The throne room had been rebuilt in three days. And I didn't know how. Didn't know what it had looked like before, or what had been destroyed anyways. But someone had worked miracles with the rubble. Fresh gilding gleamed on the pillars. New tapestries hung where old ones must have burned. The marble floor shone like it had never known the weight of a collapsing ceiling or the blood of dying faithful.

  Someone had worked very hard to make it look like nothing had happened.

  The nobles filling the hall seemed eager to believe them.

  They wore their finest silks, these survivors. Crimsons and golds and deep imperial purples, jewelry catching the chandelier light in calculated sparkles. They laughed and whispered and clinked crystal glasses filled with wine the color of fresh wounds. The air smelled of perfume and ambition and the particular desperation of people pretending the world hadn't almost ended four days ago.

  I watched them from the edge of the dais and felt nothing.

  Damian stood at the throne in robes of black and silver, a crown of twisted iron resting on his brow. He was smiling, and it wasn't the careful diplomatic smile I half-remembered from planning sessions. This was something genuine. Something that reached his eyes and transformed his whole face into something almost boyish.

  He looked happy.

  I tried to remember what that felt like. Found only fog.

  "Lords and ladies of the empire," Damian announced, his voice carrying through the hall with an ease that spoke of a lifetime of practice. "We gather today not just to celebrate a coronation, but to honor those who made it possible."

  The crowd murmured gleefully. A woman in emeralds dabbed at her eyes with a silk handkerchief. A man with medals on his chest nodded solemnly, as if he'd personally fought in the battle instead of hiding in his wine cellar. Somewhere near the back, someone was already drunk enough to shout "Long live the Emperor!" and receive scattered applause for it.

  I stood there in clothes someone had chosen for me. Black, mostly. Practical. The ceremonial blade hung at my hip, humming its quiet song against my leg. Nyssara was somewhere behind me, close enough that I could feel her presence without turning.

  The only solid thing in a room full of strangers.

  "The Grey Hand has been broken," Damian continued. "The Portal that threatened our world has been closed. And the woman who orchestrated these threats has been destroyed."

  More applause. A few cheers. Someone clinked their glass against a pillar and the crystal sang a high, which made my teeth ache.

  "But none of this would have been possible without the courage of a few remarkable individuals."

  He turned to look at me.

  The smile was still there, warm and genuine and reaching his eyes. But something else was there too, swimming just beneath the surface of his gaze. Something that had been watching me since I stepped into the room. Something that never blinked.

  Azrathel.

  The demon prince was diminished now, weakened, barely a whisper of what he'd been before Ysolde's light had burned him nearly out of existence. I could feel the difference. Where once his presence had filled a room like smoke, now he was just a shadow behind Damian's eyes. A passenger instead of a driver.

  But he was still there. Still watching. Still hungry.

  "Yozi." The voice came from Damian's mouth, but the cadence was wrong. Too slow. Too deliberate. Like someone who had learned to speak by watching humans do it for millennia without ever quite understanding why they paused where they paused. "You did well."

  The words were kind. The tone was genuine.

  That made me feel sick.

  "The empire owes you a debt," Azrathel continued, wearing Damian's face like a comfortable coat. "You could have used the Blood Ring to control the vessel. To puppet her body. To take what you needed by force, the way any sensible creature would." He smiled, and there were too many teeth if I had counted them. "Instead you gave her a gift. You let her choose."

  Damian's head tilted three degrees to the left. A gesture that was pure demon, pure wrongness, pure something-pretending-to-be-human that had forgotten which direction human heads were supposed to tilt.

  His eyes held mine. Damian's eyes. Brown and warm and absolutely hollow.

  "You surprised me, Yozi. That doesn't happen often." A pause that lasted a heartbeat too long. "I find myself curious what you'll do next."

  I didn't answer. The demon prince was complimenting me on my humanity, and somewhere in the gaps where my memories used to be, I knew that should terrify me.

  Damian blinked, slow and deliberate, and when his eyes opened again they were fully his own. The warm smile returned, natural now, human now, as if the last thirty seconds had been a fever dream.

  "Which brings me to the purpose of today's ceremony."

  He gestured, and a servant approached carrying a velvet pillow. On it rested a second blade, identical to the one at my hip. Dark metal. Brass wings. Symbols I couldn't read.

  It was humming too. The same frequency as mine. Harmonizing.

  "For generations, the throne has had a shadow," Damian announced to the crowd. "A hand that moves in darkness so the crown can remain in light. A blade that strikes when the scepter cannot be seen to swing." He lifted the blade from the pillow, and the humming intensified until I could feel it in my chest. "Today, I name that shadow anew."

  He descended from the dais. The crowd parted before him like water before a ship's prow, silk rustling, jewelry glittering, hundreds of faces turning to watch with carefully neutral expressions.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  He walked toward me with the blade held across both palms. An offering. A promise. A collar disguised as an honor.

  "Kneel," he said.

  I knelt.

  The stone was cold against my knees. The humming of my blade intensified, responding to its twin, singing a duet that no one else could hear. Around me, hundreds of nobles watched with eyes like abacuses, calculating what this meant for their positions, their alliances, their carefully constructed webs of influence.

  I could feel their attention like insects crawling across my skin.

  "Do you swear to serve the throne?"

  "I swear."

  "Do you swear to strike down its enemies?"

  "I swear."

  "Do you swear to work in shadow so the light may flourish?"

  "I swear."

  The words came automatically. My mouth knew the responses even though my mind didn't remember learning them. Somewhere in the gaps, in the empty rooms where my memories used to live, I had made this choice.

  Damian touched the flat of the blade to my right shoulder. Then my left.

  "Rise," he said. "The Bloody Left Hand."

  I rose.

  The crowd erupted.

  Applause crashed over me like a wave. Cheers and whistles and the stamping of feet on marble. The woman in emeralds was actually crying now, tears streaming down her powdered cheeks. The drunk man in the back was leading a chant of "Left Hand! Left Hand!" that was catching on with alarming enthusiasm.

  They were celebrating me. These strangers in their silks and jewels, these survivors who had done nothing while the Grey Hand grew, these cowards who had been ready to let the world burn if it meant keeping their positions.

  They were celebrating me, and I don't fully remember why.

  "Nicely done," Malgrin murmured in my head. "Very theatrical. The viewership numbers are absolutely through the roof. Every demon with access to a scrying pool is watching right now. You just became the most famous human in two realms."

  I didn't respond. My eyes had found someone in the crowd who wasn't applauding.

  A woman with grey streaks in her dark hair and scars on her knuckles. She wore armor instead of silk, practical instead of decorative. She watched the ceremony with an expression that gave nothing away, her arms crossed, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet.

  Marella. The Iron Duchess. The woman who had withdrawn her claim to the throne in exchange for something no one seemed to know.

  She caught me looking and inclined her head. A small gesture. Acknowledgment. Assessment. The kind of look one predator gives another across a crowded watering hole.

  I filed her away. Someone to watch. Someone to understand.

  Then Damian's hand was on my shoulder, warm and friendly and wrong, turning me to face the crowd.

  "The Bloody Left Hand," he announced again. "My instrument in the shadows. The one who will do what must be done when the throne cannot be seen doing it."

  More applause. More cheers. More masks smiling at me with teeth and calculation.

  Something was wrong.

  Not with the ceremony. Not with Damian or Azrathel or the cheering masses.

  Something was wrong with me.

  The fog in my head was thickening. The gaps were spreading. I could feel myself fragmenting, pieces of who I was sliding away like sand through fingers that couldn't remember how to grip.

  "The empire is safe," Damian was saying, his voice coming from very far away now, muffled, like I was hearing it through water. "The Portal is closed. The Grey Hand is broken. And with the Bloody Left Hand at my side..."

  The crowd was cheering.

  I looked at them. Looked at them smiling at me as if they knew me.

  Who were these people?

  The fog pulsed. For a moment I couldn't remember why I was standing here, why I was wearing these clothes, why a blade was humming at my hip and a crown was gripping my shoulder.

  All I could see were enemies.

  Hundreds of them.

  Surrounding me.

  "Who even are you people," I heard myself say.

  The applause stuttered. Smiles flickered. The drunk man in the back stopped mid-chant with his mouth hanging open.

  Damian's hand tightened on my shoulder. "Yozi?"

  I turned to look at him.

  At the crown on his head. At the demon swimming behind his eyes. At the wrong smile that was starting to falter, just a little, just around the edges. He is curious what I will do next.

  "Die." I said.

  The word hung in the air for exactly one perfect second.

  Then the floor came up to meet me, and everything went dark.

  I came back in pieces.

  Stone against my cheek. Cold and smooth and real. Voices shouting somewhere above me, overlapping, panicked. Someone's hands rolling me onto my back, cradling my head.

  "Give him space! Everyone back!"

  Damian's voice, cutting through the chaos with imperial authority.

  "He's exhausted. The healers warned me this might happen. The man closed a Portal and saved the empire three days ago. His body simply needs more rest."

  Murmurs rippling through the crowd. Fear dissolving into relief, into sympathy, into a narrative they could understand and repeat at dinner parties.

  The hero who collapsed at his own ceremony. How tragic. How noble. How perfectly, safely human.

  "Nyssara." Damian's voice again, quieter now, meant only for us. "Get him out. Back room. I'll handle the rest."

  Her hands under my shoulders. Her warmth against my side. The smell of leather and steel and something underneath that I couldn't name but recognized anyway.

  "I told them to die," I mumbled as she hauled me upright.

  "I know."

  "In front of everyone. I told the entire nobility of the empire to die."

  "Damian's spinning it." Her grip tightened, keeping me vertical. "The Bloody Left Hand threatening the empire's enemies. A warning to anyone who might move against the throne. Very dramatic. Very intentional." A pause. "He's better at this than I expected."

  The door opened. Closed. The noise of the crowd disappeared, replaced by blessed silence and the smell of dust and old tapestries.

  She lowered me onto something soft. A couch, maybe. A bed. I couldn't tell and didn't care.

  "What happened?" I asked the ceiling.

  "You don't remember?"

  I tried to think. Found fog and fragments. "The ceremony. People everywhere. Applauding. And I couldn't..." I pressed my palms against my eyes. "I couldn't remember who any of them were. I couldn't remember who I was. All I could see were threats."

  "Is that what happened?" I asked.

  "I don't know." Her hand found mine in the darkness. "But you're still here. That's what matters."

  I held onto her hand like it was the only real thing in the world. Maybe it was.

  "Well," Malgrin said, and for once there was something almost like respect in his voice. "That was certainly memorable."

  "Glad you enjoyed it."

  "Enjoyed it? Yozi, the demons watching on the scrying networks are losing their minds. Debates are already raging across the realm. Was it a threat? A prophecy? A breakdown? The mystery is making you more famous by the minute."

  I closed my eyes. "I don't want to be famous."

  "Too late. You're not just a host anymore. You're a celebrity. A very unstable, memory-damaged, hallucinating celebrity who apparently can't be in a room full of nobles without threatening mass murder." A pause that felt almost gleeful. "I couldn't have scripted it better myself."

  The Bloody Left Hand.

  I couldn't remember choosing that title. Couldn't remember choosing any of this.

  But Nyssara's hand was warm in mine. The blade at my hip was still humming. And somewhere in the fog, in the empty rooms where my past used to live, there were pieces of myself still waiting to be found.

  For now, it would have to be enough.

  SPECTACLE PERFORMANCE REVIEW

  Category: Public Relations Expected Outcome: Boring Ceremony, Forgettable Pomp Actual Outcome: Told the entire nobility to die, then collapsed dramatically

  Comments:

  Talk about a mic drop.

  You stood in front of hundreds of the most powerful people in the empire. You received a sacred honor that hasn't been bestowed in three generations. The Emperor himself touched a blade to your shoulders.

  And then you looked at all of them, every silk-wrapped schemer and perfumed parasite in that glittering hall, and you said one word.

  "Die."

  Then you passed out before anyone could respond.

  The demons watching on the scrying networks are losing their minds. Debates are raging across the realm about what it meant. Was it a threat? A prophecy? A mental breakdown? A warning to the throne's enemies? The mystery is making you more famous by the hour. Bookmakers in three different demon courts are taking bets on what you'll do next.

  You're a phenomenon, Yozi. Finally, a good show.

  WE MADE IT FOLKS, VOLUME 1 IS A WRAP!

  very different from this one, and I hope you'll trust me enough to stay for the ride.