dragon will rise again," Damian said.
"The what?" Lorraine’s laughter faltered, her voice tightening. She wanted to be sure she’d heard right. He did not talk about her husband, right? He was the one who bore the shaful sigil of a dragon.
"The Dragon—Vaeronyx." He whispered the na of the ancient dragon whispered in the lore, like an invocation.
Lorraine’s brows arched. And then, as if to smother the strange chill his words brought, she broke into laughter again.
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