“I killed her, but that was just the start of it,” I explained, my voice devoid of emotion. It was a painful memory, but memories were just that. They had no hold over me anymore. “For the next few weeks, it was a new lesson every day or two. First it was the ones that we’d purchased from other families, then random commoners that we snatched off the streets, and then we started escalating.”

“Merciful gods,” Jasmine said. “You were eight years old?”

“Just about, yeah,” I said. “That was the only time Lord Byron ever truly acted as a father towards me. When my hands were bloody from the execution, the dying cry of that day’s unfortunate victim still fresh in our ears, that was when he was warm.”

“And you were made to do a lot of them?”

“I got good at them,” I admitted. “I put previous theory into practice. I learned how to draw it out, how to make a death easier or prolong it. After a while, I got used to it.”

I’d expected a reaction of some sort. A condemnation, maybe. I would’ve deserved it. I didn’t particularly feel remorse nowadays—the past was in the past, after all, and I’d grown a lot more comfortable with killing in the years since—but they had been regrettable deaths. It had been too long for me to remember the details of my executions, but surely not every single one of them had deserved a painful death. It would have been all too easy for Jasmine to react with disgust. I’d been fearing that she would abandon me altogether at the grittier details of my past, but I’d hid enough from her. No more lies between us, even if that meant the departure of the only noble I’d grown to enjoy spending time with. I’d been preparing myself for that, trying to reinforce my mental walls.

What I hadn’t expected was for Jasmine to envelop me in a warm hug, leaning over and wrapping her arms around my shoulders. She draped herself over me, and I didn’t even realize that I was leaning into it until I was already nestling into her chest.

For a moment, my worries disappeared. Jasmine was warm and she was soft, her body lightly giving off the scent of freshly cut flowers even though she was barely a few hours off a battlefield. The contact made my chest feel warm and fuzzy in a way I couldn’t describe, a way that made me want to hold her tight and never let go.

I gave in, hugging her back around her torso and squeezing. I squeezed far too tight, I was pretty sure, using almost as much force as I did while fighting, but aside from a small gasp, Jasmine didn’t make note of it.

She brought one hand around to the back of my head, nudging me into her shoulder. I accepted the gesture, closing my eyes.

This was… nice, nice in a way that I hadn’t really had much before. I wasn’t sure why it was happening, but the hug was reassuring and warming in a way that not much else could have been.

“I’m so sorry, Lily,” Jasmine whispered, bringing her head down to mine so I could hear her. Her warm breath tickled my ear and I shivered involuntarily, feeling the hairs at the back of my neck raise. “You deserved so much better.”

“I killed people,” I whispered back, torn between the bundle of good feelings that was this hug and the fact that it didn’t seem all too warranted. “A lot of them. Why are you giving me sympathy?”

“Lily, you were eight,” Jasmine said, still holding me tight. “Not only did you not know better, your father manipulated you into it.”

“But I still—“

“Shhhh,” Jasmine said, patting my back. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

We stayed like that for a while.

When we finally extricated ourselves from each other’s embrace, what felt like an eternity had passed and yet it still hadn’t been enough.

I opened my eyes and found my vision blurry. I blinked, but it didn’t go away.

As discretely as I could, I wiped at my eyes. My hands came away damp with half-formed tears.

“Anyway,” I said, taking a deep breath, “Where was I?”

Jasmine had to have noticed the shakiness in my voice, the redness in my eyes, but she mercifully did not comment. “After your father forced you into the murders.”

“Right, okay,” I said. “It was around this time that House Byron started making their real push for the Crown…”

“All hail the Crowned King!”

The messenger fell to his knees, and the crowd of nobles knelt down as well. Some of the nobles were princes in their own right, ruling over massive chunks of Tayan or wielding massive amounts of private military manpower, but everyone deferred to the Crowned King. No Queen, this time around: for one indecipherable reason or another, the woman who would have been the Crowned Queen had turned it down, preferring to do her work out of the public eye.

The man himself entered the great hall, a separate set of grand double doors opening specifically for his use. He exuded presence, suggesting regality even with his relatively simple uniform—his chosen royal outfit was nothing more than a formal military uniform with the addition of a royal purple cape behind it.

Crowned King Edward, third of his name, was even taller than the other tall grown-ups, standing head and shoulders above some of them. With a sword in his hand, he strode to the front of the great hall where an empty throne awaited him. He did not sit in it, choosing instead to stand with one arm resting on its back.

“All rise,” he rumbled, his voice so deep and carrying so far that I thought I could hear my bones shake from the sound.

As one, the room rose to its feet.

“I’m going to kill that man one day,” Lord Byron said mildly, ensuring that nobody besides Jasper, Thorn, and I could hear him.

He’d allowed the three of us kids a little more free reign at tonight’s ball, and while I didn’t know what my teenaged brothers had gotten up to, I’d had a delightful conversation about martial arts forms with another child my own age from House Lysin. Lord Byron had called us back together around the time it had become clear that the Crowned King was soon going to make an appearance, probably to keep an eye on us, and now most of the members of the main Byron family were here. Mother hadn’t deigned to come, preferring to stay home to brew poisons, and our numerous cousins from the branch families were split across the rest of the room, interacting with different Houses.

“We gather tonight to celebrate the Founding Day,” the Crowned King said, the tip of his sword dug into the ground like it was a cane. “On this day, one hundred and twelve years ago, my grandfather planted the flag of Tayan and brought together its warring peoples, ending the continental war for this region.

“Tonight is not a night of arrogance. It is a night of remembrance, one where we remember the blood spilt to facilitate our advances. A night where we think back on those brave souls who laid down their lives so we could thrive.

“But it is also a night of celebration! For Tayan thrives for yet another year, and we remain strong! We remain one!

“Despite this, there are challenges on the horizon. Altered experiments run amok during the continental war are reproducing, primordials are increasing in frequency, and evil stirs in the east. We will get through this together! I bid you, enjoy this night, for we have much to accomplish ahead of us.”

With that, he raised his sword to the sky, and the hall filled with the polite, practiced cheers of a hundred or so nobles.

An unnaturally short speech, by most people’s standards, but then that was the Crowned King. He wasn’t one for ceremony, and I knew from my studies that Crowned King Edward the Third was known most for his ability to be down-to-earth and mingle with the common man as well as the nobles.

He was doing just that right now, I saw, his sword reverently placed across the throne’s seat. The Crowned was chatting up one of House… that man with the ridiculously overdone hair was House Tempet, I was pretty sure.

“Look, children,” Lord Byron muttered. “The Crown seeks favor with the filth that dirties itself for monetary gain. Let this be an example to you.”

“An example of what, my lord?” I asked. Both Jasper and Thorn flinched back at that, the question one they knew would spark his rage, but there were too many people watching. I’d pay for this later, I knew, but I was curious.

“You will see,” my father said, his voice surprisingly warm for such a defiant question. “I believe we should begin the process of departure.”

“Yes, my lord,” Jasper and Thorn said simultaneously, bowing their heads. They shot me identical looks, a mixture of irritation and worry that I hadn’t said it with them.

I cocked my head back at them, returning the glance. If we were going to be doing something abnormal—this party wasn’t even bound to be done for another few hours, at the very least—then I wanted to know why.

“My lord,” I said, hands clasped behind my back, “May I inquire as to our purpose for our early departure?”

The formality of courtspeak was cloying, my words filtered and polished to sound a certain way that didn’t quite feel right, but the etiquette tutors had been a constant enough presence in my life that I could slip in and out of it with ease.

“None of you drank any refreshments, correct?” Lord Byron was still being surprisingly forgiving even as he ushered the three of us to join him.

“As ordered, my lord,” we said in unison. When Jasper and Thorn looked at me again, I shrugged.

“I know my place when it’s necessary,” I whispered to one of them, pitching it quietly and not making any indication that I was speaking so that Lord Byron wouldn’t pick up on it and punish me for talking out of turn.

“You’re taking risks, Lily,” Jasper hissed. He looked like he wanted to say more, but Lord Byron cut his next words off and he returned to the picture of a good little son.

“Good,” our father said. “Mother will be joining us shortly, as soon as…”

A commotion rose from the other side of the great hall, nobles shouting at each other in a rather uncivilized manner.

Lord Byron shook his head, exuding disappointment. “We’ve fallen so far…”

“Quiet!” the Crowned King boomed, his voice drowning out everyone else’s. The first time I’d seen him in person, three or four years ago now, I’d asked if that was magic, but it turned out that yep, he was just that loud. “This is a celebration, not a war council! Peace!”

That had an effect on the sound, reducing it to almost nothing.

“Lord Allan of House Ther,” the Crowned King said. “You began this disturbance.”

“I did, majesty, and I apologize for it,” the offending noble said, though he didn’t sound very sorry. “I have grievance to air and conflict to declare.”

“Conflict?” Crowned King Edward asked. I couldn’t see him, but he sounded taken aback. “A heavy action to take. Explain to me the cause for your conflict.”

“House Tempet has murdered one of my daughters,” Allan of House Ther said, his heavy breathing cutting into his words. “Rosemary of House Ther, held as collateral.”

I jolted at the name, and Lord Byron grabbed onto my arm, squeezing hard enough that I thought he might’ve drawn blood.

“Remember your role,” he hissed down at me. “Remember.”

I stilled myself, calming my rapid heartbeat and stopping myself from moving.

“Good,” Lord Byron said, the steel gone from his voice. “Let us observe these developments, and then we may leave.”

“House Tempet did nothing of the sort!” another noble shouted. “House Ther seeks to obfuscate their murder of our own child!”

“You sent me her head with your name scrawled on it!” Lord Ther shouted. He sounded less angry about the death of his daughter and moreso at the gesture that “House Tempet”—us, if I had to guess—had thrown towards him. “How can you—“

“And you to us!” the Tempet noble shouted back. “You simply—“

“Quiet!” the Crowned King ordered, stomping his foot down. That had to have been magically enhanced, because the impact resounded through the room, the sound drowning out the conversation and the vibration passing through each and every one of us. “If there is cause for conflict, then let there be conflict, but let it be in a civilized fashion! We are not the animals that preceded us! Let us act like men, lest we forget who we are!”

“House Ther declares conflict on House Tempet,” Lord Ther said immediately, still speaking loudly but no longer shouting. “Beginning in one day’s time.”

“House Tempet accepts the declaration and returns it,” the Tempet said back. The anger was gone from his voice, replaced by cold decisiveness.

It was laughably stupid. Even I knew that a moment or two of critical analysis was enough to dismantle this entire scenario. Both families, receiving corpses of one of their sold children, addressed from another House? A House that denied having any involvement with it, when normally these messages were sent publicly and proudly?

“That was us, right?” Thorn asked Lord Byron.

“Of course it was,” he replied after glancing around to ensure nobody was eavesdropping. “But those fools are so simple and so flame-hearted that they will chomp at the bit for an excuse to go off at each other.

The reason why they wouldn’t take that critical moment or two was just as obvious as our lie. House Tempet and House Ther had a long history of conflicts—House Ther’s financial crisis that we’d finagled the ownership of my first victim out of had been caused by House Tempet, and that hadn’t been the start of it by a long shot. Add the fact that House Ther was ostensibly our ally while House Tempet was rather opposed to House Byron and things started heating up even more. The bodies, no matter how obvious a ruse, were the spark that would light the whole pile aflame.

“An expected success,” Lord Byron sneered. “Let us evacuate the area. It is best that we do not stay for what is to come.”

“Has Mother begun the next phase already?” Jasper asked, clearly knowing more than I did. He seemed far too comfortable with the current state of events to have not been looped in in some fashion. Then again, he was the oldest by far, more than twice my age, so I supposed Lord Byron had begun to treat him as an adult.

“Yes, she should have,” Lord Byron said. “Follow me.”

Together, we exited the great hall. Our father made some cursory excuse about being concerned for Mother’s health to anyone who asked, and then we were on our merry way.

As the doors swung close behind us, I saw the first person keel over, vomiting all over themselves.

Ah. Mother’s involvement in the plan. Her specialty.

Poison.

“House Byron,” Lord Byron whispered, quiet enough that he probably thought nobody could hear him, “declares conflict on the Crown.”

“Fourteen dead, including the Crown Prince,” Lord Byron announced. “Another twenty-one still hospitalized. Admirable work by the Lady Byron.”

“Thank you, dear,” Mother replied, taking his hand in hers and kissing it. “I do wish I could have used one of the more… entertaining variants.”

“You know those are easier to defend against and take longer to fully take effect,” Lord Byron said. “This method ensured that the maximum number of people would be incapable of surviving long enough to see a Nacea oathholder.”

“I know, I know,” Mother said, the faux frustration in her voice tinged with playfulness. “It just would have been nice to see…”

“That aside, the Crown has yet to identify the cause of the deaths, and I intend to keep it that way.”

The discussion we were having was not the most typical conversation that we had during supper, though that was largely because we generally took it separately. Today was a rare occasion where Mother and Father had decided to have the core family eat together, but from the descriptions of family meals in my novels, I was mostly sure this wasn’t a usual topic.

“Have the branch families been notified?” Thorn asked after swallowing his bite. “Are they part of our plan?”

“They are,” our father said. “The most critical have joined already, while the rest will turn in time. It does not take unprecedented genius to see where the Crowned King has gone wrong.”

But does it take a fool? I had to be honest with myself, I couldn’t see it. Crowned King Edward the Third had done a remarkable job as far as I could tell, educating the impoverished peasants while also improving relations with the neighbouring country of Yelian. A powerful military ally to have.

I didn’t dare ask the question out loud—that would probably warrant one of the bad punishments, like the campfire or the shocking tub or the training sessions against guards with swords. Instead, I considered why Mother and Father had chosen this path silently, putting their discussion of their next steps to the back of my mind.

Was it because they were against the uplifting of the peasants? No, that couldn’t be it—no matter how much education they got, there was no chance that oath knowledge was going to become commonly disseminated amongst them. There would always be a separation between them and us, and the Crowned King didn’t seem to want to entirely eliminate that separation.

Was it the Crown’s relations with opposing Houses? Perhaps, but that didn’t explain why Mother and Father had decided to go against the Crown itself rather than the Houses that we opposed.

Was it just because they wanted more power? That… that didn’t seem all too unbelievable. Most of our kind that I’d met had been like that, and I was sure that some of the greedier ones would have gladly betrayed the Crown if it meant they could have a shot at it.

Could they win? That was probably the more important question. We were powerful, yes—the proliferation of our branch families’ presence in the higher ranks of Tayan’s military proved that much—but were we powerful enough?

“—by far,” Lord Byron was saying. “Our oathholders outclass theirs by an order of magnitude.”

Theirs? The Crown’s? Maybe that was true, but…

Lessons I’d learned through hard studies and hard training flooded into my mind.

Power in numbers. With enough quantity comes quality.

An oathholder was worth more than a dozen soldiers, a military one maybe thrice that. A truly world-class oathholder, like the blue knight of the Adventurer’s Guild that I’d read about? Those could be worth a hundred.

But what were a few oathholders worth a hundred soldiers when there were ten thousand oathholding soldiers on the other side?

It felt wasteful, unplanned.

Whatever Lord Byron was, he was not a brash man. I knew that. And yet… this felt uncharacteristically unlike him.

“I do so wish I can wear the Crown soon,” Mother crooned, looking at Father like the rest of us weren’t even here.

“We will get you your Crown,” Father said, using a tone that he’d never used to speak to me. Warm, caring, and loving. “Fear not, my love.”

Whatever the case, this did not bode well. House Byron had quality on its side, but the Crown had both quantity and quality in spades. In a straight-up fight, we would lose a thousand times out of a thousand.

A campaign of stealth, fought wholly in the shadows? Doable, perhaps, but still risky. The costs of it would be terrible. If we were trying to hide an entire coup, we would likely expend so much of the Byron fortune that we would be little more than paupers if we ultimately failed to take the Crown.

“We must maintain our campaign,” Mother said. “Teach them to fear the night, and then, when the time is right…”

“We extend the hand,” Lord Byron agreed. “And with it, we shall pluck the Crown right off of the bastard King’s head.”

“It will be glorious,” Mother laughed. “What a sight it’ll be!”

I sat back into my seat as the two of them talked like they were the only people in the room. That connection they had… it was something I’d dearly wished Father would give me, once upon a time, but I’d learned. He’d sought to sharpen me into a soldier, and in the process he had given me the critical piece of myself that the Lord Byron had never fully gained.

Nobody is sacred.

Lord Wilson Byron was my father, and that was a fact, just like how water was wet and the sky was blue.

But that fact existed in isolation. He was my father, but he’d rarely offered me his approval and never offered me love. I was one of his heirs, but he was insistent on throwing away my birthright all for a doomed shot at the Crown.

Fine, then.

I was his daughter, but I owed him no allegiance. He would one day allow me to succeed him as leader of the House, but if he wanted to throw everything away, then I could too.

I would sit and wait for the time being. If I was wrong? If the Crown was truly within reach?

Maybe I would act then. Maybe I wouldn’t.

Only time would tell.