For one stunned heartbeat, no one moved.
The explosion still echoed through the garden court, rattling silver lanterns and sending petals raining down from the arches in a ruined white drift.
Smoke curled thick and black along the far wall where the blast had torn through stone and silk.
Guests screamed. Chairs toppled. Someone dropped a glass that shattered like a second burst of panic beneath the noise.
Then the masked person moved.
Fast.
Too fast for the eye to settle.
One second they were only a dark shape stepping out of smoke, black-clad and lean and wrong against the whiteness of the ceremony.
The next they were halfway into the open court, moving with a kind of brutal economy that made the whole crowd seem slow by comparison.
Sarisa felt them before she fully understood what she was seeing.
The aura hit her like cold water poured down her spine.
It was not magic in the ordinary sense. Not the visible flare of spellwork or the crackling edge of summoned power. It was something heavier. Meaner.
A pressure in the air. A wave of bad intent so sharp and absolute that it made the breath catch in her throat.
Every instinct in her body went tight at once. Her skin prickled. Her hands turned cold inside the white silk.
Around her, people recoiled as one.
The masked figure wore black from throat to boots, with no ornament and no crest to identify them.
The mask itself was pale and smooth and expressionless, making the darkness of the rest of them seem even more violent. But it was the aura that held the eye. That terrible wrongness rolling off them like smoke.
Sarisa shivered.
Guards surged forward.
Of course they did. Celestian guards in white and silver, trained for years to defend the crown, to protect the altar, to bury threat beneath discipline before fear could spread.
Half a dozen rushed the intruder from different angles at once, blades drawn, boots hammering against the stone.
The masked person tilted their head once.
Then, in a voice so high and ragged it almost sounded animal, they said:
"Fuck the queen."
The words cracked across the ceremony like a curse.
Then the first guard reached them.
The masked figure did not use magic.
That was what made it worse.
No light. No summoned fire. No visible power at all.
Only movement.
A turn of the body. A hand catching a wrist. A twist so sudden and brutal that the first guard's sword went spinning across the aisle in a flash of silver.
The second guard lunged and caught an elbow to the throat hard enough to send him choking to the ground.
The third was thrown over the masked intruder's shoulder and hit the stone so hard Sarisa heard the impact even over the screaming.
People were scattering now, nobles clutching skirts and children, attendants dragging the elderly aside, priests shouting useless things about calm while the entire ceremony tore itself to pieces around them.
The masked person moved through the guards like they were made of paper.
Sarisa stood frozen in the aisle for one dreadful second longer, unable to look away.
It was too quick. Too clean. Too easy. Every strike landed where it would do the most damage with the least wasted effort. A knee.
A throat. A shoulder. A jaw. One after another, the first line of guards dropped in a widening ring around the intruder, gasping, swearing, or not rising at all.
Then someone seized Sarisa's arm.
She jerked, startled violently back into her body.
"Your Highness!"
Vaelen.
He had come down from the altar at last, all perfect black and silver ruined now by dust and alarm.
He caught her by the elbow and pulled her back from the center of the aisle, away from the smoke, away from the line of attack, away from the masked figure who was still moving with that impossible, inhuman precision.
"This way," he said sharply. "Move."
More guards closed around them at once, forming a wall of white steel and broad shoulders between Sarisa and the chaos at the far end of the garden.
Two took positions in front, two behind, one at each side. Vaelen stayed close enough that she could feel the heat of his body through the silk of her gown.
Sarisa twisted once, searching the wreckage behind them.
Aliyah.
There.
Elysia had both children behind her, one arm flung protectively across Kaelith and Aliyah while she backed them toward the side colonnade.
Malvoria and Raveth were already moving in the opposite direction, not away but toward the masked intruder with the kind of terrible focus that made Sarisa's pulse jump harder.
Good.
If anyone in this entire broken court could stop whatever this was, it was them.
The masked person saw them coming.
Sarisa knew they did because the pale face of the mask turned, slowly, toward Malvoria and Raveth as if greeting something mildly interesting.
Then they attacked.
Raveth reached first, a blade in hand now, her whole body a line of violence. Malvoria came only a beat behind her, fire already flaring in her palms.
For one impossible second Sarisa thought that would be it, the end of this strange nightmare. Raveth's speed, Malvoria's power, both of them together, both of them furious.
The masked intruder met them head-on.
Still no magic.
The first clash of metal rang out hard enough to hurt.
Raveth struck low. The masked person slipped past it and drove a heel into her ribs with enough force to send her skidding across the stone.
Malvoria's fire came up in a vicious arc, but the intruder was already inside her range, catching her wrist before the flame properly formed and slamming their forehead into hers with a crack that made Sarisa gasp.
Malvoria stumbled. The masked figure struck again, once to the stomach, once to the side of the jaw, fast enough that it barely looked real.
Both of them fell back.
Not down for long. Never that. But back.
And in those two stolen seconds, the intruder looked straight toward Sarisa.
The aura hit again, harder this time. A pressure full of hunger and purpose and something so focused it felt almost intimate.
Vaelen stepped in front of her.
Whatever else he was, whatever Sarisa felt or did not feel for him, the man was not a coward.
He drew his blade and went forward with the grim resolve of someone who had finally been given a fight he could not smile his way through.
It did not matter.
The masked person hit him like a storm.
The first strike shattered his guard. The second drove the breath from him. The third caught him across the mouth hard enough that blood sprayed bright against the white flowers at the edge of the aisle.
Vaelen staggered and tried again, desperate now, angry, more soldier than prince for one raw second.
The masked figure broke him down methodically.
A blow to the knee. A fist to the ribs. An elbow across the temple so vicious Sarisa heard the sick crack of impact.
Vaelen hit the ground, tried to rise, and was kicked flat again with enough force to send him rolling across the stone like a discarded doll.
He stayed down.
The guards around Sarisa closed in tighter, but there was panic in them now. She could feel it.
They had seen too much happen too quickly. They had watched the first line fall, then Raveth and Malvoria thrown back, then Vaelen beaten half senseless in the middle of his own wedding.
The masked intruder came through them anyway.
One guard at Sarisa's left went down clutching his throat. Another had his sword torn from his grip and the pommel of it slammed into his face.
A third tried to grab the intruder from behind and was thrown bodily into the overturned rows of chairs where nobles were still scrambling to escape.
Someone screamed Sarisa's name.
Then the masked person was in front of her.
Up close, the pale mask was somehow worse. Blank. Blood-flecked now. Breathing hard behind it. The aura around them rolled over her skin like a threat made physical.
Sarisa could not move.
A gloved hand closed around her wrist.
Strong. Certain. Burning through the silk.
"Your coming with me now," the masked figure said in that same high, almost feral voice.
Then the world twisted.
The last thing Sarisa saw was white silk, smoke, Malvoria trying to rise, and Vaelen's blood on the stones of the ruined aisle.
Then the masked person pulled her close, and they teleported.