The clash of volcanic glass against star-iron was not a ring of metal. It was a concussive detonation that blew the cinnabar mosaic off the floorboards in a cloud of red dust.
Gideon’s charge met Emperor Ignis-Vael at the bottom of the amber dais. The warlord’s right claymore swept in a brutal, rising diagonal cleave intended to take the Emperor’s golden head from his neck, while his left blade snapped downward to sever the knee.
Ignis-Vael didn't even shift his footing.
The five-foot volcanic glass great sword moved with a lazy, liquid grace that seemed entirely divorced from physical inertia. With a flick of the Emperor’s right wrist, the smoking black blade parried Gideon’s rising strike with a shower of incandescent orange sparks, spun through the air, and cracked against the flat of Gideon’s left claymore with the weight of a falling portcullis.
The sheer kinetic force buckled Gideon’s front knee.
The paving stones beneath the warlord’s boots spider-webbed into powder. Blood seeped through the white linen binding Gideon’s cracked ribs, the fresh agony flaring white-hot behind his eyes, but his jaw remained locked in a feral, pitiless snarl.
"You have heart, dog," Ignis-Vael murmured, his molten golden eyes swirling with cold amusement as their faces locked inches apart over crossed steel. "Crude. Primitive. But your marrow has good iron in it. Perhaps when I finish flaying your queen, I will keep your pelt to line my winter carriage."
"You talk too much for a corpse," Gideon growled.
The warlord headbutted the Emperor.
The iron rim of Gideon’s forehead struck the bridge of Ignis-Vael’s aristocratic nose with a sickening, wet crack.
The Emperor’s head snapped back. A line of thick, luminous golden blood spurted from his nostril, his molten eyes widening in momentary, bewildered shock that a mortal beast had dared mark his flesh.
Gideon didn't give him room to recover.
He pivoted on his heel, swinging his right star-iron blade in a two-handed horizontal backhand that sheared clean through the left lapel of the Emperor’s electrum mantle, slicing a shallow, smoking line across his chest.
Ignis-Vael hissed—a dry, terrifying sound like a pit of vipers—and kicked Gideon in the chest with his golden greave.
The blow landed squarely over Gideon’s wounded ribs.
The warlord flew twenty paces backward across the hall, crashing against the base of a fluted golden pillar with a concussive thud that cracked the marble column behind the metal casing. He hit the floor on his hands and knees, coughing a spray of dark blood onto the mosaic, but his claymores never left his grip.
"Gideon!" Talia screamed, drawing her rapiers to leap forward.
"STAND DOWN!" Lyra’s voice was a whip of thunder that froze Talia and Korina in their tracks.
Lyra walked past the line of her guards.
Her antler-handled skinning knife was held loosely in her right hand, its iron edge resting along her thigh. Her hazel-grey eye was dark as a storm-tossed sea, but her left eye was an incandescent, swirling vortex of pure, sovereign starlight.
The star-iron circlet upon her brow burned with cold, diamond-bright fire, venting thin plumes of pale-violet mist that drifted across her shoulders like a queen's mantle.
The Emperor wiped the golden blood from his lip with the back of his fingers, staring at the stain with disgust before his gaze locked onto Lyra.
"You think to challenge me with a kitchen knife, little stray?" Ignis-Vael mocked, the black-glass great sword igniting with roaring crimson flame. "I have drunk the marrow of nine wyrms! I hold the soul of your mother in my palm! I am the living incarnation of the First Sun!"
"You aren't the sun, Ignis-Vael," Lyra said, her voice dropping into that terrifying, subterranean dual-resonance that made the entire two-thousand-foot pyramid shudder to its roots. "You are a tick. A bloated parasite feeding on the stolen marrow of women and beasts."
She pointed her antler knife toward the floating golden cage behind his throne, where the pale-violet spirit of Sovereign Vespera wept in its eternal slumber.
"Nineteen winters ago," Lyra whispered, her fangs lengthening against her lip in a cold, sovereign snarl, "my mother made a covenant with the North. She didn't buy an empire. She bought time."
Lyra took three slow, measured paces forward.
"She knew her bloodline would not end in a cellar. She knew that one day, her seed would return with an army at her back, a dragon in her sky, and a warlord who would tear the throat out of any tyrant who tried to put a collar around her neck."
Ignis-Vael’s golden eyes narrowed to lethal slits.
"Then die like her!" the Emperor roared.
He lunged.
The volcanic glass blade descended in an executioner's overhead arc that tore through the air with the scream of a falling meteor, leaving a trail of white-hot plasma that vaporized the mosaic flagstones beneath its path.
Lyra didn't raise her knife to block.
She didn't try to dodge.
She raised her bare left hand.
The black-glass blade struck the center of her palm.
CRACK!
The impact was an apocalyptic shockwave of red and violet energy that blew out forty of the fifty golden pillars lining the throne room, sending tons of masonry crashing down onto the lower terraces of the city below.
The five-foot volcanic glass great sword stopped cold.
Held fast in the grip of five small, pale fingers.
Ignis-Vael stared in absolute, paralyzing horror as the starlight in Lyra’s veins flared with diamond-hard density.
The crimson flame along the black-glass blade didn't scorch her skin.
It was being devoured.
The celestial violet starlight of the Morvath dynasty surged into the glass, inverting the solar frequency, turning the volcanic blade from smoking red into brittle, frosted white.
"Impossible..." Ignis-Vael choked out, his golden face draining of color. "The solar marrow cannot be contained by mortal flesh!"
"I am not mortal," Lyra whispered into his face, her violet eye blazing with the wrath of forty generations of slaughtered queens. "I am the Ash Throne."
She closed her fist.
CRACK.
With a single, effortless squeeze of her bare hand, Lyra shattered the five-foot volcanic glass great sword into ten thousand harmless, smoking shards.
Before the shattered glass could hit the floor, Lyra moved.
Her right hand shot forward, the antler-handled knife leading the way.
She didn't stab him in the chest.
She severed the thick, parasitic soul-tether connecting the Emperor's heart to the floating cage of her mother's spirit.
SEVER!
A deafening, celestial chord of liberation rang through the throne room.
The golden soul-wire around the starlit orb dissolved into shimmering, fragrant rain that smelled of crushed cedar, mountain mint, and sovereign starlight.
The spirit of Sovereign Vespera opened her glowing eyes.
For a single, breathless heartbeat, the ghost of the ancient Queen looked upon her daughter—taking in the star-iron circlet, the fierce combat braids, and the unyielding, sovereign pride in her eyes.
A smile of infinite, triumphant peace touched the spirit's lips.
My brave little wolf, her mother's voice whispered through the chambers of Lyra’s soul. The loom is whole. Burn him down.
With a soft sigh of resting starlight, Vespera’s spirit ascended through the open roof of the pyramid, returning to the celestial cradle of the Moon Mother.
Deprived of his nineteen-year supply of stolen starlight, Emperor Ignis-Vael convulsed violently.
His ageless, copper skin shriveled like dry parchment. His golden hair turned to coarse, brittle ash; his molten eyes clouded into hollow, sightless sockets as two centuries of unnatural, stolen time crashed down upon his frail mortal frame in a single, catastrophic heartbeat.
He collapsed onto his knees on the ruined mosaic, coughing up mouthfuls of black, calcified blood, his trembling hands reaching out toward the empty air where the cage had floated.
"My fire..." the ancient wretch wept, his voice a dry, pathetic rattle. "My sun... give it back..."
Behind him, heavy boots crunched over the shattered glass.
Gideon stepped up onto the dais, his twin star-iron claymores dripping gore, his amber eyes dead, cold, and entirely devoid of mercy.
The warlord looked down at the ruined husk of the Emperor.
He didn't ask Lyra for permission.
He didn't look at the guards.
Gideon reversed his grip on his right claymore, resting the heavy, star-iron pommel in his palm.
"For the North," Gideon growled.
He drove the blade down through the back of Ignis-Vael’s neck, pinning the Emperor’s head to the marble floor.
The Sun-King was dead.
Silence fell over the summit of the Sun-Pyramid.
The only sound was the howling of the southern wind through the shattered pillars and the heavy, ragged breathing of the two monarchs standing among the ruins of an empire.
Gideon pulled his blade free with a wet scrape, sliding it smoothly into its back-scabbard.
He turned to Lyra.
The young queen was swaying on her feet, the immense spiritual drain of shattering the glass blade and releasing her mother's soul catching up to her battered body all at once.
Her knees buckled.
Gideon was there before she could touch the stone.
His massive, blood-stained arms caught her, lifting her off her feet, pulling her flush against the solid, comforting furnace of his chest. He fell back against the carved arm of the amber throne, cradling her in his lap, his scarred face buried in her neck, his body trembling with the raw, terrifying relief of a warrior who had fought through hell to keep his mate alive.
"I have you," Gideon choked out into her hair, his deep bass raw and thick with tears. "I have you, little bird. It's over. The Emperor is dead."
Lyra buried her face into the rough linen of his bandage, her small, blistered hands clutching his leathers, her breathing shallow and sweet against his skin.
The silver-red cord between their hearts thrummed with a blinding, incandescent radiance that filled the entire ruined throne room with the warm, fragrant light of dawn.
Four chapters left.
The crown was won.
Now, they had to rebuild a world from the ashes.