The throne room was dark.
Not the kind of dark that happens when candles burn low or clouds cover the moon. This was deliberate. Chosen. Every torch had been pulled from its sconce and drowned in the fountain outside. Every window had been draped with black velvet — the same velvet that lined coffins in the royal crypt. The only light came from the thin, dying glow of the brazier beside the Iron Seat, where a handful of coals pulsed like the last heartbeats of something that had already decided to stop living.
Vaelric sat on his throne.
Not slumped. Not sagging. Sat. Spine straight, shoulders back, chin lifted. The way his mother had taught him to sit when he was six years old and she'd placed him on this same chair and said a king does not lean, Vaelric. A king is the thing others lean against.
