The coronation was quiet and swift, conducted with minimal fanfare. The ceremony and proceeding ball should’ve been a celebration. Instead, the coronation was kept down to the bare minimum of what was required, and the accompanying ball was postponed in a declaration that Torian “would not celebrate until he knew there was no further threat to Aethelgard.”
Torian’s first few months as king were spent securing the shattered reality Valerius had created. The Council was cowed for the moment, the dissenters jailed, and the immediate threat to the Drakemoor bloodline had subsided.
Torian was still obsessed with two things though: finding a path back to Anya and understanding the depth of Valerius’s obsession with the Temporal Key. The sheer, irrational violence of Valerius’s pursuit felt to
