LIAM'S POV:
The world before dawn was a silent, suffocating landscape of obsidian and charcoal grey. I woke long before the first golden thread of light had the courage to pierce the horizon, my body moving with a cold, mechanical precision that had become my second skin. In the stillness of the Empress Dowager’s palace, every breath felt like a calculated weight, every heartbeat a drum echoing in a cathedral of my own making. Today was the final day of the old world—the eve of a gala that would serve as either the foundation of my kingdom or the funeral pyre of an empire.
I sat in the dim luminescence of my chambers, the fire in the hearth having dwindled to a collection of glowing embers that pulsed like a dying heart. My mind, ever restless, wandered toward the woman who was my biolog
