Chapter 131 Forced Loyalty
"Do not strike yet," the Emperor commanded.
His papery voice slithered down from the ivory dais behind me, echoing loudly in the cavernous, jaundiced hall. He didn't want a quick execution. He wanted a spectacle. He wanted to wring every single drop of humiliation and victory from this moment.
I kept my arms locked in place, holding the dagger steady in the air, but I did not turn around to look at him. I kept my eyes fixed entirely on Klaus’s broad, scarred chest.
"Look upon this kneeling beast, my court," the Emperor declared, his midnight-crimson robes rustling loudly as he glided closer to the edge of the dais. "For three centuries, you believed him to be the impenetrable shield of the Empire. You believed him to be a loyal soldier. You drank his wine, you celebrated his victories, and you slept soundly in your towers because you thought the Admiral of the Northern Seas stood guard."
A low, collective murmur of angry agreement rippled through the gallery.
"But he was never guarding you," the Emperor sneered, his tone dripping with absolute, venomous disgust. "He was guarding a disease. He was hiding the Witch’s rot within his own ribs."
Klaus didn't react to the insult. He remained perfectly still on the jagged obsidian block. His chin was tucked low against his collarbone, fighting the brutal upward pull of the heavy iron leash Commander Thorne held in his steel gauntlet.
I stared at the thick, raised silver scars stretching across Klaus’s left side. They were the physical remnants of the Trench-Stalker, the two-ton beast the Emperor had unleashed on me in the arena. Klaus had thrown himself into the sand, fighting the monster with his bare hands, letting it carve him to pieces so I wouldn't have to use my voice and accelerate the curse. He had bled out on the floor of our suite for me.
And now, the Emperor was demanding I repay that devotion by cutting his heart out.
"The magic of Queen Ligeia is a foul, parasitic thing," the Emperor lectured, pacing slowly behind me. His velvet slippers whispered against the polished black marble. "It was designed to turn our oceans to ash, to dissolve our commercial fleets in toxic sludge. But the spell required an anchor. It required a dead heart to absorb the resonance of the Siren’s cry. The Admiral offered himself. He became the filter."
The Emperor stopped pacing. I could feel the cold, ancient draft of his presence standing just a few feet behind my back.
"If we simply executed him," the Emperor explained to the eager court, "if we took a broadsword and removed his head, the curse would lose its anchor violently. The three hundred years of compressed, festering rot stored within his flesh would detonate. The Sapphire Sea would boil in black ink before the sun rose. The Empire would starve."
The courtiers gasped, a genuine ripple of fear breaking through their sadistic anticipation. They looked at Klaus’s chest, suddenly realizing that the kneeling man was a ticking bomb holding their entire economy hostage.
"But the ancient texts are explicitly clear," the Emperor purred, his voice dropping to a smooth, arrogant hum. "The bloodline that cast the curse holds the key to dismantling it cleanly. If the Siren pierces the Anchor with ceremonial obsidian, the magic is absorbed into the glass. The rot dies with the host. The ocean is purged, and the threat is permanently erased."
The Emperor was giving them a masterclass in his own supremacy. He was proving that he hadn't just defeated a traitor; he had solved a three-hundred-year-old magical crisis, and he had broken a Queen to do it.
I didn't care about his speech. I tuned out the words, focusing entirely on the physical layout of the execution block.
I was standing on Klaus’s right. Commander Thorne was standing directly to Klaus’s left, just past the kneeling Admiral. Thorne’s heavy iron boots were planted firmly on the blood-slicked marble. His right hand was wrapped twice around the thick iron leash attached to Klaus’s collar. His left hand rested casually on the pommel of the heavy broadsword sheathed at his hip.
Thorne was relaxed.
He looked at my chained wrists, at the heavy black silk dress restricting my movements, and he saw absolutely no threat. He thought I was a broken, terrified girl being forced to murder her lover. He didn't think I had the physical strength or the tactical speed to attack a fully armored Imperial Commander.
I kept my eyes on Klaus’s chest, but I used my peripheral vision to study Thorne’s armor.
It was elite blackened steel, interlocking plates designed to deflect heavy blows. The breastplate was thick, the pauldrons wide and sweeping. But armor meant for mobility always had gaps.
I found it.
Right beneath Thorne’s heavy steel jawline, there was a narrow, two-inch gap between the bottom of his helmet and the top of his gorget. It was protected only by a thick layer of boiled black leather. Obsidian glass, properly sharpened and driven with enough force, would slice through boiled leather like wet paper.