Adrian's POV
The summons came at midnight.
Adrian woke to a servant shaking his shoulder, whispered words about the king wanting him in the throne room immediately. No explanation. No warning. Just the soft urgency of someone who knew better than to ask questions.
He dressed in the dark, fingers moving through the motions out of pure habit. Black tunic. Leather belt with the royal insignia. His sword, the one King Marcus had given him on the day he became Commander of the Knights. Everything in its place. Everything perfect.
Everything a lie, though Adrian didn't know it yet.
The palace corridors were empty at this hour. His footsteps echoed on stone floors that had been his home since he was twelve years old. Twelve years old and orphaned when his parents died serving the crown. The king had taken him in. Raised him alongside the royal family. Gave him purpose when he had nothing else.
Adrian owed him everything.
The throne room doors were massive, carved from black wood and studded with silver. Two guards stood watch, their faces blank. They opened the doors without a word.
King Marcus sat on his throne like a man carved from stone. He was fifty-five but looked older tonight. The candlelight caught the silver threading through his dark hair. His eyes were sharp, calculating, the eyes of a man who'd spent decades keeping secrets.
Adrian dropped to one knee. The proper way. The way that meant respect and loyalty and absolute obedience.
"Your Majesty."
"Stand," the king said.
Adrian stood.
"I have a task for you," Marcus continued, his voice steady and quiet. "A final task. One that will prove your devotion to this kingdom once and for all."
Adrian's chest tightened. Final task. The words sounded important. Heavy.
"Anything, Your Majesty."
"The sealed tower," Marcus said. "You know of it."
Everyone knew of it. The tower that stood at the kingdom's edge, ancient and wrong and surrounded by magic that burned flesh. Legends said a demon queen lay imprisoned inside, bound by chains of pure light, waiting to wake and destroy the world. Every child in the kingdom learned the story. Adrian had heard it so many times he'd stopped questioning it years ago.
"I know of it," Adrian said.
"Tomorrow at dawn, you will ride there alone." Marcus leaned forward slightly. "You will enter the tower. You will find the creature imprisoned within. And you will execute it before the seal breaks completely."
Adrian's hands went numb.
The king continued like he'd said nothing strange. Like he'd asked Adrian to fetch water instead of asking him to walk into a place of ancient magic and kill something nobody had ever seen. Something nobody knew was even still alive.
"The seal has weakened over the past hundred years," Marcus said. "My father's magic is failing. Soon she will wake. If she wakes while still imprisoned, the magic will tear itself apart. The tower will collapse. The seal will shatter. And a being of immense power will be loose in our kingdom."
Adrian couldn't breathe properly.
"You are my greatest knight," the king continued. "The most loyal. The most disciplined. The most incorruptible. This task requires someone I can trust completely. Someone who will follow orders without hesitation, without doubt, without question."
All the things Adrian prided himself on. All the things that made him who he was.
"I want you to execute her, Adrian. Before dawn tomorrow. Put your sword through her heart and end this threat forever. This will be your greatest honor."
Adrian bowed because he didn't know what else to do. Because saying no wasn't something he understood how to do. The king had raised him. The king was his father in every way that mattered. The king never asked for things he didn't believe necessary.
If the king said the demon queen needed to die, then she needed to die.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Good," Marcus said, and something in his expression shifted. Something almost relieved. "Ride at first light. Come back when the deed is done. Then this kingdom can finally rest easy."
Adrian left the throne room and walked back through the empty corridors on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. His mind was spinning. The sealed tower. A creature of immense power. An execution he'd have to carry out alone.
It should have felt like an honor. The king's final test of loyalty. The thing that would prove Adrian was worthy of everything he'd been given.
Instead, something in his chest felt wrong. Like an alarm he'd learned to ignore long ago was finally starting to ring.
He packed through the night. Weapons. Water. Provisions. All the things a knight needs for a journey that might kill him. He told himself the demon queen was a monster, something evil that needed to end. He'd killed things before. He'd ended lives in battle without hesitation. This was just another enemy.
This was just another order.
By the time dawn broke, Adrian was riding toward the sealed tower on a horse that sensed his tension and moved restlessly beneath him. The tower appeared on the horizon before noon, rising from the landscape like a wound in the world.
It was older than anything Adrian had ever seen. Stone that looked almost black, covered in symbols that hurt to look at directly. Magic twisted around it like living things, visible in the shimmering heat that rose from the ground. The air tasted wrong on his tongue. Burnt. Poisoned.
This place was not meant for people.
Adrian dismounted and approached on foot. Every step felt like walking into something hostile. The magic pressed against him, burning his skin, resisting his presence. He could turn back. He could ride to the king and tell him the tower's magic was too strong, that it was impossible.
He didn't turn back.
He climbed the stairs. One step. Then another. The walls seemed to pulse with something alive. The magic grew thicker as he went deeper. It wrapped around his arms like invisible chains, burning through his skin. Adrian pushed forward anyway because kings don't accept excuses from their soldiers.
At the top, the stairwell opened into a massive circular chamber.
Adrian stopped moving.
In the center of the room, suspended by chains of pure light, hung a woman.
Not a monster. Not a creature. A woman with skin so pale it shimmered in the darkness, like she was made of moonlight. Her hair was long and black, streaked with white like frost had painted it. And her eyes were violet, bright enough to glow in the shadows.
She was awake.
She was watching him.
"Are you here to finally end this," she asked, her voice soft and terrible and perfectly human, "or are you another one who'll leave me chained?"
Adrian's sword felt impossibly heavy in his hand.
Something was wrong. Everything the king had told him suddenly felt thin and fragile and like it might break if he looked at it too closely. But he was trained to follow orders, not to question them. He raised his blade.
The woman smiled, and it was the saddest thing Adrian had ever seen.
"I thought so," she whispered.
Then she moved.