Chapter Text
It starts with an envelope — unsigned, delivered by a raven black as night — and it ends in the Royal bunker, the dark shapes of Jeno’s soldiers around him, the enemy kneeling at his feet. The king, a once-proud man whose head now dangles from his shoulders. The queen, a woman garlanded in jasmine and eucalyptus, vomit staining her snow-white gown. Every man and woman of nobility, each one decked in jewelry and the finest fabrics, each one prostrate on the cold stone floor.
Then, the prince. Jaemin. Bleeding from his lip, looking up with those eyes that Jeno once knew so well, knew like a mirror, old as an heirloom and distant as a dream. Those eyes, unafraid. Watching.
There in the bunker, Jeno becomes the executioner. Blood is warm on his hands, speckled on his face. His sword is red, dripping. The floor is a shallow pool.
Jaemin is watching, still, as the king and queen — as his parents — are killed in front of him.
He’s smiling.
Jeno understands two things then.
This moment, the mark of his sword, is not the end. Far from it.
And he does not know Prince Jaemin. No, not at all.