The glass panes of the high-arched windows let in the midday sun, but Priscilla Lysandra's chambers remained cold.
Her headquarters—if they could be called that—sat at the western fringe of the imperial palace grounds. Not hidden, no. Merely… ignored. Nestled between the old observatory archives and a wing that hadn't seen renovation in decades. The floor tiles here didn't shimmer. The walls bore no enchantments to keep the temperature perfect. The lamps had to be lit manually, and the tapestries? Faded, outdated, and untouched by a court artisan's hand in years.
You are allowed to exist. But not to shine.
And she had learned to live with that.
She sat now at her desk—one of the few things she'd chosen herself—going over reports left by her attendant, Idena. Rotations of imperial personnel at the festival, status updates from the Shadowguard outposts near Velis Prominence, and several sealed letters bearing the crimson wax sigil of her half-brother.
Unread. She didn't need to open them to know the poison inside.
She was halfway through marking a reply to a Crown Cipher memo when the soft knock came at her chamber doors.
It was Idena, of course.
"Your Highness," the attendant said with her usual quiet grace. "It has begun."
Priscilla didn't look up. "The Trials?"
Priscilla set her quill down and closed the folder before her. Her fingers rested atop it for a long moment, unmoving.
She rose slowly, the folds of her slate-colored gown settling around her like settling ash.
This—the Trials—was a newly implemented measure. A gesture, they called it. A reform.
The Imperial Academy, once a sealed sanctum for nobility and highbloods alone, had opened its gates to outsiders. Commoners, they said, as if the word itself were a fresh idea. The public was told it was a grand vision for the future—one led by the Crown Prince's progressive council.
But Priscilla had lived in this palace long enough to know the nature of its theater.
This wasn't a change of heart.
It was a recalibration.
Yes, the Trials allowed commoners a path into the Academy now—but the number permitted was still tightly controlled. Whispers in the halls said only nine seats had been promised. Out of hundreds. And those nine would be hard-earned, their placement determined not by examination of mind or merit, but by survival. Blood spilled in arcane arenas. Power measured in desperation.
They would watch from behind charmed glass and silk-curtained lounges, placing bets and sipping golden wine, safe in the knowledge that any commoner strong enough to survive would be placed under constant scrutiny. Displayed like beasts that had earned their place in the menagerie.
Priscilla stepped away from the desk and moved toward the hearth—not for warmth, but because the room lacked even the illusion of comfort. Her fingers brushed the stone, rough and cracked from time and neglect. Unlike the other wings of the palace, hers bore no scrying basin. No viewing crystal. Not even a spell mirror tuned to the Academy's private feeds.
Her half-siblings would have them, of course.
The Crown Prince, especially.
She could picture it now—him reclining in one of the eastern viewing towers, surrounded by advisors, courtiers, and coiling sycophants. Watching the projection with cold, expectant eyes. Measuring the candidates. Weighing them like meat at market.
Smiling if one of them stumbled.
Smiling wider if one of hers did.
Her fingers curled against the stone.
Let them dress it in glory and call it opportunity. Let the empire pretend that this was a step forward.
This wasn't about inclusion.
It was about control.
And when the Trials ended, when the nine were chosen and paraded into the Academy as symbols of change, they would be shackled by expectation—studied, feared, used.
Priscilla turned from the hearth and walked toward the far window, where the shimmer of the capital's illusion dome could be seen in the sky's reflection—just faintly. Barely visible unless you were looking for it.
"I assume the others are watching from the imperial halls?" she asked, her voice quiet.
Idena inclined her head. "Yes, Your Highness. Most of them were invited to the Platinum Lounge for a private viewing."
The ones that mattered.
The ones who had never needed to earn a seat.
Priscilla stood in silence for a long moment, then turned back toward her desk.
"Very well," she said. "Prepare my riding coat."
Idena blinked. "You intend to… go out, Your Highness?"
"I intend to see," Priscilla said, her tone colder now. "If I'm to enter the same academy, I may as well witness the theater from the edge of the stage."
She would not be granted a seat beside her siblings.
So she would stand in the crowd.
She would walk among the people.
And watch who dared to rise.
The coat they brought her was plain by imperial standards—no gilded cuffs, no house crest sewn into the lining. Just a charcoal-gray riding cloak with faint embroidery at the collar and a row of polished onyx clasps. Modest. Unassuming.
Priscilla fastened the last clasp herself, tugging the fabric close around her frame. Her hair, usually left loose in the palace, was pulled into a high, elegant twist—braided, minimal. A statement not of vanity, but control.
Idena stepped back, glancing over her silently. She didn't ask where they were going.
As they passed through the lower hall of the west wing, the guards stationed at her entrance nodded—but with the stiffness of habit, not respect. The corridors remained mostly empty—few dared wander this wing unless summoned. It was a stretch of old stone and forgotten prestige.
But as they turned the final corner before reaching the inner courtyard gate—
A subtle shift in the air.
Like gravity remembering itself.
He stepped into view.
Someone that she was not ready to face at that moment….
I am sorry for the inconvenience.
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