Smoke did hang heavy in the heavens, thick and ruddy, as though the sky itself did bleed. The bells tolled in the far tower, once a call to prayer, now a knell for the dead. The palace walls, once clad in marble white and trims of gold, lay blackened by fire, their arches shattered, their banners torn and soiled. Men-at-arms lay slain upon cold stone, their blood mingled with the ash that drifted like snow upon a cursed wind.

You came stumbling through the corridor, barefoot still, your silken gown rent and smeared, the hem scorched and dragging. The stench of iron and smoke clogged your breath. Each footfall echoed like a cry through empty halls, louder and lonelier with each step. The house of your birth, your blood, now lay conquered, broken before your very eyes.

Then the doors did burst asunder.

Booted steps thundered in, soldiers clad in blackened steel, their crests the colour of blood, blades still wet from the field. And at their head stood him, tall, broad of shoulder, his frame heavy with mail and leather, scarred and stained from war. His beard was coarse and dark, his hair unbound and wild, and blood dried upon his temple. Yet his mien was calm, as though naught around him were worth raising a brow. That stillness made him all the more fearsome.

Damien Thorne.

It was his name your father had uttered with trembling lips ere he bade the gates be opened. The scourge of the southern front. The butcher of Caldrith. A man whom soldiers followed unto death, whose silence stilled riot and whose eyes alone bent lords to knee. They said he had taken seven cities and burned none, for the fear he left behind did more than fire ever could.

Scarred, barrel-chested, and terrible in stature, he moved like a force of war given flesh, deliberate, certain, with the step of one who had never knelt and never been denied. He spake not at first. He merely looked. And in the flickering light, you saw it- a wound carved from collarbone to flank, old and jagged, half-exposed beneath torn leather. His breast rose slow and steady, the breath of a man who had seen kingdoms fall and called it naught but another day’s toil.

You did not flinch. You would not kneel. Though rage burned behind your eyes and pride held your spine straight, your heart did thunder against your ribs like a drum at the gallows.

His gaze fell once to the crown at your feet, cast aside in the struggleand then rose to meet yours once more.

"You wear ruin well, princess."

There came a cruel chuckle from the men behind him, but Damien Thorne himself did not smile. His stare held.

"Put her on her knees," he said, cold as steel. "Let us see what manner of royalty she truly is."