Chapter 116 Treason Charge
"Bring the traitor to the dais," the Emperor’s voice hissed. It was a dry, papery sound that slithered across the cavernous hall, cutting through the heavy silence.
Commander Thorne drove his steel-gauntleted hand hard into the space between Klaus’s shoulder blades.
Klaus stumbled forward. His bare feet dragged against the marble, leaving faint smears of watery silver blood. The heavy iron chains wrapped around his torso and wrists clanked with a brutal, dead weight. He didn't try to catch himself. His knees hit the stone floor with a sickening crack at the base of the ivory throne.
The guards holding my arms yanked me forward, forcing me to halt ten feet behind him. The steel of their grips bit deep into my biceps, bruising the flesh beneath my ruined, damp grey mourning dress.
I stared at Klaus’s broad, scarred back. The suppressor collar locked around his throat glowed with an angry, blistering heat, the runes searing into his pale skin. Through the blood-bond anchored behind my ribs, his agony washed over me in relentless, suffocating waves. He was starving, shivering, and completely drained of his immortal strength, yet he kept his spine rigidly straight.
"Klaus Falkenstein," the Emperor announced, shifting his skeletal frame on his throne of carved bone. His blind, milky eyes stared out into the void, but his twisted smile was pointed directly at the kneeling man. "Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy. You stand before this court stripped of your rank and stripped of your dignity."
A low murmur of agreement rippled through the gallery. In the front row, I saw Lady Vespera. She wore a gown of dark crimson silk, a delicate black lace fan held over her mouth to hide her cruel, triumphant smirk.
"You are charged with high treason," the Emperor continued, his voice rising, bouncing off the high, domed ceiling. "You are charged with conspiracy against the crown. And worst of all, you are charged with the willful withholding of vital Imperial assets."
"I withheld nothing," Klaus rasped. His voice was a ruined, gravelly ruin of its former authority, but the defiance in it was absolute. He lifted his heavy head, glaring up at the blind ruler. "I carried the rot of the ocean in my own chest so your empire could thrive. I was the drain you poured your filth into."
"You fed on the Siren," Thorne barked, striking the side of Klaus’s face with the heavy wooden shaft of his halberd.
Klaus’s head snapped to the side. Fresh silver blood sprayed across the black marble. A sharp, blinding spike of pain ripped through my own jaw via the tether, so intense my knees buckled. The guards simply hauled me back upright, their grips tightening until my shoulders screamed.
"He drank her blood to heal his failing flesh," the Emperor mocked, leaning forward. His midnight robes pooled around his feet like dark water. "He bound his life to the very creature holding our commercial fleets hostage. He chose a singing fish over the survival of his own kind."
"I chose to protect a life," Klaus spat, blood dripping from his chin. "Something you have never understood."
The Emperor laughed. It was a dry, rustling sound, entirely devoid of warmth. He stood up, slowly descending the steps of the dais until he was standing just inches from Klaus.
"Protection," the Emperor mused, tapping his long, yellowed fingernails against his chin. "What a fascinating concept. Tell me, Peregrine, how well can you protect her when you are chained to my floor?"
The Emperor turned his blind eyes away from Klaus and fixed them directly on me.
"Bring the Witch forward," he commanded.
The guards shoved me. My bare, cut feet slapped against the cold stone as I was forced to stand right beside Klaus. I looked down at him. His sapphire eyes found mine, the vibrant blue clouded by pain and the suffocating suppression of the iron collar.
"I have spent the morning consulting the oldest texts in the Imperial Archives," the Emperor said smoothly, gliding around us like a vulture circling a dying animal. "The lore of the First Era. I needed to understand exactly how Queen Ligeia cast the curse that turned my Grand Admiral into a sponge."
The Emperor stopped directly in front of me. He smelled of old parchment and mint.
"The magic is bound to his dead heart," the Emperor explained, raising a skeletal hand. "As long as the heart remains intact within his chest, the curse holds. The ocean stays clear, and the rot fills his veins. But the tether is fraying, isn't it? He is dying."
I locked my jaw, refusing to give him a single word. I tasted the copper of my own bitten lip.
"If he dies of natural causes, or if the curse simply consumes him, the magic breaks violently," the Emperor whispered, leaning close enough that I could feel the cold draft of his breath on my cheek. "The three centuries of black sludge stored in his body will detonate. It will flood back into the ocean all at once. The Sapphire Sea will boil in ink. Your home will be a dead, toxic wasteland forever."
My heart slammed against my ribs. I stared at the Emperor, the cold, hard reality of his words sinking into my bones.
"However," the Emperor purred, pulling a long, slender object from the folds of his midnight robes.
It was a ceremonial dagger. The blade was forged from pure, polished obsidian, the hilt wrapped in heavy gold wire. He held it up to the jaundiced light.
"There is a loophole in Ligeia’s blood-binding," the Emperor stated, his voice carrying to every corner of the silent hall. "A way to break the curse cleanly. To sever the tie without detonating the rot."
He lowered the blade, pointing the sharp, black tip directly at Klaus’s chest, right over the dark, necrotic veins that marked the curse.
"The heart must be destroyed," the Emperor decreed. "But it cannot be destroyed by an Imperial blade. It cannot be destroyed by a beast. It must be pierced by the hand of the bloodline that cast the curse. It must be a Siren."