Content Warning: This chapter contains references to mass death, grief, and psychological trauma. Reader discretion is advised.
The Day After the Dead Fell/Imperial Palace
POV: Seraphina
Victory felt hollow.
Seraphina woke to gray light filtering through her chamber windows. She barely remembered getting here. She remembered fragments: Yona's firm hands forcing the blood-crusted dress off her body, a damp cloth wiping the grime from her skin, quiet scolding she had been too exhausted to answer. She had let her aide maneuver her into a clean shift and guide her to bed without protest.
Every muscle ached. Her magic felt drained after two days of burning everything she had.
She forced herself upright.
The palace was too quiet.
Eleanor summoned them before the sun had fully risen.
The Empress stood at the head of the council table, surrounded by reports that kept arriving in the hands of pale-faced clerks. Each parchment added weight to the room. Each set of numbers deepened the exhaustion on Eleanor's face.
Caelan stood to Seraphina's left. He had changed clothes and washed the blood from his hands. Exhaustion showed in the shadows beneath his eyes.
Thalion stood to her right, keeping careful distance. He had not spoken to her since they climbed out of that chamber. He had not looked at her or acknowledged what they had accomplished together.
She did not have the energy to care.
"The count," Eleanor said. Her voice was steady even though her eyes held the hollow look of someone who had not slept. "Give me the count."
The head clerk stepped forward. His hands trembled as he unfolded the parchment.
"Eighty-nine confirmed dead, Your Majesty."
The number hit her hard. She would remember it for the rest of her life.
"Thirty-one guards. Twenty-three servants. Nineteen palace staff. Nine healers. Seven nobles and courtiers."
Each category made it worse.
Nine healers. The ones who had tried to save people who turned and killed them. Who had stayed at their posts while corruption spread through the halls.
"Nearly a hundred people," Eleanor said quietly. "In two days."
Seraphina had saved thirty.
She knew it with the precision of someone who had counted each face, each name, each life she had pulled back.
Seven in the infirmary in those first desperate hours. Another twenty-three throughout the siege, racing through corridors, reaching the bitten before the gray could spread too far.
Thirty people who would be dead without her.
It should feel like victory.
The math said otherwise. One hundred and nineteen people had been in mortal danger. She had saved thirty. Eighty-nine still died.
Caelan must have seen something in her face.
"Without you, it would have been everyone." His voice was quiet and firm. "The curse would have spread beyond the palace. The city would have fallen."
She knew he was right.
She still saw the young healer's face. The old man she had reached too late. The screaming that never seemed to stop.
"For every life I pulled back, three more slipped away."
Caelan had no answer for that, and neither did she.
The memorial was held at midday.
They gathered in the great hall, survivors and mourners filling a space that felt too large for the people who remained. Eleanor read the names herself. Every servant, every guard, every healer, every noble.
Seraphina stood with the others and listened. She did not cry. She had no tears left after those long hours of fighting.
Eighty-nine names. Eighty-nine people who would never go home.
And somewhere in this city, the ones responsible walked free.
"The investigation," Eleanor said, once the memorial ended and only the council remained. "What do we know?"
The head investigator stepped forward. He was a man with gray hair and lines around his eyes from decades of work.
"The relic was ancient, Your Majesty. Pre-imperial." The investigator consulted his notes. "Our scholars matched the curse signature to historical records. The whispers, the gray skin, the dead rising with black eyes. Three other incidents in imperial history showed identical patterns. All three were linked to the same artifact: the Wound of Othren, believed destroyed centuries ago."
"How did it end up beneath my palace?"
"We do not know. The archive above the chamber was torched during the battle. Any records are ash."
Eleanor's expression hardened.
"Then tell me who activated it."
No one answered. The investigator exchanged glances with his colleagues. None of them wanted to speak.
"The timing suggests a connection to recent events." He glanced at Seraphina. "We investigated everyone with motive and opportunity."
"And?" Eleanor's voice was sharp.
"Lord Alaric Vessant was checked first. He lost everything in the divorce proceedings. If anyone had reason to want chaos in this palace, it would be him."
"He also has an alibi," Thalion said.
She turned to look at him. His face was expressionless and professional.
"I reviewed the guard logs personally." He produced a sheaf of papers. "Alaric Vessant never left the estate. Imperial guards monitored him around the clock. Every hour accounted for."
Seraphina said nothing. She knew those guards were lying. She could feel it in her bones. Knowing and proving were different things.
The investigator continued. "We also checked Lady Evelyne Malenthra. Known associate of Lord Vessant."
Thalion checked his notes. "Accounted for. She was at the Sisters of Mercy healing house the night the curse began. Arrived at sunset, remained until dawn. Dozens of witnesses."
Seraphina went still.
"The night the curse began. She has an alibi for those exact hours."
"Charitable work. Tending to plague victims."
Evelyne Malenthra had a perfect alibi for the precise hours that mattered.
Seraphina almost laughed.
To anyone else, the alibi would seem credible. Evelyne had always played the sweet, caring cousin in public. The helpful relative who smiled at servants and remembered their children's names. Who would suspect someone so kind?
Seraphina had felt Evelyne's fingers squeeze her burned arm while charm magic pushed into her mind. She knew what Evelyne really was beneath the act.
And she knew Evelyne would never waste a night on charity unless she gained something from it.
"You find this credible?"
"I find it documented." Thalion's eyes met hers. "Multiple witnesses. Meticulous records."
She remembered the pressure against her mind months ago. That sensation when Evelyne had tried to push past her defenses.
Seraphina had resisted. Her fire burned the intrusion away.
The sisters at that healing house had no fire. No defenses against a woman who could slip into minds and rewrite memories.
The witnesses were not lying. They genuinely believed Evelyne had been there. They would pass any test, any magical verification.
Because to them, it was true.
Evelyne had touched their minds and made them remember a night that never happened.
"My lady?" Thalion was watching her. "Do you have additional evidence?"
"No." The word was hard to say. "I have nothing I can prove."
"Without evidence, we cannot act," Eleanor said. "They remain suspects. Suspicion is not conviction."
Eighty-nine people dead. And the people who killed them sat untouchable behind alibis built on corrupted guards and corrupted memories.
One thing had changed.
The accusers who had demanded Seraphina's containment had gone silent. Lord Harwick withdrew his proposal before the memorial ended, suddenly concerned about "overreach." Lady Delmonte discovered urgent business at her country estate that required immediate departure.
It was difficult to accuse the Flamebearer of causing a curse she had just destroyed. Difficult to call her dangerous when she had spent two days burning corruption from the blood of servants and nobles alike. Thirty lives saved by her fire. The math was hard to argue with.
The whispers did not stop entirely. They never would. For now, the loudest voices had retreated to wait for better ground.
Small comfort, and comfort nonetheless.
The gates opened at sunset.
With the curse broken and the relic destroyed, Eleanor lifted the blockade. Carts rolled in bearing supplies. Carts rolled out bearing bodies.
She met Siran and Amara in a private chamber.
They had slipped through during the siege when the barricade was briefly lifted. There had been no time to speak until now.
Caelan stood by the window. She had asked him to join this meeting.
Siran looked like he had not slept in a week. His clothes were travel-stained and his face was drawn tight with exhaustion.
"We tracked a scout through the eastern provinces." Siran's voice was hoarse. "Professional and trained. He led us to a cottage where someone had been hiding."
"Who?"
"We do not know. She fled when we captured the scout."
"And the scout?"
"Killed himself with poison hidden in a hollow tooth." Siran placed a wooden box on the table. "He died rather than talk. The woman fled and left this behind. We found it under a loose floorboard. Years of records. Someone has been piecing together a conspiracy."
Seraphina reached for the box.
A knock at the door interrupted her.
A palace messenger entered, bearing crimson banners with imperial crisis colors.
"Urgent summons for all military commanders. The war council convenes at dawn."
Seraphina's blood went cold.
She knew what this meant before Caelan broke the seal. Before his expression shifted from exhaustion to grim duty.
"Three border fortresses have gone dark in the past week." His voice was hollow. "Unprecedented threat level. The generals are being called to coordinate the response."
As Warden Commander, he had no choice.
"When do you leave?" she asked.
"Tonight. The council meets at dawn and I need to review the intelligence reports before then."
Seraphina looked at the box still sitting on the table, unopened. Whatever secrets it held would have to wait.
"Keep this safe," she told Siran. "Tell no one. When Caelan returns, we examine it together."
The box remained on the table.
After they left, Seraphina stood alone by the great window.
The palace grounds stretched below. Workers cleared debris. Soldiers patrolled. Life continued despite the horror that had consumed this place.
She thought of Alaric.
She remembered a night three months into the marriage. A thunderstorm had rattled the windows and she had woken gasping from a nightmare about her parents. Alaric had pulled her close without asking what was wrong. His hand had stroked her hair while rain hammered the glass.
"I have you," he had murmured against her temple. "You are safe here."
She had pressed her face into his chest and let herself believe him. Let herself think that maybe this arranged marriage could become something real. That maybe he saw her as more than a political arrangement.
He had stayed awake with her until the storm passed. Made her laugh with a story about falling off his horse as a boy. Kissed her forehead when she finally drifted back to sleep.
She had believed it was real.
The vault had shown her otherwise. The vision of Alaric discovering her bloodline, leaning forward with hunger in his eyes as a cloaked figure revealed what House D'Lorien had hidden. She had watched him choose to pursue her. Watched him plan the courtship, the proposal, the wedding. All of it calculated to acquire the Celestine heir before she understood what she was.
Someone had pointed him toward her. He had done the rest himself.
Every tender moment had been performance. Every comforting word, every gentle touch, every night he held her through bad dreams. He had played the devoted husband while draining her inheritance and positioning himself as the man who would rule beside a Warden Empress.
How did I not see it?
The answer was simple: because she had wanted to believe. Because she had been orphaned and lonely and desperate for someone to care. Because he had made the trap feel like home.
The eighty-nine names stayed in her head.
People who died because she had been born with the wrong bloodline. Because she had married the wrong man. Because she had the audacity to survive.
My mother gave her life so I could have another chance. And what have I done with it?
I changed strategies. I made different moves. The body count keeps rising.
She thought of the first timeline. The life that had ended on a pyre. The people who had lived because she had died.
Different bodies now. Different names. The count keeps climbing.
Eighty-nine in the siege. The witnesses who died before they could testify. The servants caught in conflicts that had nothing to do with them.
Would these people be alive if I had stayed dead?
If Mother had never cast the spell?
She did not know and could not know.
That uncertainty was the worst part.
The curse was broken. The palace was saved.
As Seraphina stood alone watching the sun set, she understood that one crisis had ended and another was already beginning.