The night the Calamity was sealed, Aetherion Palace bled moonlight.
Nine-year-old Serelis de Luthra sat barefoot on the obsidian throne, silver hair spilling over the armrests like liquid starlight, molten-gold eyes half-lidded with lazy cruelty.
"I told you," she murmured, voice honey over broken glass, "never make Lysandra angry."
Emperor Cassian III knelt in his own throne room, forehead pressed to cold marble, tears and terror mingling on the floor. When the priests flung the star-iron net and poured sacred water that hissed like acid against her skin, she laughed until every chandelier shattered and rained crystal tears.
Then she fell.
Silver melted into midnight. Gold bled into emerald.
A fragile girl opened her eyes and asked, voice trembling, "Where… am I?"
Cassian smiled the smile of a man who had just sold his soul and received a receipt. He named the girl Serelis de Luthra, betrothed her to his son Aurelian, and gifted her to Duke Alaric Voreigne with one whispered order:
"Break what is left."
The Duke obeyed with relish.
The Observatory Spire became her cage: a tower of cracked mirrors and frozen star-charts. Cold bread once a day. Whips. Cressida's manicured nails raking through her scalp until blood matted midnight strands. Serelis learned to sleep curled like a wounded animal, arms wrapped around her own ribs because no one else ever would.
But inside her skull, Lysandra purred, patient as winter.
Years slid by like knives.
One moonless night, Serelis pressed her forehead to the icy window and whispered, "I'm tired of being afraid."
Lysandra answered, voice velvet and venom, "Then let me drive."
The girl closed her eyes. When they opened again they were gold.
Bodies hit the carpet without a sound. Serelis stepped over them barefoot, blood warm between her toes, and walked into the capital wearing a stolen cloak and a face that made grown men forget how to breathe.
At Le Cygne Noir she ate an entire matcha-rose mousse cake in slow, reverent bites, tongue curling around each spoonful like she was tasting freedom. The chef wept in the kitchen; he had never seen anyone look so alive while devouring his art.
At the slave auction she bought a boy for one gold coin. Filthy. Chained. Forest-green eyes burning with hate.
She named him Caelum because even ash remembers fire.
She bathed him herself in a public bathhouse, fingers scraping grime from scarred skin, nails dragging down his back just hard enough to leave pink trails. When he shivered—rage or cold, she didn't care—she leaned in and whispered against his ear, "You are mine now. Be useful, and I will keep you."
Caelum's first gift to her was a perfect matcha macaron presented on his knees at dawn. His second was the corpse of the guard who had once struck her.
She rewarded him both times the same way: fingers threading through his damp hair, pulling just hard enough to tilt his head back, lips brushing the corner of his mouth—never quite a kiss, always a promise.
Years passed in blood and sugar.
She taught him sword forms under starlight. He taught her how it felt to be worshipped.
Some nights she let him sleep at the foot of her narrow cot. Some nights she dragged him onto it, pressing him into the thin mattress, biting his collarbone until he bruised violet, tasting salt and devotion on his skin. She never let him inside her—never yet—but she let him learn every inch of her with trembling hands and reverent mouth until she was shaking and he was praying her name like scripture.
Then the Emperor summoned her.
"Queen-consort training begins tomorrow," the letter read.
Serelis smiled slow and sharp. "Time to go home, Caelum."
They rode to Aetherion Palace in silence. Inside the carriage she straddled his lap, fingers tangled in his hair, and kissed him properly for the first time—no teasing, no distance. Just hunger. Teeth clashing, breath stolen, her tongue sliding against his until he groaned into her mouth and clutched her hips hard enough to leave marks.
When the carriage stopped, her lips were swollen, his eyes black with want.
She stepped into the throne room with moonlight hair loose down her back and Caelum one pace behind, murder in his smile.
Cassian offered her the crown if she would only spare his life.
She let him choose: his life or his son's.
He chose his son without hesitation.
Caelum dragged Crown Prince Aurelian and the charm-speaking courtesan Liora away. Serelis turned to the Emperor with the same polite smile she once used to ask for extra macaroons.
He buried a hidden dagger beneath her ribs.
She laughed, blood bubbling on her lips, and buried hers in his heart first.
They fell together.
Caelum returned.
He saw the body.
He saw Lysandra wearing Serelis' face, lounging on the throne, legs crossed, victorious.
Liora's charm-speak had coiled around his mind like silk ropes and made him drive the second blade home while he screamed behind his own eyes.
But love is a blade sharper than any spell.
The charm shattered.
Caelum snapped star-iron chains around the thing that wore his beloved's skin. He bound her wrists above her head to the throne itself, forced her to watch while he peeled Lysandra's stolen face away inch by screaming inch with a peeling knife meant for fruit.
Every strip of skin he laid gently across Serelis' cold cheek like an apology.
Then he took the crown and ruled with frost and silence.
Every week he descended to the vault and reminded the creature what pain felt like when it had forever to feel it. Some nights he used knives. Some nights he used his mouth—slow, deliberate kisses along the raw meat of her throat while she begged in Serelis' stolen voice. He never let her come. He never let her die.
Every night he sat before the portrait he had painted from memory—emerald eyes, matcha at the corner of her swollen lips—and pressed his forehead to the canvas until the paint smelled like her again.
Then one dawn, a basket appeared at the sky-gates.
Inside lay a baby girl with forest-deep eyes and a crescent birthmark on her tiny collarbone.
Caelum lifted her with hands that had murdered empires. The child opened her eyes and gurgled—the exact sound Serelis made the first time he fed her warm matcha crème from his own fingers.
He carried her to the throne room, sat on the cold seat that had killed his beloved, and settled the infant against his chest.
Her tiny fist closed around his finger.
He bent his head until his lips brushed the soft fuzz of her hair and whispered, voice cracking like ice over deep water:
"This time I will be strong enough.
This time no one will ever make you snap.
This time I will burn the world before I let anyone take you from me again."
Far away, in whatever place souls wait between lives, something that might once have been Serelis opened her eyes—gold, then emerald—and smiled.
The moon had simply changed its phase.
It would rise again.
And this time, Caelum would be waiting beneath it with open arms and blood on his teeth.
~ Fin ~