When the clinking of the fallen crown died out, the throne room went still. Even the servants lining the walls froze in fear, staying silent. Only Queen Ghallia's moth fluttered to the ground beside her sorcerer, so softly that only Esmera could hear her wings beat. Only King Ruagu's viper coiled and uncoiled at his feet, his scales scraping against each other as he eyed the moth the way a predator would his prey.

Esmera was grateful that she and her friends were invisible for now, but she didn't know how long that would protect her.

Where Princess Kerani stood behind Ruagu with her blue bird on her shoulder, tears rose in her eyes as they fixed on the crown, deformed and distorted as her family and her life had been. Beside Esmera, Tauram drew a shaky breath.

To see an heirloom of their family tossed aside like worthless junk couldn't have been easy. It was an item that must've graced their beloved mother's head once, perhaps even her mother and grandmother before her. It must've been an item of pride once, standing for dignity and strength, but now it was just forlorn and hopeless where it lay on the tiles.

"What I want to know is why you would do such a thing." Ruagu jerked Ghallia's face up to his, sending her luxuriant hair rippling as it fell down her back. "Did I not give you everything you wished for when you left Tauram for me? A throne, all these jewels and garments?"

She made no reply. Her silence stretched until it became uncomfortable, like an itchy shawl covering Esmera's arms. Ruagu's viper rustled, while the king merely pressed his mouth into a line as he gazed down at his wife.

"Did I not?" Ruagu grabbed Ghallia's face, and she let out a whimper as his talons pressed into her skin, still warm with life and youth that Esmera feared wouldn't last.

"No." Ghallia's whisper resounded through the silent room as a cry would've.

It was just a single word, but it froze Esmera's blood, tightened Tauram's hand around her arm, trapped Belaren's breath in his chest because Ghallia had chosen the wrong answer. Maybe it was the truth, but it wasn't what her husband wanted to hear.

Ruagu's face hardened as Esmera expected it would. "Then tell me what you so severely lacked in my opulent palace that you would resort to plotting against me."

Again, she didn't budge, and to Esmera, it felt like she was signing the death warrant Ruagu had placed in front of her. She may be jealous of the queen for what she had been to Tauram ten years ago. She may have even hated her for the hold it seemed she still had on him, but it pained her to see her now, on her knees in front of the man she loved, who was dressed in black like the Grim Reaper. Esmera wanted to do something to help her, to keep her and Tauram's plan intact, but she could do nothing without exposing herself.

"I want you to tell my entire court why you betrayed us all." Ruagu tilted Ghallia's head up so that their gazes were in line and there was no escaping him. "Tell me before I show you the bad side I protected you from for all these years."

The confession flooded out of Ghallia's mouth, hasty with fear even as her words seemed chosen with care. "You didn't give me what you promised, not the sacred marriage, not a queen's respect, not a prosperous, joyful kingdom for my children to grow up in and one day rule."

Ruagu tilted his head, his eyes lighting up with amusement. "I'm curious about why you thought your children would rule Milatanur when I have lived for hundreds of years and can survive for thousands more."

Esmera's skin prickled at the thought of him outliving all of them, at the land itself withering and dying while he danced on it, as youthful as ever while only his hands betrayed his age.

"I thought that because that's what you promised me, and I chose to believe you, young, lovestruck, lustful fool that I was to side with you." Ghallia's words were heavy with regret, but there was no turning back the clock.

She had made her choices a decade ago, and like everyone around her, she had to live with them.

Anger flashed over Ruagu's face before he got it under control, taking hold of it and softening it. He traced his finger along Queen Ghallia's jaw, as Esmera imagined he had when he was a silver-tongued lover persuading her to his goals. "Was loving you not enough to satisfy you?"

"You didn't love me," Ghallia retorted with the speed of a slingshot snapping back. "You loved that I could get you within range of Tauram's throne quicker than his underage sisters could." Her voice shook, speaking of her anger and distaste for herself and her husband even as her shoulders remained steady.

Kerani flinched, folding her hands into each other and shrinking back as if she wanted to be anywhere but here. Esmera knew what that felt like. She shared the feeling, but there was no escape for either of them.

Ruagu frowned down at his wife. "Who has been feeding you these lies?"

"I have eyes to see for myself, Ruagu." Ghallia lowered her gaze to the floor. "You'd have married one of the princesses if they were old enough at the time. I never did understand your obsession with Morghis women." She shook her head. "You could've waited a few months for Namesha to be of age, for the queen and her husband to give you their blessing before you aimed for their thrones, but you didn't have the patience. That pleased me at the time. I considered myself so lucky that you chose me, but I see now that it wasn't a choice."

Ruagu shook his head. "I love you as I love Kerani, Ghallia. I truly do, but now that you have betrayed me, you will wear the mark of that." Something like sadness mingled with the fury quivering in his eyes as he put a gnarled, wicked hand on Ghallia's face.

"Ruagu, please—" she started, but the king was not a man of mercy.

Ghallia's beautiful flesh rotted away while the throne room looked on in silent horror. Ruagu withdrew his hand before the decay travelled any deeper, leaving his traitorous wife marred but alive. Death may have been kinder to a woman of her beauty, who was accustomed to being worshipped for it as a goddess was. Ghallia ran her shaking hand along the remains of her skin that crumbled in her hand in disbelief, in devastation.

Esmera felt Tauram tense beside her. Her heart sped up as her body prepared either to flee or fight. If Ruagu knew of Ghallia's betrayal, it was only a matter of time before he figured out that Esmera and Tauram were here.

Or maybe he already knew.

The thought sent goosebumps prickling along her arms. Surely he didn't know, or he would've killed them already. Maybe they still had time to escape, to regroup, to do something to change the trajectory of what had been an ill-fated mission even before Ghallia's moth summoned them.

But Tauram, it seemed, had other priorities. His voice was a whisper, barely more than a breath. "Lundas, get Esmera out of here—"

"Tauram, do show yourself." Ruagu looked up from his mutilated wife and stepped around her, all the negative emotions she had brought out in him falling away in the light of his grin. "I know you're here. Your friend Anjarah told me everything."

Esmera's heart nearly stopped. Anjarah? How on earth had she gotten involved with Ruagu? And why would she agree to that?

She had helped Esmera and Tauram find out about the Finnaaz army. She had taken them to the god who taught Esmera how to wield it. She had been on their side since the beginning. It seemed like a cruel joke that she couldn't be trusted, but there was no mistaking what Ruagu had said.

Anjarah had betrayed them. Maybe she was even the reason Ruagu had discovered Ghallia's hand in the plot. The queen seemed much too conniving to have given herself away.

Esmera's heart thudded with frantic fear, but she opened her mouth to summon the army. She had to do something before it was too late, but Tauram must've sensed her stir because he gripped her arm harder. She bit back a yelp.

"Not yet," Tauram breathed. "While Ruagu has the heartstone, he can defeat your army. We need to separate him from it before we summon them to attack."

The dramatic scene unfolding before Esmera had so consumed her attention that it was the first time she was looking at the tyrant king closely. A pendant hung from a thick black string around his neck, falling all the way down to the intersection of his chest and stomach. It looked like a little human heart that had shrivelled and turned into smoky purple stone, but it gleamed from within with unmistakable power that no doubt amplified Ruagu's as Tauram had explained before.

Esmera closed her mouth, swallowing. Tauram was right. To call on the army prematurely would be to forsake the advantage they had that Ruagu may not even know about.

Ruagu smiled as if he knew that the odds were so clearly stacked in his favour that Esmera and her team held back their attack until they were in a better position. He looked out over the throne room. "Come on up here, Anjarah! I want you to see the looks on your friends' faces when they realise you were the one who led them into this trap."

She shuffled from the edge of the room, where Esmera hadn't noticed her standing among the servants, the hem of her brown SUAF uniform fluttering around her ankles. Her figure was hunched over as if she had aged years in the evening since Esmera had last seen her. Her bun sat crookedly on her head as if something had knocked it askew.

She was a stranger, yet she was an unmistakable member of Esmera's crumbling team. She had smiled back at them in the moonlight while she helped them delve into the mystery before them, and now she fought back tears as she stared at her feet.

"They took my son... they came to my house and took Kuan. I didn't know what to do but give King Ruagu what he wanted. I- I'm so sorry." Anjarah's voice cracked, and she clamped her mouth shut.

Esmera's hands hardened into fists at her sides. She wasn't sure whether she was angrier at Ruagu for kidnapping Anjarah's son or Anjarah for falling into the king's trap and taking the rest of them into it.

So, she let out a breath and settled for not being angry at all. She couldn't let her fury cloud her judgment. Not when the week was almost up. Not when victory was within her reach.

Esmera sensed Lundas settle beside her, felt the warmth of his furry body as it brushed against her ankle, and heard his muscles tense like the strings of a musical instrument as he prepared to spirit them all away. He was too slow for the yaoguai who surrounded them, their circle so precise that Esmera could tell they knew exactly where she and her team were. Whether they could see them with their evil magic or smell their invisible forms, she didn't know. What she did know was that they would be dead before Lundas could transport them all to safety.

Tauram let out a heavy sigh. His shoulders sagged as he dropped the cover of invisibility, revealing the team and their familiars to the people who most wanted to kill them.

Ruagu beckoned them over, but before they could approach him, a yao grabbed them from behind, pinning their arms against their backs and pushed them forward. Ruagu waved a careless hand, and two more yaoguai strode forward and pulled Ghallia to her feet. She didn't resist as they dragged her out of the throne room, her hair falling over her marred face like a dark curtain of silk.

Esmera swallowed a cry as she took the disgraced queen's place in front of the thrones. Her yao captor forced her to her knees on the cold tiles. Tauram and Belaren shared the same experience beside her.

"It is wonderful to see you again, dear friend." Ruagu floated down from the dais, his dark, merciless eyes fixed on Tauram. "I'm trying not to be hurt that you returned to Milatanur without paying me a visit." Ruagu pouted playfully.

In contrast, Esmera had never seen Tauram so serious, so measured with his reply. "Well, I'm visiting you now. Surely that counts for something?" He flinched as the yao restraining him tightened his grip on his arms with a growl.

"And how long has it been since you returned? A few days already, you said?" Ruagu looked to Anjarah for an answer, and she gave a miserable nod. The king flicked his eyes back to the prince he overthrew all those years ago. "I thought we were better friends than that, Tauram."

Tauram's jaw tightened with audible tension. "So did I, but then you misused my trust to steal my betrothed and my kingdom and destroyed what remained of my family."

If it had been Esmera's crimes set out so plainly before her and an entire throne room of onlookers, she might've felt guilty, maybe even apologised for her acts and explained herself.

Ruagu, on the other hand, merely tsked, his eyes gleaming. "Grudges do not become you, my dear Prince Tauram."

"You haven't had any contact with me in a decade." Tauram glared up at him, taking time with his words as if he were sharpening a knife. "You are the least fit person to make that judgment."

"I beg to differ." Ruagu left the dais behind and above him, stopping before Tauram. "There is no one alive who has held a longer grudge than me." He smirked as he gazed down at his defeated former friend while his viper slithered after him, finally spiralling to a stop beside him.