The Emperor's Witch

Chapther 7: The First Pyre

Below, the city lights flickered like a thousand stars, a reminder of the empire he had been born to rule, the empire that had shaped him and hardened him.

Atum exhaled slowly, the breath fogging faintly in the cooling air. Thalassas never truly slept. Even at this hour, he could hear it—the distant clang of forge hammers, the murmur of taverns refusing to close, the rhythmic march of patrols enforcing his laws. His laws. Every stone, every flame, every whisper of fear carried his name.

Power had never been gentle with him.

He had learned early that mercy was mistaken for weakness, that hesitation invited rebellion. At ten years old, crowned in blood and ash, he had understood one truth with brutal clarity: if he did not rule with an iron hand, Andrax would devour him whole. So he had become exactly what the empire demanded. Cold. Calculating. Unyielding.

A tyrant, some would say.

His fingers tightened around the stone balustrade. He did not deny it.

What unsettled him—what gnawed relentlessly at the edges of his control—was that for the first time in years, something had pierced that armour.

Someone.

Tara.

Her name surfaced unbidden, as it had every night since she’d appeared in his life like a fracture in reality itself. It is rather strange that thoughts of her are slowly invading in his mind, conquering his very being. It has not been that long since they met. He regrets even thinking at some point when he was made aware of her existence that he should behead her for trespassing.

She was an anomaly—too knowledgeable, too defiant, too unafraid. Where others bowed, she watched him. Where others lied, she challenged him. And when she looked at him, it was not with reverence or terror, but with something far more dangerous.

Judgment.

He suspected she was a witch. Perhaps worse—something older, something displaced. A traveler through time, if the unease in his bones was to be trusted. And yet, despite everything his laws condemned, despite everything he had sworn to eradicate, he had not ordered her arrest.

He had not ordered her death.

The realisation tasted like treason.

Had she bewitched him? The thought curled darkly through his mind. Magic was insidious by nature; it did not need spells or sigils. It seeped. It corrupted. It made kings hesitate when they should strike.

And yet, when he imagined her gone—burned, silenced, erased—the idea hollowed his chest in a way no battlefield ever had.

He closed his eyes briefly, jaw tightening. Weakness. That was all this was. A distraction at the worst possible moment.

The Masquerade loomed, its date etched into his thoughts like a blade poised to fall. By tradition and treaty, it marked the end of summer—and the deadline for his decision. Marriage or war. Peace sealed in silk and vows, or blood spilled across borders.

Years ago, he had agreed to wed the eldest princess of Belinium. A strategic match. A necessary one. Elyndor was everything an empress should be—graceful, obedient, politically invaluable. The alliance would secure the eastern borders and quiet the nobles already restless beneath his rule.

It should have been simple.

But when he imagined standing beside Elyndor, crown heavy on his brow, his thoughts did not linger on her smile or her lineage.

They drifted, traitorously, to emerald eyes and sharp words. To a woman who looked at him as if she saw not the Emperor of Andrax, but the boy beneath the crown—the one forged in fire and loss.

Atum opened his eyes.

The empire could not afford his hesitation.

And yet, for the first time, neither could he.

Somewhere within the palace walls, he felt her presence like a disturbance in the air—subtle, electric, impossible to ignore. He did not know what she was plotting, only that Tara never moved without purpose. And that whatever path she walked would inevitably collide with his own.

History was not fixed. Not anymore.

The thought unsettled him more than any rebellion ever had.

Atum straightened, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders as he turned away from the balcony. Tomorrow, the court would expect certainty. Strength. A ruler untouched by doubt.

They would get it.

But tonight—just this once—he allowed himself to acknowledge the truth he would never speak aloud.

If Tara stayed, she would change him.

And if she left, he feared he would become exactly the monster history remembered.

The palace did not sleep.

It only pretended to.

Tara learned that in the days following the assassination attempt, when guards shadowed her steps and every corridor echoed with secrets that stopped short the moment she entered a room. She felt them watching her—not with suspicion alone, but with curiosity, fear, and something darker.

A witch, they whispered.

The Emperor’s witch.

She hated how easily the title settled into place.

Atum did not come to her that night.

Nor the next.

Instead, she received silk gowns she did not ask for, jewels she refused to wear, and a quiet but unmistakable elevation in status. Servants bowed deeper. Nobles watched her longer. Doors opened that had once been closed.

Protection, she realised.

A gilded cage.

She stood at her chamber window as dawn bled pale gold across Thalassas, fingers curled in the curtains. Somewhere beyond the palace walls, history was already shifting—subtly, dangerously.

And she needed to know how much had already been lost.

She found the first clue in the archives.

The lower vaults smelled of dust and iron, scrolls stacked in towering shelves like the bones of forgotten ages. Tara had slipped away during the midday council, cloaked in illusion, her heart pounding with every step deeper into forbidden ground.

She wasn’t looking for a prophecy.

She was looking for dates.

Decrees.

Orders signed in blood-red wax.

Her fingers trembled as she unrolled a ledger marked with the imperial sigil.

Magical Regulation Act – Year 198 of Atum’s Reign.

Her breath caught.

That was earlier than it should have been.

Far earlier.

The entries were meticulous.

Confiscations. Arrests. “Relocations.”

And then—burnings.

She pressed a hand to her mouth as nausea surged. In her time, the Purges were recorded as beginning decades later, after Atum’s marriage, after his full consolidation of power.

But this…

This meant history had already diverged.

Or worse—

That it had always begun with him.

Tara learned the truth.

She had slipped out of the palace barefoot, magic dampened beneath layers of illusion, following the copper-sour taste in the air that no spell could disguise. Death had a signature. She had memorised it in her own time.

Smoke.

Screams.

She found the square already full.

Torches ringed the stone platform like teeth. Soldiers stood in disciplined rows, armour gleaming, faces impassive. At the centre, three women were bound to iron stakes—hands burned raw from restraints etched with sigils older than the empire itself.

Witch-binding runes.

Her knees nearly gave out.

“No,” she whispered.

A child cried from the crowd. Someone cheered.

And then Atum stepped forward.

Not the man she laid beside. Not the man who watched her sleep as if afraid she’d disappear.

The Emperor.

His voice carried effortlessly. “By decree of the Crown, magic practised beyond imperial sanction is treason.”

The first torch was raised.

Tara screamed his name.

The flames took the women before he turned.

She confronted him before dawn.

Atum was alone in the war room, armour discarded, hands braced against the map table as if holding the world together by force alone.

“How long?” she demanded.

He didn’t look up. “Two months.”

Her laugh cracked into a sob. “I came back in time to stop this.”

“You came too late.”

She shoved the table, sending pieces skidding. “You started it.”

“I enforced it.”

“You signed the order.”

“Yes.”

Her magic surged, lights flaring, the air vibrating violently. Guards rushed the doorway. Atum lifted one hand. They froze.

“Get out,” he said.

When they were alone, Tara’s voice dropped to a whisper sharp enough to cut bone. “You swore you hadn’t begun.”

“I said I hadn’t told you.”

She slapped him.

The sound echoed like a gunshot.

He didn’t move.

“Say it,” she hissed. “Say you don’t regret it.”

Silence.

“I regret,” he said finally, “that it didn’t end sooner.”

Her heart shattered.

“You burned innocent women.”

“I burned threats.”

“You burned me,” she said. “Just not yet.”

His eyes lifted then—dark, conflicted, hungry. “If I saw you on that pyre, I would tear the empire down with my hands.”

“That doesn’t make you better.”

“No,” he agreed softly. “It makes me honest.”

That night, she tried to leave.

She didn’t make it past the eastern gate.

“You think I wouldn’t feel you run?” Atum asked quietly behind her.

“I won’t be your monster’s exception.”

He stepped closer. “You already are.”

She turned, tears streaking her face. “You don’t get to love me after that.”

“I don’t love you,” he said.

She flinched.

“I want you,” he corrected. “And I hate myself for it.”

Her laugh was broken. “Good.”

He reached for her anyway.

She didn’t stop him.