Alura stiffened when she heard the chapel door open behind her. From the doorway, she could hear Reverend Mother Vikta, the temple’s high priestess, chastising whoever had entered the room. There was only a brief exchange of harsh whispers before she heard the rustling of the reverend mother’s robes and the angry clack of her shoes on the stone floor fading away. The intruder began to walk up the aisle between the pews toward the head of the room where Alura was busy praying befo...

The silence in the throne room was suffocating, bearing down on Alura with its inescapable weight. The water still dripping from Matilde’s hair onto the floor was almost as deafening as the occasional crackle or snap of the wood burning in the braziers all around the room. Alura didn’t even dare to blink as she knelt before the emperor, eyes fixated upon the alabaster floor beneath her. Dioclaetus rarely ever needed to speak to make his point known. He simply sat back in his golden th...

“Don’t patronize me,” Matilde scorned. Hissing through clenched teeth, she tightened her grip on Alura’s hands as she attempted to rise from her bed for the fourth time. Getting her up and moving on a normal day was a challenge in and of itself, but when she was injured, it was a nightmare. It had taken nearly an hour to get her to a sitting position, full of coaxing and sweetness that was running dry the longer Alura had ...

 Alura tapped her foot impatiently on the floor and glanced out the window as what had to be the hundredth explosion shook the canyon somewhere in the distance. Pillars of smoke billowed into the night sky all over the city, but Matilde was still busy collecting the last of the items she wanted to take with her, stuffing more things into the bag on the bed that was already starting to overflow. They should have been on the boats by now, evacuating with the rest of the city that had managed to get to...