Mask of Shadows chapter 1: the meeting
TWs: grief, fantasy violence, sleep drugging, genre-typical leering and dubcon-ey implications (tame for now)
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The soldiers deposit you inelegantly on the throne room floor. Just hours ago you walked here arm-in-arm with Lysander, heads high, crowns glittering. Now the carpet is blackened with bootprints, the room dark and reeking of ash, the screams of your people ringing in the distance.
“Your grace,” a cool, masculine voice announceds. “Welcome. I apologize for the crudeness of the circumstances, but I’m afraid I couldn’t wait for an audience.”
On the throne — your father-by-law’s throne, one day to be your husband’s — lounges a tall, lithe figure, cloaked in darkness. You can’t make out his face.
It doesn’t matter. You pull yourself up from the floor with as much authority as you can muster. “Call off your army at once. Whatever your demands, we can come to an agreement without this— this atrocity.”
He laughs, high and clear and ringing off the stone walls. Tears fill your eyes. You glimpsed the devastation yourself, as they dragged you across the courtyard: the smoke rising from the city, the wailing children and bloody cobblestones.
“Please,” you say, quietly.
The laughter stops.
“Do you know who I am, princess?” The figure asks, cold and imperious.
