Melusine of Nevirion was not listening.
Her tutor's voice droned like a distant mill wheel—steady, unyielding, and meant to grind her into attentive obedience. Yet her mind floated elsewhere, slipping beyond the stone walls of the chamber as easily as breath leaves the body.
Her eyes kept straying to the painted map on the far wall. It spanned nearly the entire breadth of the chamber, a vast sheet of parchment nailed to oaken boards darkened by years of smoke. Once, she imagined, the map must have gleamed with color—azure seas, emerald hills, banners of red and gold—but now it bore the tired stains of candle soot and generations of dust. The rivers had faded to faint spiderwebs of silver. The mountains, once proud and black, sagged into gray smudges. Even the mighty ocean had become a pale bruise of blue.
And yet, to Melusine, it lived.
In her mind the ink leapt and churned. The ocean was not dull parchment but a boundless plain of green and silver, where waves galloped like untamed horses and the spray stung her cheeks. She saw foam curling like lace across a moonlit tide. She heard the low, endless hum of water breathing against cliffs.
She imagined herself swimming there—beyond the black cliffs of Last-Build, where the gulls wheeled and cried like lost children. She could almost taste the salt, sharp as iron, on her lips.
"Princess Melusine."
The voice cracked through the dream like a whip.
She flinched.
Master Halvern's tone carried no warmth. His name suited him: a sound of gravel and old iron. Among the servants he was "the Cinder," for his robes smelled forever of spent fires and his beard bristled like gray ash. His eyes, keen as a raven's, fixed on her with something close to accusation.
He tapped his cane sharply against the floor. "Attend."
Melusine folded her hands in her lap. The wooden chair beneath her felt suddenly hard and narrow.
"Tell me," he said, rapping the map with the tip of his cane, "the names of the five kingdoms that once bent the knee to your grandsire's scepter."
She knew this answer—had known it for years—but her throat felt stiff, as though the truth might betray her.
"Thaldrune," she began, voice barely above a whisper. "Veyndar. Kalvethor. The Drovath Marches. And the Salt-Banner Isles."
The cane struck the floor once, a single dry note.
"And what," he said, "became of them?"
Melusine's gaze drifted back to the sea painted on the map. She thought of the books she had read in secret, the ones hidden beneath her mattress and behind the loose stone in her chamber wall. Chronicles penned by wandering clerics and disinherited lords. Pages that smelled of mildew and exile.
"They broke away," she said softly. "When the empire fell. They said our lords had bled them dry, taken their sons for endless wars, burned their fields. They rose together until…"
She faltered.
"Until what, child?"
"Until the empire's heart gave out," she finished, barely breathing the words.
Master Halvern's eyes narrowed. "Until propaganda poisoned them. Until lies turned them against rightful order. Do you believe such tales?"
The question settled like a weight on her chest. Did she believe? In the sleepless hours before dawn, when the wind clawed at her shutters, she sometimes wondered. She had read of famine and conscription, of endless winters when the imperial tithe stripped peasants of their grain. She had seen sketches of the old wars, the hollow-eyed children in charcoal lines. But she had also listened to her brother, Oberon, King of Nevirion, speak of destiny—of crowns forged for conquest, of a unity shattered by cowardice.
Her lips felt dry. "I… believe what you teach me, Master."
The old man sniffed, pleased. "Good. Then remember this: men are liars. Empires are truth."
His words left a hollow taste, like cold iron.
Melusine kept her gaze lowered, but inside she felt a faint stirring, a ripple that refused to still. Empires are truth. It sounded so much like something Oberon would say.
Before Halvern could press her further, the door creaked open. A young page entered, bowing so low his nose nearly touched the stone. His voice trembled with haste.
"Princess, forgive the intrusion. His Grace bids you prepare. The council gathers. Today they will choose the first Grand Magister."
A chill skated down her arms.
So soon.
Her heart fluttered, half fear, half wonder. She rose from the chair, smoothing her pale skirts. Behind her, Master Halvern muttered about wasted lessons, but the words faded like smoke.
The corridor beyond smelled of damp stone and old fires. Torches hissed in their brackets, their flames licking upward with a weary light. She moved slowly, letting the silence of the keep seep into her bones.
Last-Build Castle was a fortress before it was ever a home. Her grandsire had raised it in the empire's dying years, when rebellion crept like frost across the borders. Its walls were thick enough to swallow echoes. Its towers were squat, its windows narrow as arrow slits. Even the air seemed watchful.
Melusine trailed her fingers along the cold stones. Beneath the grit, she felt a faint vibration—as though the castle itself remembered the old wars.
Through the narrow windows came quick glimpses of the outer world. Low sunlight turned the courtyard to brass. Beyond the walls, autumn woods lay in patient shadow. Far off, a caravan wound along the forest's edge: wheels creaking, horses tossing their heads beneath banners of crimson and black.
Mages, she thought.
They always arrived with too much silk and too many trunks, bringing perfumes that clung to the air like secrets. Their garments shone brighter than peacock feathers. Some of the court whispered that their rings were carved from stars.
A memory stirred: a night years ago, when she had been a child of nine, standing on a balcony while a traveling mage performed for her father. She remembered the smell of cedar smoke, the way the magician's hands wove sparks into living birds of fire. The birds had wheeled above her head and vanished in a shower of gold. She had not slept that night, her eyes full of imagined wings.
Two maids crossed her path now, bent over a lintel they scrubbed with harsh lye. Their voices carried in soft, quick murmurs.
"—never trusted their kind."
"Aye. Too fine for their own good."
"And now His Grace means to seat one beside honest men. May the Five Gods help us."
Melusine lowered her gaze and passed them without a word. But their whispers followed her like smoke.
She imagined the mages again: tall, graceful, their cloaks flowing like water, eyes alight with secrets. Dangerous. Untouchable. How strange that others could only sneer.
Her brother would not sneer. Oberon loved grand gestures, bold gambits. To place a mage among the high councillors—no king of Nevirion had ever dared such a thing.
Her thoughts drifted to him as she walked.
Oberon had been more father than brother since their sire's death. She remembered the nights when he would sit at the edge of her bed, telling stories of the empire's golden age. He spoke of their bloodline as if it were steel drawn from the core of the earth. "We are the hammer that shapes the world," he would say, his voice warm with certainty.
Yet there were other memories, quieter and less certain. She recalled seeing him alone in the chapel once, kneeling in the gray light of dawn, his hands gripping the altar rail as though it might splinter. She had not called to him.
Now, the weight of his plans pressed at her ribs. Choosing a Grand Magister meant more than a single seat at the council. It meant binding the old magic to the crown, stitching something long-banished into the heart of rule.
The corridor opened to the western gallery, where tall windows admitted a pale gold light. Dust motes turned slow circles in the air, each one a tiny star.
Melusine paused, breathing in the coolness. From here she could see the training yard below. Soldiers moved like clockwork pieces, their armor dull in the morning sun. Beyond them, the gatehouse loomed—a black mouth set against the world.
A raven settled on the sill just beyond the glass. It cocked its head and regarded her with an unblinking eye. For a heartbeat she thought of omens, of the old tales where birds carried the souls of the restless. The raven gave a low croak and took flight, its wings scattering the motes into whirling constellations.
She turned away, shivering though the day was mild.
The nearer she drew to the council hall, the heavier the air became. It smelled of wax and old parchment, of iron hinges and lingering incense from the royal chapel below. The stone floor cooled her slippered feet through the thin soles.
She thought again of the map in Halvern's chamber—the rivers fading into spiderwebs, the mountains bleeding into gray. She wondered if the world itself might one day fade the same way, until all that remained were lines drawn by victors and forgotten by their heirs.
Perhaps that was what empires did: they turned the living into memory, memory into dust.
She touched the small locket at her throat, a simple thing of tarnished silver. Inside lay a wisp of her mother's hair. She had never known the woman, who died bringing her into the world. Yet sometimes, when the halls were silent and the moon high, Melusine fancied she could feel a pulse in the metal, as if the past still breathed there.
A guard in black-and-gold livery waited at the end of the passage. He bowed as she approached, his spear gleaming dully in the torchlight.
"Your Grace," he said, voice low. "The council awaits."
Melusine inclined her head. Words gathered and fled before she could speak them.
Beyond the great cedar doors lay the chamber where Oberon and his councillors—soldiers, nobles, and today, perhaps, a mage—would decide a future none could yet name.
She stood a moment longer in the dim corridor, the chill of the stones seeping into her palms where they pressed against the door. The murmur of voices drifted through the heavy wood, a tide rising just beyond reach.
Her heart beat once, twice, slow and deliberate.
Then she exhaled and placed her hand on the iron latch.