CHAPTER 244: DANGEROUS

The snow fell past Vetra’s window in fat, lazy flakes that seemed to mock the smoke still rising from the eastern districts. She stood with one hand pressed against the cold glass, watching the gray column stain the twilight sky, and waited.

The knock came exactly when she expected it.

"Enter."

The door opened. Isolde stumbled in, bowing so hastily she nearly tripped over her own skirts. "Your Imperial Majesty."

Vetra didn’t turn from the window. The smoke was thinning now, dispersing into the gathering dark. From here, the destruction looked almost beautiful, abstract, distant, someone else’s problem. "Well?"

Isolde’s breathing was labored, like she’d run the entire way from the eastern districts. Probably had. Good. Let her be rattled. Fear kept servants loyal.

"The demons are gone."

"Gone." Vetra let the word hang in the air for a moment before turning slowly. "Gone how, exactly?"

"Banished." Isolde’s voice shook slightly. Not enough to be disrespectful, just enough to be honest. "Back to where they came from. All of them."

"All of them." Vetra moved away from the window, each step measured, controlled. "And the Emperor managed this feat? His ice magic, impressive as it is, shouldn’t have been able to know how—"

"Not the Emperor."

Something in Isolde’s tone made Vetra stop mid-step. "What?"

"Lady Eris." Isolde swallowed hard. "She banished them. Alone. The Emperor created a barrier to contain the attack, but she..."

The lady’s trailed off, eyes distant like she was seeing something that didn’t fit into her understanding of reality.

"She floated, Your Majesty. From what I could gather. Wings of black fire. Her voice shook the buildings. And when she spoke the final spell, the ground itself opened and swallowed every demon in the district."

Silence.

Vetra felt something cold slide down her spine that had nothing to do with Nevareth’s eternal winter. Eris had banished hundreds of demons. Fire demons. Corrupted, ancient beings that had crawled through the abyss for millennia, learning cruelty in hell’s deepest pits.

And she’d sent them back. Single-handedly. Without any help.

The power level that required wasn’t just impressive. It was terrifying. Divine.

"Casualties?" Vetra kept her voice carefully neutral, moving to pour herself wine from the decanter on her table. Her hands didn’t shake. She wouldn’t allow them to.

"Confirmed dead, around a hundred Nevarians." Isolde consulted a scrap of parchment she’d pulled from her sleeve.

"Another hundred missing, presumed dead in the initial attack before the barrier was raised. One district destroyed completely, one partially. The eastern market is just... gone, Your Majesty. Nothing but ash and melted stone."

Vetra sipped her wine, calculating.

About two hundred dead. One district destroyed.

Not enough.

She’d wanted thousands. Had needed devastation so complete, so catastrophic, that Soren would have no choice but to sever his alliance with Eris.

The people would have demanded it, screaming for the fire queen’s head, and even an emperor couldn’t ignore that level of public outcry.

Instead, Eris had saved them.

Vetra set down her wine glass with a softclick and smiled to herself. A small expression, private, the kind that never reached her eyes.

But underneath the smile, fear crept in on spider legs.

Eris had banished the demons. Creatures summoned using a powerful spell, the ritual Vetra and Aira had performed with blood sacrifice and forbidden magic.

There was a connection there, invisible but real. A thread linking the summoning to the summoner.

If Eris was powerful enough to seal demons back to hell without any preparation, without any relics or assistance, just raw divine power channeled through mortal flesh...

What else could she do?

Could she trace the spell back to its source? Could she sense Vetra’s magical signature lingering in the ritual circle they’d drawn in blood? Could she know, with divine certainty, exactly who had orchestrated the attack?

Dangerous. This was becoming very, very dangerous.

"Your Majesty?" Isolde’s voice was small, uncertain. "What are your orders?"

Vetra turned to face the room properly. In the corner, half-hidden by shadows despite the candles burning on every surface, Aira waited.

The witch hadn’t moved or spoken since Isolde entered, but Vetra felt her presence like a cold spot in warm water.

"We need to play this differently," Vetra said, speaking more to herself than to either woman.

She began pacing, each step punctuated by the whisper of silk against marble. "The demons failed. Spectacularly. Eris could use this to paint herself a hero instead of the threat we want her as."

She stopped pacing, turned to face them both fully. "The next step in this game is a political weapon. Something Soren cannot simply freeze or ignore. Something even Eris, for all her divine fire, cannot burn away."

Isolde straightened slightly, sensing the shift in conversation, the movement from failure to new strategy. "Your Majesty?"

"Public opinion." Vetra smiled, more genuinely, though the expression held no warmth.

"The people saw fire demons, Isolde. Servants of Pyronox. Ancient evil crawling through their streets, burning their neighbors, turning children to ash. And when did this attack occur?"

Understanding dawned in Isolde’s eyes. "On the eve of His Majesty’s wedding to Lady Eris."

"Precisely." Vetra moved to her desk, pulling out fresh parchment and ink. "The timing is too convenient to ignore. A fire queen arrives in our empire, and suddenly fire demons follow. She may have banished them, yes, but who’s to say she didn’t summon them first? Who’s to say this wasn’t a demonstration of power, a show of force to prove her value?"

"But the Emperor saw her save people," Isolde protested weakly. "He watched her nearly die doing it."

"Soren saw what he wanted to see." Vetra’s quill scratched across parchment, swift and sure. "A woman he desires proving herself worthy. But the nobility? The common people? They will see what we show them. And what we will show them is a pattern. Fire magic brings fire demons. The dragons’ power, unchecked and unwelcome, tearing holes between realms."

She finished writing, sprinkled sand across the wet ink, then turned to Isolde. "Send word to all the dukes. All high nobles. Every house with voting rights in the Imperial Council. Emergency session tomorrow morning."

"Emergency?"

Vetra’s smile sharpened into something that could cut. "Regarding the attack on our capital. The threat to the empire’s stability. The unsuitable alliance that brought demons to our doorstep and cost two hundred innocent lives."

She held out the parchment, let Isolde take it with trembling fingers. "Make sure the wording is clear. We’re not accusing Lady Eris directly—that would be too obvious, too crude. We’re simply asking questions. Raising concerns. Protecting the empire’s interests."

Isolde hesitated. "Your Majesty, if the Emperor discovers this came from you—"

"Then I will have done nothing wrong." Vetra’s voice turned cold, sharp enough to draw blood.

"I am the Regent Empress. It is my duty to question threats to Nevareth’s security. If Soren disagrees with my concerns, he is welcome to address them in council. Publicly. Where everyone can see if he values his empire or his bedmate more."

The cruelty of it settled into the room like poison in wine... invisible but deadly.

Isolde curtsied deeply. "I’ll send the messages immediately, Your Majesty."

"Good girl." Vetra watched her scurry toward the door, then added casually, "And Isolde? This conversation never happened. You were in your chambers all evening, recovering from your injuries. If questioned, you know nothing about council summons or political strategy."

"Yes, Your Majesty." The door closed behind her with a soft click.

Vetra waited until the footsteps faded down the corridor before turning to the shadows. "You’re quiet, Aira."

The witch emerged like smoke given form, her ruined face catching candlelight in ways that made her scars look alive. "I’m thinking."

"About?"

"About how a mortal woman channeled enough divine power to banish an army of demons without dying." Aira moved closer, her voice dropping to something almost reverent.

"The amount of magic required for that spell should have burned her to ash from the inside for attempting it alone. I’ve seen trained sorcerers attempt lesser banishments and tear themselves apart. But she survived."

"What are you saying?"

"I’m saying we might have underestimated her power" Aira’s eyes glittered in the dim light. "Closing the gates of hell should have sucked the soul out of her."

Vetra felt the cold slide deeper into her bones. "Then why didn’t she die?"

"I don’t know." And that uncertainty in Aira’s voice was somehow more terrifying than certainty would have been. "It’s terrifying to think what she might be capable of. "

The witch’s scarred lips curved into something that might have been a smile or a grimace. "She’s an anomaly. And anomalies are either weapons or threats, depending on who wields them."

Vetra picked up her wine glass again, swirling the dark liquid thoughtfully. "Then we make sure Soren cannot wield her. We turn the nobility against the alliance, make them see her as the threat she is. Force him to choose between his throne and his obsession."

"And if he chooses her?"

"Then we remind him that emperors rule only as long as their people allow it." Vetra drained her wine in one long swallow. "Even gods can be overthrown if enough mortals unite against them. Fire burns, yes. But ice..." She smiled, setting down the empty glass with deliberate care. "Ice endures."

The candles flickered as though responding to her words, shadows dancing across walls hung with Nevareth’s proud banners. Outside, the snow kept falling, blanketing the capital in false peace.

Tomorrow, the real war would begin. Not with demons or magic or divine power, but with words. With politics. With the slow, careful poison of doubt planted in fertile soil.

Vetra moved back to her window, watching smoke still rising faintly against the darkening sky, and allowed herself a moment of genuine satisfaction.

The demons had failed, yes. But the damage was done. The people had seen fire demons attacking on Eris’s wedding eve.

They would remember. They would fear. And fear, properly directed, was more powerful than any spell.

Soren could protect Eris from assassins and rival nobles and even demon armies. But he couldn’t protect her from his own people’s hatred.

From whispers that would grow into shouts, from questions that would harden into accusations, from the inevitable conclusion that fire and ice could never truly unite.

And when the empire finally turned against the fire queen, when even Soren’s love couldn’t shield her from the consequences of being what she was, Vetra would be there. Waiting. Ready to restore proper order to Nevareth.

Ready to reclaim the power that was rightfully hers.