Page 51 of Rhapsody of Ruin (Kingdoms of Ash and Wonder #1)

Vaeloria

The steam clung to my skin like the hands of ghosts, curling damp fingers down my throat, along my ribs, and into my lungs until every breath tasted faintly of metal and roses.

The Twilight Pools chamber had always smelled of roses, petals steeped into the mineral waters by acolytes who believed beauty softened grief, but beneath it lived the harsher note of stone, salt, and ash.

The Shroud’s echo. The thing I had ruled my entire life to keep from unraveling.

The pools shimmered with a pale, violet light, not from the braziers that hung on silver chains overhead, but from the veil itself.

The water reflected Lunareth’s dying strength back at me, fractured, as if mocking my efforts.

My body floated, weightless, the silken folds of my ceremonial gown spreading around me like a shroud stitched from the moon itself.

My breath came thin, shallow. I could hear it rattle, amplified by the stone walls.

It was a queen’s chamber, but it felt like a tomb.

And perhaps that is what it was meant to be.

The ripples shifted. The steam thickened. Another presence stirred the air.

I forced my head to turn, though my body ached in protest. My vision blurred, but through the haze I saw a tall figure step into the chamber, his movements deliberate, his mask catching the violet glow. My heart stuttered against my ribs.

“Caelthor,” I whispered. His name left my lips like a prayer I had sworn never to say aloud again.

He knelt at the edge of the pool, head bowed, silver hair catching the light. His voice, when it came, was deep, resonant, achingly familiar. “My queen.”

For a moment, only a moment, I let myself believe. That my consort, lost in his pursuit of wards, had returned. That his disappearance had not been folly or failure, but merely delay. That he would place his hand upon mine, steady as ever, and together we would weave Lunareth whole again.

But shadows know the taste of lies.

My gaze lingered on the line of his jaw, the cut of his shoulders, the flawless illusion. The glamour was nearly perfect. Nearly. It carried no weight of years. My Caelthor had carried grief into every smile, and this one’s mouth was too smooth.

Still, I let the lie live a breath longer. I was too tired to kill it yet.

“You shouldn’t have come,” I said softly. “If you step too close, the Shroud will devour you as it devoured me.”

He raised his head then. His eyes were not Caelthor’s. They were steel, cold, sharp, hungry. Iriel. My son.

“You are dying,” he said, and the glamour cracked faintly around his mouth. “I wanted you to see the face you loved most, before you left me.”

His cruelty was a blade, but it was one I had tempered myself. I closed my eyes. “Then keep it, if it pleases you.”

He leaned closer, voice lowered. “Tell me what Father discovered before he vanished. His last research. You know where he went. You know what he found.”

So this was why. Not to mourn me. Not to comfort me. To plunder me.

The steam curled tighter around my face. I inhaled its bitter sweetness, coughed once, and tasted blood. “Even now, you cannot hide your ambition behind tenderness.”

“Ambition keeps Lunareth alive,” he answered. “You taught me that.”

I opened my eyes. His glamour still wore Caelthor’s face, though it flickered faintly at the edges. It was cruel, yes, but clever. In my final hours, I could almost believe I had my consort beside me. Almost. And yet the knife of his absence twisted sharper for it.

“You want his work?” I asked, my voice little more than a rasp. “The Dusk Rites?”

He nodded, eyes bright.

My chest ached with memory. Caelthor had buried himself in forbidden texts, whispering of cracks in the Shroud and the need for older answers. I had scorned him, feared what he courted, feared how much of him I was already losing. And then he was gone.

“I hid what he left,” I murmured. “Because if the wrong hands touched it, Lunareth would not survive its own salvation.”

“And are my hands wrong?” Iriel asked.

I studied him. The glamour, the sharp hunger in his gaze, the way he knelt yet made the whole chamber feel like his conquest. He was my son. He was my heir. He was everything I had made him.

“Yes,” I whispered. “But I have no choice.”

I lifted a trembling hand and pointed toward the far wall. Veined marble rose there, flawless to the eye. But if you knew where to press, if you bled on the stone, the lock would listen.

“The vault lies behind the seventh panel,” I said. “Mark it with blood and whisper my consort’s name. It will open. Inside you will find the tome he called The Rite of Dusk. ”

His eyes gleamed. His glamour faltered fully now, slipping away like smoke, leaving only Iriel, my son, my betrayer, kneeling at the water’s edge.

He did not thank me.

He never has.

A shift in the shadows at the corner of the chamber caught my gaze. Maelith stood there, the Shadow Counselor, silent as stone, black staff in hand. His eyes were unreadable. He had heard every word. He did not move to stop Iriel. He did not move at all.

Perhaps he knew this moment was already written. Perhaps he wanted it so.

I shivered, though the water was hot. “Guard him,” I said weakly, my voice directed at Maelith. “Even if he damns us all.”

Maelith’s mouth moved just enough to form one word. “Always.”

I closed my eyes.

My last strength was not for my son, nor my counselor, nor the vault.

It was for the Shroud. I lifted my hands, let the steam curl through my fingers, and whispered the final rite.

Old words. Forbidden words. They cut my tongue as I spoke them, sharp as glass.

My veins lit, every nerve set alight as if molten silver poured through me.

The chamber trembled. The pools glowed brighter. Outside, the Shroud steadied, its trembling pause stretching into something firmer, like a wound sutured, if not healed.

My lungs seized. My vision narrowed. Still, I whispered until the last word burned through me and left me hollow.

The Shroud sang once, low and terrible, and fell silent.

Iriel leaned closer, his face unreadable. The glamour was gone. He let me see him as he was, my son, my heir, the boy I had once cradled in these arms now limp against the water.

I searched for grief in his eyes. There was none. Only calculation.

My chest collapsed inward. The steam thickened, black at the edges.

“Iriel,” I tried to say, but the sound came as nothing but a breath.

He reached out and closed my eyes with his fingers. Not gently. Not cruelly. Simply… as if sealing a ledger.

When I was gone, the glamour around him shimmered once more, and I felt in the fading pulse of my heart what he meant to do: wear another man’s skin, wear another man’s power, until even the world mistook him for rightful.

He rose, tall and sure, already regarding the vault with a hunger that could swallow kingdoms.

And when he turned, for the first time in my reign, my son’s face carried no mask, no softness, and no tears.

The Queen of Lunareth was dead.

The heir of Lunareth had already decided what to resurrect.