Chapter Forty-One: Sylvia

Disguised as a servant, Sylvia slips into the Omal palace at dusk and navigates through drunken courtiers and largely empty guard posts. Guided by maps memorized during Arin’s Alcalah training, she locates a concealed stair and ascends in darkness, refusing to use her unstable magic. She weighs the Urabi’s fears about her magic against her own calculated risk in giving Binyar Lazur’s confession to Arin to test his commitment to truth over hatred of magic.

Emerging filthy into Queen Hanan’s wing, Sylvia encounters a newly hung family portrait depicting Hanan, King Toran, Emre on the throne, and a young Sylvia on his knee—an audacious suggestion of legitimacy that would provoke Felix. When confronted by a guard, she kills him swiftly, then dispatches two more outside the throne room, surprised by the palace’s light defenses.

Entering the vast throne room, Sylvia finds no defenders and advances toward the Omal throne beneath a looming rochelya. She follows the sound and trail of blood to the dais and discovers Queen Hanan’s corpse pinned to the chair with knives and a sword, her throat sawn open. In the rochelya’s gaping jaws, Sylvia retrieves a glass crown. She closes Hanan’s eyes and privately vows to believe Hanan would have accepted her claim.

As the platform trembles with approaching forces, doors burst open and ranks of Omalian soldiers pour in to surround her. With the room filled, Felix approaches wearing a real crown, openly asserting control. He greets Sylvia—“Hello, cousin”—announcing his triumph and setting the stakes for the coming clash over Omal’s throne and the future of their intertwined realms.