They had chosen the garden for it. How considerate.
Virelya Noctis stood among the night-blooming roses, their crimson petals like scattered drops of the blood that was about to be hers. She had known for three days that this moment was coming. Perhaps longer, if she was being honest with herself. The signs had been there: the careful way her council had stopped meeting her eyes, the sudden absence of her most loyal generals on "urgent business," the way conversations died when she entered rooms that had once hummed with activity.
She had built an empire from the corpses of six kingdoms. She had broken armies with a word and toppled dynasties with a gesture. And now, in the garden of her own palace, surrounded by roses she had planted herself, she was about to die.
"You look calm," said Marcus, stepping from the shadows. Her First Blade. The man she had raised from poverty to power, who had sworn thirteen oaths of loyalty across ten years of service.
"I am calm," Virelya replied, and it was true. Her voice carried no tremor, no heat, no fear. Just the same cool certainty it always had. "Calmness is a choice, Marcus. Panic serves no purpose."
Behind him, the others emerged. Her Minister of Coin. Her High Inquisitor. Her Chief Architect. Seven in total, each one a pillar she had carefully placed to support her dominion. Each one now a blade pointed at her heart.
"We're sorry," said Elara, her former confidant, though her hands didn't shake as she raised the enchanted crossbow. "But you've become too dangerous. Too absolute."
"Too absolute," Virelya repeated softly, tasting the words. "I was absolute when I saved your brother from execution. I was absolute when I rewrote the tax system so your villages could eat. I was absolute when I ended the Plague Wars that would have killed millions." She tilted her head slightly, crimson undertones catching moonlight in her black hair. "At what point did absolute become too much?"
"When we realized," Marcus said quietly, and there was genuine sorrow in his voice—which somehow made it worse, "that you would never stop. That you would keep reshaping the world until nothing remained but your vision of order. We can't—we won't—live in a world where one person decides the fate of everything."
"So you decide my fate instead." Virelya smiled, and it was a terrible thing, that smile. Not cruel, not mocking. Just… aware. "The irony is almost beautiful."
"You're not even going to fight?" asked Torven, her Inquisitor, suspicion heavy in his voice.
"Against seven Ultimate-rank assassins who have clearly spent months planning this? With wards carved into every stone of this garden, each one designed specifically to counter my abilities?" Virelya looked around at the glowing sigils that had activated the moment she'd stepped into the garden's center. She had, of course, noticed them. She had even recognized the craftsmanship—her own Chief Architect's work. "No, Torven. I'm not going to fight. I'm going to die."
She saw the confusion on their faces. They had expected rage, or fear, or desperate bargaining. They had prepared for everything except acceptance.
"But I want you to understand something," Virelya continued, her ruby eyes moving from face to face, calm and unbearably steady. "When you kill me, you won't be freeing the world from tyranny. You'll be removing the one thing holding it together. Within a year, the eastern kingdoms will rebel. Within two, the plague will return because no one else knows how I suppressed it. Within five, everything I built will collapse, and millions will die in the chaos."
"That's a risk we're willing to take," Elara said, though her voice wavered slightly.
"No," Virelya said gently. "It's a risk you're willing to make others take. You'll be safe in your estates and towers while the world burns. That's the difference between us. I was willing to be hated if it meant people lived. You're willing to be loved while they die."
"Enough philosophy," Marcus said, and raised his hand. "I'm sorry, my lady. I really am."
The bolts came from seven directions at once. Each one carved with void-runes, each one designed to bypass her defenses. She felt them punch through her body with clinical precision—heart, both lungs, liver, spine. They had been thorough. She would be dead in less than a minute.
Virelya remained standing for a moment, looking down at the shafts protruding from her torso. Blood ran down her dark coat in steady streams, pooling among the rose petals.
"You know what's funny?" she said, and blood bubbled at her lips. "I was going to abdicate next year. I was tired."
The lie was perfect. She saw it hit them, saw the doubt and horror bloom across their faces. She wasn't going to abdicate—she would never have given up power willingly—but they would spend the rest of their lives wondering. That was her final gift to them: uncertainty.
Virelya Noctis, the Sovereign of Eight Kingdoms, the Unbroken Empress, the woman who had never lost, fell to her knees among the roses.
Her last thought, as darkness closed in, was not of revenge or regret.
It was simpler than that.
How… disappointing.
Then there was nothing.