I CAME TO END HIM — HE MADE ME HIS EMPRESS

I CAME TO END HIM — HE MADE ME HIS EMPRESS Chapter 1 — The Weapon Walks In I had three minutes to kill the most powerful man alive. That was all the Ancient Ones had given me. Three minutes from the moment I entered the throne room before the Blood Moon shifted and my power began to fade. Three minutes to get close enough, strike fast enough, end him completely enough that not even his supernatural healing could save him. I had been preparing for this moment my entire existence. I walked through the palace doors like I owned them. The guards didn't stop me. They couldn't. The Ancient Ones had built me with a face that made men forget their own names and a presence that whispered she belongs here to every mind I passed. It was not beauty exactly. It was something older than beauty. Something that bypassed the brain entirely and went straight to the instinct. Let her through. She is supposed to be here. Two minutes fifty seconds. The throne room doors were black obsidian, floor to ceiling, carved with the faces of every enemy Emperor Kael Dravon had ever destroyed. There were hundreds of them. Kings, warlords, gods, monsters — all reduced to decoration on his door. I pushed them open without breaking stride. Two minutes thirty seconds. The room was empty. Not almost empty. Not quietly empty. Completely, deliberately, impossibly empty. No guards. No court. No servants. Just a vast black hall lit by torches that burned silver instead of gold, and at the far end, a throne carved from what looked like solidified shadow. And on that throne — Him. Emperor Kael Dravon sat with one leg crossed over the other, elbow resting on the armrest, chin resting on his knuckles, watching me walk toward him like he had nothing better to do on the night of the Blood Moon than wait. He was younger than I expected. Or rather — he wore youth the way dangerous things do, effortlessly, like a warning dressed as an invitation. Dark hair. A jaw that looked like it had been carved from the same obsidian as his doors. Eyes the colour of a eclipse — that impossible ring of gold around absolute darkness. He was, irritatingly, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Two minutes. Focus. I kept walking. Straight spine. Measured steps. The red gown the Ancient Ones had chosen whispered against the black floor. I reached into the invisible fold of power at my wrist where my strike was coiled and ready — a concentrated burst of divine energy that could stop any heart, crack any soul, end any life regardless of power level. I was ten feet away when he spoke. "You're twelve seconds behind schedule." I stopped. Every calculation in my mind went silent. "Excuse me?" I said. He tilted his head slightly, those eclipse eyes moving over me with an expression that was not fear, not surprise, not even curiosity. Just a quiet, settled recognition. Like a man seeing something he had been told about his whole life finally standing in front of him. "The Blood Moon rises at precisely midnight," he said, his voice low and unhurried, the voice of someone who had never once been rushed by anything. "A divine weapon activated at peak lunar power would need to strike within the first three minutes of entry to maximize impact." He paused. "You spent one minute and forty eight seconds in the corridor. That leaves you one minute twelve seconds." His eyes met mine. "You're twelve seconds behind your own plan." One minute ten seconds. My strike was still coiled. Still ready. I could still do this. "You know what I am," I said. "I know exactly what you are." He stood from the throne slowly, unfolding to his full height, and every torch in the room burned brighter without him touching anything. "You are Zara. Made from a dying star and a warrior's last breath. Sent by the Ancient Ones to end my reign." He stepped down from the throne platform, one step, two, closing the distance between us with the calm of someone who had rehearsed this moment. "I have known you were coming for one hundred years." Fifty seconds. "Then why," I said carefully, "did you let me in?" He stopped three feet in front of me. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him — not body heat, something deeper, something ancient, like standing near the core of the earth. He looked down at me and said something that no target had ever said to any weapon in the history of the world: "Because I wanted to meet you before you decided." Thirty seconds. "Decided what?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Whether to kill me." His eyes didn't move from mine. "Or whether to hear what I know about the ones who made you." Twenty seconds. My strike was ready. One release. One breath. It would be over. "What could you possibly know about the Ancient Ones?" I said. Ten seconds. He leaned forward slightly, just enough that his next words landed directly against my ear, quiet as a secret, heavy as a death sentence: "I know why they really sent you. And it has nothing to do with killing me." The Blood Moon shifted. My power didn't fade. It exploded — burst through every wall I had been built with, flooded my entire body like a dam breaking, so violent and so sudden that I staggered backward with a sound I had never made before in my existence. The Ancient Ones had lied to me. Whatever I was — whatever they had really made me for — it was waking up right now, in this room, three feet away from the man I had come to kill. Emperor Kael Dravon caught my arm before I hit the ground. And the moment his hand touched my skin, we both went completely still. Because we both felt it. The bond.