Two days later, Seamus Matteo sent a courier directly to the city Cathedral.
A formal request, signed in his own hand:
To His Grace, Cardinal Volte, and to Madam Lee of House Rosaria:
I, Viscount Seamus Matteo of Puerto Cuidad, request the hand in marriage of the woman known as Elena Rosaria.
She is not merely suitable — she is essential.
Do not attempt to intervene.
I will have her, or I will raze heaven to ask why I may not.
The Church laughed behind closed doors.
His mother nearly fainted.
Lee Rosaria smashed a glass and whispered, "No. No. Not her. Not him."
The Inquisition began to prepare.
Niegal:
The letter arrived by hawk.
The bird bore House Matteo's crest — barely legible beneath layers of sand and soot, its gold ink blistered by the desert sun.
Niegal Matteo unfolded the note with gloved hands, the message scrawled in Kenneth's precise script:
Sir,
He's done it. The boy's asked for her hand — Rosaria's girl. Elena.
Church is aflame. The city buzzes. She's alive.
Prepare yourself.
Your bloodline just called down thunder.
He read it twice. Then burned it in his palm.
The heat did not faze him.
He stood in the middle of the Red Chapel, a hollowed ruin buried beneath the dunes of San Cordero, where the Muerte JuJu legions camped near fractured mana wells. Around him, wind howled through cracked mosaics and scorched pillars. A candle had just gone out on the altar, and he knew—it was time.
Niegal Matteo had not stepped foot in Puerto Cuidad in nearly eight years. Not since the Church exiled him with veiled threats and false charges. Not since he left Seamus the title and walked into exile like a man swallowing poison to save his house.
But this? This was not politics.
This was blood.
He packed light — black linens, desert-worn leathers, relics and salt. His sword, wrapped in silk. And a single ring, tucked into a pouch: the original signet of House Matteo, older than law.
He wrote only one letter before he left:
Behike,
I will arrive in the north within six days. I'll require lodging, privacy, and a shadow priest. Possibly a forge.
My nephew has stirred the Church. His bride is Elena Rosaria.
Yes, that Rosaria.
He sealed it with ash and blood.
Then he left the desert — toward the city that had nearly destroyed him.