The snow fell upon Lord Ren’s bowed head like grey ash from a funeral pyre.
The Emperor remained kneeling in the slush, his iron gauntlets buried in the frozen mud. His broad shoulders shook under the frost-wolf pelt. For thirty years in his unchosen timeline, he had carried the weight of an empire, the silence of a tomb. The rotting memory of a sister who had refused to look upon his bloodstained crown.
Now, on the castle walls of a crumbling frontier castle in a world he had never conquered, he waited for her to turn her back on him again.
Mira didn’t walk away.
She took two steps forward through the swirling drift, her boots making a soft, crunching sound on the flat stone slabs. Her charcoal shawl parted, slipping back over her right shoulder to reveal her arm in the pale winter darkness.
From her fingertips to her collarbone, the flesh was solid, many-sided smoky quartz. It caught the dim moonlight filtering through the storm clouds. It glowed with a deep, internal amethyst sheen that pulsed in time with her slow, melodic breathing.
Mira knelt in the snow directly before the Emperor.
She raised her right hand—the cold, unbending arm of living stone—and pressed her crystal-clear palm flat against Lord Ren’s scarred left cheek.
