The funeral fires had barely cooled before Elara began to work.
There was no ceremony to it — no grand proclamation delivered from a gilded balcony, no tearful address to grieving ministers, no symbolic gesture of a crown lowered onto her head while courtiers wept and composed verses about the dynasty's sorrow. That was the kind of theater the dead emperor had loved. Elara had no patience for theater. She walked into the palace and she began, and by the time anyone realized what was happening, it was already done.
The first three days were a purge.
