The sun hung like a golden coin in the cloudless sky, its rays spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the King estate with the kind of brilliance that made everything look like it belonged in a catalog. Marble floors reflected light like frozen water. Oil paintings, the kind people pretended to understand, lined the walls that probably cost more than most people's houses. Even the air smelled expensive, like leather and old money and the particular brand of cologne that came in bottles shaped like chess pieces.
Julius Solomon El King stood near the back of the ballroom, watching his father work the crowd.
The party was technically in his honor. His ascension. His future. But Julius had learned early that parties like this were never really about the person being celebrated; they were about reminding everyone else where they stood on the ladder, who was climbing, and who was slipping.
"Your tie's crooked."
Julius glanced down. It wasn't. His younger sister, Lydia, grinned up at him from where she'd materialized at his elbow, already dressed in something that looked like it cost more than her college tuition. Probably did.
"You're hilarious," Julius said flatly.
"I know." She tilted her head, studying him with the kind of scrutiny only a sibling could get away with. "You look nervous."
"I'm not nervous."
"Your eye twitches when you lie. The red one."
Julius resisted the urge to check. Instead, he reached out and flicked her forehead, not hard, just enough to make her yelp and swat at his hand.
"Children," their mother's voice cut through the ambient chatter like a conductor's baton. Victoria El King approached with the kind of grace that made people straighten their spines without realizing it. Dark skin, darker eyes, and a smile that could either welcome you or cut you down, depending on her mood. "Julius, your father's about to speak."
"I know."
"Then stop lurking in the corner like you're at someone else's party."
Lydia snickered.
Julius shot her a look that promised retribution later.
The crowd shifted as Aurelius Victor El King stepped onto the podium, his presence filling the room without him raising his voice. He didn't need to. The man commanded attention the way gravity commanded objects—effortlessly, inevitably. His suit was immaculate, tailored to emphasize shoulders that suggested he could still handle himself despite the silver threading through his hair.
"Welcome everyone," Aurelius began, his voice carrying that particular timbre that made you want to listen, "and thank you all for coming. Today, my son Julius, as you may know him, will become a member of our society of wealth. He will soon be taking over the family business, and I'd like you all to get acquainted with him."
The murmuring started immediately. Julius could pick out fragments heard he's ruthless, those eyes though, too young, father's pride and joy, the usual cocktail of admiration and resentment that came with being born into a name like King.
He stepped forward.
The murmuring stopped.
It always did. Julius had learned to use it, that weight in the air when people looked at him. The heterochromia helped—purple and red, like someone had mixed royalty and violence in a test tube and poured it into his skull. But it was more than that. Something in the way he moved. The way he looked at people.
"Greetings to you all," Julius said, and the room seemed to lean in. "As my father introduced, I am Julius Solomon El King. Your future." He let that hang for a beat. "I will lead the King Dynasty into an era even more prosperous than my father's."
The arrogance was deliberate. Calculated. If you were going to stand in front of a room full of sharks, you shouldn't bleed in the water, you convinced them you were something bigger.
Aurelius smiled. Not the public smile, the real one, small and proud, the kind Julius only saw at home.
The party resumed, and with it came the parade.
Julius settled into the throne-like chair beside his father on the raised platform, fighting the urge to slouch. Within minutes, a line had formed. Fathers with daughters. Some with multiple daughters, like they were hedging their bets at a horse race.
"This part always looks medieval," Julius muttered.
"It is medieval," Aurelius replied without moving his lips, smile still fixed in place. "Just with better lighting."
The first few were predictable. Nervous fathers, nervous daughters, stilted introductions that went nowhere because Julius wasn't interested and everyone could tell. He was polite. Professional. But unmoved.
Then came the peacock.
Julius clocked him three people back, a barrel-chested man with too much gold jewelry and not enough subtlety, practically dragging his daughter forward like a prize heifer. The girl looked uncomfortable, her dress cut in a way that screamed I didn't pick this out myself.
When their turn came, the father didn't wait for an introduction.
"Vincent Marconi," he announced, puffing his chest. "Perhaps you've heard of me. I control the eastern seaboard operations, shipments, distribution, and enforcement. Quite the empire, if I do say so." He gestured to his daughter like a game show host revealing a prize. "This is Angelica. Beautiful, isn't she? Educated too. Speaks four languages."
Angelica smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. She stepped forward, her movements rehearsed, and placed a hand on Julius's armrest, leaning in close enough that he could smell her perfume, something floral and cloying.
"It's an honor," she breathed, her voice dropping into a tone that was probably supposed to be seductive but just sounded tired. "I've heard so much about you, Julius. They say you're... extraordinary."
Her fingers traced the edge of his sleeve. Her other hand brushed his knee.
Julius looked at her, really looked at her, and saw what everyone in this line saw when they looked at him. A stepping stone, a trophy, a means to an end.
"I'm sure you're very accomplished," Julius said evenly, removing her hand from his knee with the kind of gentleness that somehow made the rejection worse. "But I'm not interested."
Angelica's smile fractured. She pulled back like she'd been slapped.
Vincent Marconi's face went from pleased to confused to furious in under three seconds.
"Not interested?" His voice rose. "Do you have any idea who I am? What I offer?"
"You just told me," Julius said. "Eastern seaboard. Very impressive. Still not interested."
"Are you insane? My daughter is—"
"Your daughter is lovely, I'm sure. This isn't personal."
"Not personal?" Vincent's laugh was ugly. "You little shit, you think you're too good for—"
"Vincent." Aurelius's voice cut through like a blade. "You're making a scene."
But Vincent was past hearing reason. His face had gone red, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. "Too good for my family? For an alliance that could triple your reach? What, are you a faggot? Is that it? Too busy eyeing the men to notice a real woman when—"
Julius stood.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
"You showcase such disrespect," Julius said, his voice quiet but cutting through the sudden silence like a razor. "You should know your place, scum. After all, you are just an ant. And your daughter?" He glanced at Angelica, who'd gone pale. "Merely a whore you're trying to auction off."
The gasps were immediate. Aurelius closed his eyes briefly, a tell that Julius recognized as you went too far.
But Vincent had already gone further.
The gun appeared from inside his jacket with practiced speed, the barrel leveling at Julius's chest. Around the room, the few guards loyal to the King family started to raise their weapons, then stopped, confusion rippling through their ranks as other guards, ones Julius had seen a hundred times, turned their rifles toward the family instead.
Screams erupted. People dove behind tables, knocked over champagne towers in their scramble for cover.
"Everyone, stay calm!" Vincent's voice boomed, confidence flooding back now that he held the power. His men, and they were clearly his men now, fanned out, creating a perimeter. "Nobody needs to die. Well." He grinned. "Most of you don't."
Julius's mind raced. Twenty, maybe twenty-five hostiles. At least a dozen compromised guards. Angles of fire, exit points, his mother and sister somewhere in the crowd—
"How?" Aurelius asked, still seated, still calm. "How did you bring guns past security? How did you turn my men?"
"Money," Vincent said simply. "And patience. You think you're the only one who knows how to play the long game, Aurelius? I've been placing people in your organization for years. Waiting. Planning." He pressed the gun against Aurelius's temple. "Honestly, I'm almost disappointed it was this easy."
"Disappointed," Aurelius repeated, and there was something almost amused in his tone. "You orchestrate a coup, subvert my security, and you're disappointed. That's the problem with people like you, Vincent. You'll never understand."
"Understand what?"
"That you could pull off a thousand coups, kill a thousand kings, and you'd still be exactly what you are. Scum. You're always going to be fated to be no more than—"
The gunshot was deafening.
Aurelius's head snapped back, blood misting the air in a red halo before his body slumped sideways off the throne.
For a moment, Julius forgot how to breathe.
His father, his invincible, untouchable father, lay crumpled on the platform, blood pooling beneath him, eyes staring at nothing.
"DAD!" Lydia's scream cut through the ringing in Julius's ears.
Vincent swung the gun toward her. Toward their mother, who was trying to shield Lydia with her body, tears streaming down her face, but her jaw set in the same stubborn defiance Aurelius had worn.
"The women we keep," Vincent said to his men. "Good merchandise. But the boy?" He turned the gun on Julius. "The boy dies."
Julius looked into the barrel. Looked past it to Vincent's triumphant sneer. Looked beyond that to the bodies starting to pile up as Vincent's men "cleared" the room.
His mother's voice, hoarse: "Run, Julius, please—"
Vincent's finger tightened on the trigger.
Something inside Julius broke.
Not broke like shattering broke like a dam bursting, like something that had been caged and pressurized and compressed, finally finding a crack wide enough to escape.
His eyes ignited.
Purple and red light blazed from Julius's heterochromic eyes like twin stars going supernova, and the air around him began to warp. Not like heat distortion, like reality itself was being pulled toward some invisible drain centered on his body.
Vincent fired.
The bullet slowed as it approached Julius, the space around him bending impossibly, and then it simply... stopped. Hung in the air like a fly in amber. Then collapsed inward, compressed into nothingness by forces that shouldn't exist.
"What the—"
Julius screamed.
It wasn't a sound of pain or rage or fear; it was all three and none of them, a primal thing torn from somewhere deeper than conscious thought. The light from his eyes intensified, became blinding, and the warping effect exploded outward in a sphere of gravitational annihilation.
Everything touched by that sphere ceased to exist.
Not destroyed, erased. People, furniture, walls, the very floor beneath them all of it collapsed inward toward Julius like the world's slowest, most horrifying implosion, compressed into infinite density and then simply gone. No debris. No ash. Just absence.
Vincent didn't even have time to scream.
The mansion folded in on itself like paper in a fist. Marble and mahogany and priceless art and human bodies all crushed down, down, down into a singularity of Julius's uncontrolled power. The light swallowed everything: the ballroom, the hallways, the wings, and gardens, and the security walls.
And then, silence.
When Julius's vision cleared when the light finally died, and his eyes stopped burning, he was standing at the bottom of a crater so deep he couldn't see the top.
The King estate was gone.
His family was gone.
Everything was gone.
Just him, standing in the center of an abyss, staring at his hands like they belonged to someone else.
The days blurred together.
Julius remembered stumbling. Climbing. The walls of the crater were glass-smooth, fused by heat or pressure or something worse, and his hands kept slipping. Blood under his fingernails. Knees scraped raw.
He surfaced in an alley.
How did he get there, which alley, which city, none of it registered. Time had stopped meaning anything. Sometimes it was day, sometimes night. He couldn't tell if hours were passing or days.
His body started to fail. When had he last eaten? Drunk water? His clothes hung off him like rags. His braids came loose, hair matted with sweat and grime.
The memories played on loop. His father's blood. His mother's scream. Lydia's face, the last thing he saw before the light—
Julius curled into a ball between a dumpster and a brick wall and stared at nothing.
The thousand-yard stare, they called it. The look of someone who'd seen too much, processed too little, and broken somewhere in between.
He didn't know how long he'd been there when the angel appeared.
She was dressed in white, all white, like she'd stepped out of a dream or a hallucination. Blonde hair catching what little light filtered into the alley, blue eyes impossibly clear. Beautiful in a way that didn't seem real.
"Oh my god," she breathed, kneeling beside him. Her hand touched his forehead, cool against his fevered skin. "You poor thing. How long have you been here?"
Julius tried to answer. His throat felt full of gravel.
"Don't talk," she said quickly. "It's okay. You're safe now. My name is Emma. Emma Frost. I'm going to help you."
She extended a hand.
Julius stared at it. At her. At the impossible kindness in her eyes.
He took her hand.
Julius woke to softness.
Actual softness, Egyptian cotton, down pillows, the kind of mattress that costs more than a car. For a disoriented moment, he thought he was home, that everything had been a nightmare, that he'd open his eyes and see his room and hear Lydia banging on his door to hurry up for breakfast.
Then he saw the unfamiliar ceiling. The unfamiliar walls. The unfamiliar everything.
He sat up too fast, head spinning, and that's when he realized his clothes were different. Clean. New. Dark jeans, a soft black shirt, neither of which he recognized.
"Easy." Emma Frost entered through a doorway Julius hadn't noticed, carrying a tray with food, real food, not the protein bars and water bottles he vaguely remembered her feeding him. "You've been out for almost sixteen hours. Your body needed the rest."
Julius's hand went to his hair instinctively. Still braided, but clean now, re-done properly.
"I took some liberties," Emma said, setting the tray on a bedside table. "You were... well, you were in bad shape. I hope you don't mind."
"Where am I?"
"My home. Westchester County." She settled into a chair across from the bed, folding her hands in her lap with practiced elegance. "You're safe here. No one's going to hurt you."
Julius's laugh was bitter. "Safe. Right."
"I mean it." Her eyes, those impossibly blue eyes, held his. "Whatever you're running from, whatever happened to you... You're safe here. I promise."
For a long moment, Julius just looked at her. Trying to find the angle, the trap, the reason someone would help a stranger they found dying in an alley.
"Who are you?" he finally asked.
"I told you. Emma Frost."
"That's not what I mean."
A small smile played at the corner of her mouth. "Perceptive. I'm... let's say I'm someone who recognizes potential when I see it. Someone who believes people deserve second chances."
"You don't know anything about me."
"Then tell me." She leaned forward slightly. "Who are you?"
The question hung in the air. Who was he? The heir to a dynasty that didn't exist anymore? The son of a dead king? A murderer who'd killed hundreds of people, including his own family?
A monster?
"Julius," he said finally. "Julius Solomon El King."
Emma's expression didn't change, but something flickered in her eyes, recognition.
"King," she repeated. "The... King family?"
"You've heard of us."
"I've heard of what happened. The estate. The—" She paused, choosing her words carefully. "The crater."
Julius's hands clenched into fists. "That was me."
"I know."
"I killed them. My father. My mother. My sister. Everyone."
"Did you mean to?"
The question caught him off guard. "What?"
"Did you mean to kill them?" Emma's voice was gentle but insistent. "Because from what I understand, Julius, you were being attacked. Someone was trying to murder you and your family. What happened after that... I don't think you had control over it. Did you?"
Julius opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I didn't know," he whispered. "I didn't know I could— That I was—"
"Different?" Emma supplied. She stood, moving closer. "Special? Powerful?" She sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that Julius could smell her perfume, something subtle and expensive. "Julius, what you experienced, what you did... there's a word for it. For people like you."
"Monster?"
"Mutant."
The word landed like a stone in still water, sending ripples through everything Julius thought he understood about himself.
"I don't—"
"You manifested," Emma continued. "Under extreme stress, your body unlocked something that had been dormant your entire life. A genetic mutation that gives you abilities beyond normal human capacity. In your case..." She glanced toward the window, where sunshine streamed through. "Destruction, if I had to guess. The power to destroy anything in your way."
Julius stared at his hands. The same hands that had erased his entire world.
"I'm a mutant too," Emma said softly. "A telepath, I can read minds, project thoughts, protect myself mentally in ways that would take hours to explain." She touched his hand. "You're not alone in this, Julius. And you're not a monster. You're just... new, raw, untrained."
"Everyone's dead because of me."
"Everyone's dead because a coward with a gun tried to murder your family." Emma's voice hardened. "What happened after that wasn't your fault. It was a tragedy. Horrible, awful tragedy. But it wasn't. Your. Fault."
Julius wanted to believe her. God, he wanted to believe her so badly it hurt.
"Why are you helping me?" he asked. "Really?"
Emma was quiet for a long moment, her expression unreadable.
"Because I've seen too many young mutants destroy themselves with guilt over powers they never asked for," she said finally. "And because I believe you deserve a chance to learn who you are, Julius. Who you could be, with the right guidance."
She stood, smoothing her white slacks with a gesture that felt more about composure than wrinkles.
"Rest," she said. "Eat. We'll talk more when you're ready. For now, you're my guest. My safe guest. Nothing bad will happen to you here."
She moved toward the door.
"Emma?"
She paused, looking back.
"Thank you," Julius said. "For... for not leaving me there."
Her smile was warm. Genuine.
Or at least, it looked genuine.
"Everyone deserves an angel, Julius," she said. "Even kings."
The door clicked shut behind her.
Julius sat in the quiet room, sunlight warming his face, and tried not to think about the abyss he'd left behind. Tried not to wonder what he'd become, or what Emma Frost really wanted, or whether he'd ever be able to close his eyes without seeing his father's blood.
Outside, birds sang.
The world kept turning.
And Julius Solomon El King, the last of his dynasty, began the long process of learning how to breathe again.
He didn't know couldn't know that his angel in white had played this game before. That she'd known exactly who he was the moment she found him. That every word, every gesture, every carefully calculated kindness was a thread in a web she was weaving around him.
Emma Frost stood in her study, watching Julius's room through the security feed, and allowed herself a small, satisfied smile.
Potential indeed.
The boy was broken, traumatized, and desperate.
Perfect.