CHAPTER 549: BETRAYAL IN THE PALACE

In the left wing of the palace, the air felt strangely alive. It did not breathe — it brooded. The silence there was not the stillness of peace but of something waiting, listening. The tapestries along the corridor barely stirred, yet the chill beneath them carried whispers of long-dead kings and promises that had rotted into curses.

Turik waited alone in one of the abandoned council chambers — a room the court no longer entered, though its ghosts had never left. The remnants of old power still clung to the air, bitter as iron and incense. The candles had long since drowned in their own wax; the scent of burnt tallow mingled with damp stone.

He had stripped away his ceremonial armor hours ago, leaving only a travel-worn cloak, its coarse folds dark with shadow. The fire in the brazier had gone out. Only a single lamp trembled beside a half-empty goblet.

He had been a soldier all his life, yet he found the waiting harder than any battle. Waiting required patience. And he had none left.

The door opened. The lamplight caught the sweep of her silver gown, a liquid gleam that turned her every motion into temptation and threat. Her hood slid back, revealing her face. She smiled, slow and deliberate, and Turik felt that familiar fascination— the one he mistook for love but knew was only hunger.

"You’re late, Mira," Turik muttered.

"You’re impatient." Her voice carried that husky lilt he could never quite resist. She moved like smoke toward the table. "I had to make sure the queen was asleep... and that my precious cousin was ready for the king to devour."

Turik poured a measure of wine and didn’t drink it. "You are my woman. Why do you still need to curry favor with Miranda? No need to speak to her like you owe her."

"I speak as someone who survives," she said softly. "Miranda may think she rules this palace, but she doesn’t know the scent of her own doom." A shadow passed across her eyes, and then it was gone. "You, of all men, should know how to serve whoever lives to see tomorrow."

Their eyes met, both aware that tomorrow might claim them instead.

Turik looked down at her then, really looked — and saw the weariness beneath her composure. In the months they stayed at the palace, the court had shaped them both into liars. She wore elegance like armor; he wore loyalty like a chain.

"So," Mira murmured as she leaned against the table. She turned her gaze toward the cracked map spread across the table. "King Roman still thinks my cousin is harmless?"

"He thinks with his pride," Turik said. "Not his mind. Just like the other idiot generals. Only Zamree warned him, and even then, Roman laughed it off. He thinks women are weak and just ornaments.

Mira smiled — slow, secret, cruelly beautiful. "Lara will teach him what kind of weapon an ornament can become. Let the court choke on its own love for scandal. We’ll give them tragedy wrapped in silk and blood — a death so artful they’ll whisper about it for generations."

Turik studied her face in the lamplight. He could not tell if the flush in her cheeks was excitement or fear. "You mean to let her take the blame."

"She’s perfect for it," Mira said, voice lowering to a near whisper. "And why shouldn’t she? It isn’t a lie. She will be his executioner." Her eyes glinted, sharp as frost. "She’ll be the last thing the king ever desires."

He hesitated. Beneath the calm, a flicker of doubt gnawed at him — the same doubt that had haunted him since Mira first approached him with her quiet schemes. "And the queen?"

Mira’s lashes lifted slowly. "Hadn’t you already arranged something... for her and her heirs?" Her tone was gentle, but it landed like a blade drawn across glass.

Turik’s lips curved. "Of course. Every detail accounted for."

"No." Mira’s voice turned soft, then dangerous. "Nothing is settled until it’s over. Lara still breathes. There is still Alaric who has grown more powerful. My uncle still watches. My cousins still plot."

She stepped closer, her perfume, the scent of jasmine, was intoxicating, curling around him like a spell. "The game has only begun, Turik. And tell me, my love—" her fingers brushed his cloak, lingering like a promise and a curse, "when the board clears, will you kill me too? Am I one of your pawns?"

He caught her wrist. The pulse beneath his thumb fluttered like a trapped bird. "Of course not. You will be sitting beside me on that throne as the new queen of Zura."

She smiled then. "Good," she whispered. "Remember what you said today. I’d hate to die for someone who didn’t mean it."

Her hand slipped free. With one last look — part warning, part invitation — she turned and glided from the room, her gown whispering secrets against the stone floor.

But before she reached the door, a hand caught her wrist.

Turik pulled her back, and for a breathless moment she was against him — the hard rhythm of his heartbeat, the scent of smoke and steel on his cloak. The air between them seemed to tighten, as if the room itself leaned closer to listen.

Whatever words she meant to speak dissolved when he tilted her face toward his. The kiss that followed was not gentle — it was a collision of hunger, of lust.

Time lost its measure. The lamp guttered, shadows trembled, and somewhere a map slid from the table to the floor. When the silence returned, it was different — heavier, threaded with the faintest echo of what had just burned through it.

Mira drew a long, steady breath and smoothed her gown, her composure settling over her again like armor. She turned back once — a ghost of a smile on her lips, satisfaction tempered by something colder.

Then she left.

The door closed softly behind her, and in the stillness that followed, the scent of her perfume lingered — jasmine and danger, entwined.

Turik stood motionless, listening to the silence stretch back around him like a shroud. His gaze drifted to the empty throne carved into the council table, a hollow reminder of what he was about to grasp. The lamp guttered once, throwing his shadow across it like an omen.

He did not yet know that even now, Lara was setting her own plans in motion.

And before the week’s end, the palace of Zura would not just reek of roses and wine —it would bleed.