The moon did not rise that night.
It was the Solvaris Festival—when the five divine houses stood united beneath banners of light, storm, fire, wind, and rebirth. Aetherian guards lined the marble halls, music echoed through the garden courts, and golden lanterns floated like stars over Lumivara.
But in the Empress's chambers, there was no celebration. No light. Only silence, and a mother running out of time.
Elira tightened the wrappings around her infant daughter, pressing a kiss to the child's forehead. The baby stirred but did not cry. Not a sound. Not a breath too loud.
"Good girl," Elira whispered. Her voice trembled, but her hands did not.
Her golden crown was gone. Her ceremonial gown abandoned. She wore a simple traveling cloak now, lined with pale sigils sewn in haste—protection runes whispered by a dying priestess two nights ago.
"They don't want her captured," the woman had said. "They want her erased. Unborn. Unnamed."
Elira had not asked who they were. She already knew.
---
She moved through the eastern corridor, a sleeping corridor meant for the high priesthood. It was empty now, cleared on her orders. The child's warmth pressed against her chest, barely a weight at all—and yet heavier than any crown she had ever worn.
"Forgive me, Edmund," she thought.
"I could not tell you. You would have followed me. And you would have died."
A shadow passed the outer terrace. Elira stopped.
Then another—closer, faster, silent.
She ran.
Not as a ruler. Not as a queen.
As a mother, praying the gods she once served had not turned away.
---
Down the vine-draped stairwell. Across the silent bridge of moonstone. Into the old tunnel that only the high priestesses remembered.
The Whispering Vale was still three leagues away.
The guards would not notice she was gone until sunrise. Perhaps Edmund would wake early. He always did when she dreamt poorly. He'd ask the steward about her tea. He'd check the nursery.
He'd find it empty.
He'd break.
Elira didn't let herself cry. There would be no time to stop if she did.
---
A noise. A snap of air.
She spun—too late.
A blade flew past her shoulder, narrowly missing her cheek. It struck the tunnel wall and vanished into dust.
No soldier used weapons like that.
They've already crossed into the sacred ground.
The child stirred against her.
Elira didn't think. She threw up her hand, and a radiant burst of light—faint and flickering—flared from her palm. Enough to stun. Not enough to kill. She didn't need them dead. She just needed them behind her.
"Not tonight," she whispered. "Not my daughter. Not her fate."
She ran again, faster, until the tunnel fell away behind her and the trees opened into mist.
---
To be continued…