Chapter One: Throats and Thorns

Sebastian was getting married.

Soran learned that truth with blood still warm on his hands.

Blood still steamed on the blade when Soran dropped it.

It felt easier than holding onto the truth.

It landed with a soft thud in the dewy grass, beside the twitching body of the traitor—an ambassador who’d thought bribery might loosen Clanthian tongues. The fog of morning clung to the hills around them, veiling the violence in pale silence. Only the breath of his companion, a low exhale, reminded Soran that he wasn’t alone.

Sebastian stood at his side, their shoulders almost brushing, the soft freckles across his cheek catching the light like stardust. His auburn hair, damp from the mist, clung to his forehead. He wiped his blade with the elegance of someone who’d done it a hundred times and felt nothing.

“I told you he’d run,” Sebastian muttered. His voice was smooth, teasing. Familiar.

“You told me he’d piss himself,” Soran replied.

“He did.”

They both looked down.

A pause, then laughter. Quiet and sharp, like old memories resurfacing.

This was what they did—what they’d always done.

From the guttered streets of the capital to the golden halls of the palace, they were the hands behind Emperor Kieran’s unshakable reign. Assassins, spies, enforcers. The kind of men whose names were whispered in the dark, if spoken at all.

But Soran remembered them differently. Two boys with scraped knees, playing swords with sticks outside the palace gates, waiting for the emperor’s summons.

Waiting for Kieran.

The thought of him now—his voice, the warmth in his eyes when no one else watched—unsettled Soran more than the kill.

Soran’s hands, still gloved, twitched at his sides. He tried to steady his breath. He was a weapon. That was all.

“Come on,” Sebastian said, already walking away.

“We’ll miss breakfast. And Diana will be there.”

A name like a stone dropped into a still lake.

Soran flinched.

Diana. The noblewoman with the moonlit smile. The one with soft hands and a family name stitched into tapestries. The one Sebastian was set to marry.

The one who wasn’t him.

He shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t still feel it—the ghost of Sebastian’s mouth on his neck, the breathless night in the palace stables, the way Sebastian had whispered his name like a secret prayer.

He shouldn’t remember. But he did.

And Sebastian? He acted like none of it mattered. Like it hadn’t meant everything.

It was just once, Soran had told himself. Just once, and only because he was drunk on victory and wine and the way Sebastian had looked at him that night like he was made of something rare.

But it hadn’t been just once. It had been weeks of shared warmth, of hands fumbling in darkness, of whispers that tasted like promises. Until the day Sebastian showed up in a gold-trimmed tunic and said the engagement had been arranged.

“I’m sorry,” he had said, looking everywhere but at Soran. “It was always going to happen. You knew that.”

Did I?

Now, Soran stood motionless, watching Sebastian vanish through the trees.

He turned the other way.

He’d made an excuse.

Something about needing to deliver the ambassador’s smuggled intel directly—urgent, sensitive, important. Just enough to slip away from the breakfast.

It was a poor excuse.

But he couldn’t stay.

Being around Sebastian felt like a noose tightening around his throat, inch by inch, breath by breath.

And seeing him with Diana…

Felt like the snap had already come.

He shoved the feeling down.

He knew what it was.

Love.

And what had love ever done for him?

He gave everything for it.

Sebastian gave him “I’m getting married.”

What a joke.

The palace was silver in the early light—glass domes casting fractured beams across the obsidian floors, silence threading through the halls like smoke.

Soran moved through it like a shadow, his long silver hair trailing behind him like mist. Few dared walk the corridors barefoot at this hour, but Soran liked the quiet. The cold. The absence of eyes.

He always returned before sunrise—before the world woke, before duty resumed, before he had to see Sebastian standing beside Diana with that hollow smile.

He didn’t expect the throne room to be occupied.

Emperor Kieran stood near the arched window, watching the sea beyond the cliffs. The wind tugged at the hem of his black robe, loose and elegant, tied casually at the waist. His hair was dark as ink, gleaming like polished obsidian. But it was his eyes—those piercing, unnatural red eyes—that caught and held the breath in Soran’s throat.

They flicked toward him now, unreadable.

“Soran,” Kieran said, voice quiet and certain.

Soran bowed low. “Your Majesty.”

Kieran’s mouth curved, faint but wry. “You only call me that when you’re angry with me.”

“I’m not angry.”

“No?” Kieran stepped forward, his presence weightless and exacting. “Then it must be guilt.”

Soran said nothing.

Kieran walked past him slowly, the echo of his bare feet soft against marble. “You always come this way after a kill. I used to wait here more often.”

Soran turned slightly. “Why did you stop?”

Kieran didn’t look at him when he answered. “Because you stopped looking for me.”

A silence stretched.

The emperor turned then—slow, deliberate. His red eyes were steady, as if weighing Soran down to the bone. “He’s marrying her.”

The air tightened. Soran hated how easily Kieran said it. How final it sounded.

“You think I don’t know?” Soran said quietly. “Everyone knows.”

“Knowing doesn’t make it hurt less.”

Soran stiffened. “Why would it hurt?”

Kieran’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Why indeed.”

He moved back toward the window, folding his hands behind his back. “Diana is smart. Tactful. From a family that wants power more than love. She’ll make Sebastian a fine wife.”

“Don’t speak about him like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like he’s already gone.”

Kieran turned his head slightly, but not fully. “Isn’t he?”

The words landed with a strange gentleness, like a bruise pressed by a careful hand.

Soran looked away, the long strands of his silver hair falling like a curtain. In the reflection of the polished stone, he saw himself—hollow-eyed and beautiful in a way that made people hesitate. No wonder they mistook him for something other. Something breakable.

Only Kieran had never made that mistake.

“You still fight like a god,” Kieran murmured. “Even when your heart is bleeding.”

Soran’s jaw tensed. “Is that why you waited here? To remind me I’m not good at hiding it?”

“I waited,” Kieran said softly, “because I missed you.”

The words were simple. Not grand. Not heavy. But they made Soran go still.

Kieran stepped closer, stopping just behind him. “I once thought… if I was patient, you’d come back on your own.”

“And now?” Soran asked.

Now Kieran’s voice lowered, rough like stone worn by time. “Now I think patience might be the cruelest lie I ever told myself.”

Soran turned slightly, only to find Kieran’s eyes already on him—burning red and solemn.

“But it’s not my place,” Kieran said, softer this time. “It never has been.”

He stepped away before Soran could speak. Returned to the window. Returned to stillness.

Soran stood rooted in place, unsure which ache hurt more—the one in his chest, or the one that had just formed in Kieran’s eyes when he let him go again.

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