The heavy oak doors of the council chamber clicked shut, a final, resonant sound that signaled the end of Vetra's era. She walked through the sprawling corridors of the Imperial Palace with her spine as straight as a spear and her chin tilted at an angle of serene indifference. To any servant or guard passing by, she looked exactly as she always had: the immovable Regent Empress, a woman carved from the very permafrost of Nevareth.
But beneath the silk and the calculated composure, Vetra was crumbling.
Her blood felt like molten lead, thick and scorching with a rage that threatened to crack her ribs. Displaced. Relocated. The words looped in her mind, each repetition a fresh lash against her pride.
Soren, the boy she had molded, the boy she had broken and rebuilt to be her perfect, icy instrument, had cast her aside like a piece of dry-rotted furniture.
