Gareth’s POV

The fireplace was broken again.

I stared at the dead hearth from my narrow cot, wrapped in a blanket that smelled of mildew and old sweat. The landlord had promised to fix it ages ago. Repeatedly before that, too. But nobody rushed to serve the Emperor’s disgraced brother.

Not anymore.

A draft slipped through the crack beneath the door. The single room was barely large enough for the cot, a chair, and a writing desk whose leg had been shimmed with folded paper. Water stains bloomed across the ceiling like bruises. The whole place reeked of damp plaster and rotting wood. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Home sweet home.

I unfolded Seraphine’s latest letter. She’d sent it by enchanted messenger—a wisp of silver light that dissolved after delivering its cargo. Smart woman. No paper trail that could be traced by the palace’s intelligence network.

He grabbed my throat today.

I read that line twice. Three times. Then I started laughing.

Not a polite laugh. Not a restrained chuckle. A full, body-shaking, stomach-cramping howl of laughter that echoed off the stained walls and rattled the loose windowpane.

The great Kaelen Nightfire. The composed Emperor. The flawless Alpha who never lost control, never raised his voice, never showed weakness—had wrapped his hand around a woman’s throat.

Over a pregnancy he couldn’t even remember causing.

I pressed the letter to my chest and kept laughing until my ribs ached.

He offered millions in gold, Seraphine continued. He demanded that I terminate the pregnancy. He’s desperate. Completely unraveling.

I wiped tears from my eyes and read on.

Elara has moved out of the palace. Separate residence. The staff whisper that he paces his study endlessly. He is cracking, Gareth. The plan is working.

The plan was working.

I folded the letter with careful fingers and tucked it beneath my mattress, where a stack of similar letters had accumulated recently. Each one a small report. Each one a little victory.

The woman was brilliant. Ruthless. Driven by the same poisonous fuel that drove me—rejection from the one person who was supposed to see our worth.

I pulled a blank sheet from my desk and dipped a quill in cheap ink.

Keep pressing. Don’t let him breathe. If he offers more money, refuse. If he threatens again, cry. He’s a wolf who can’t stand the sound of a woman weeping. It reminds him of his dead mother.

I signed it with the cipher we’d agreed upon and summoned my own enchanted wisp. The silver light swallowed the message and darted out through the gap in the window.

Then I lay back on the cot and stared at the water-stained ceiling.

This was the happiest I’d felt in years.

---

Pathetic, wasn’t it? That destroying someone else’s life could feel like sunlight after endless rain.

But Kaelen had never understood what it meant to live in shadow. Born first. Born Alpha. Born to the crown. Everything handed to him on a golden platter while I scrambled for scraps.

Our father’s bastard—that’s what they called me behind closed doors. The accident. The inconvenience. The lesser brother who shared a bloodline but none of the glory.

And what had Kaelen done with all that unearned fortune? He’d taken more.

He’d taken Isolde first. Not that I’d wanted her—not really—but she’d been mine. My wife. My match. And the entire time we were married, all she could talk about was him.

"Kaelen would never wear that."

"Kaelen controls a room just by entering it."

"You’re so... dull, Gareth. So utterly without presence."

Dull. She’d actually said that to me.

I’d endured her comparisons for years before she finally left, and even then—even then—the court had blamed me. Poor Gareth, they whispered. Couldn’t even hold a woman’s interest.

Then came Elara.

My jaw tightened at the thought of her. Silver hair. Ice-blue eyes. A body that had trembled beneath mine long before she ever knew what an Alpha was. Before Kaelen. Before any of it.

She’d been mine first.

Not officially. Not publicly. But we’d had something once—a closeness, a warmth—and then Kaelen had swept in with his crown and his dark gold eyes and his damned mate bond, and suddenly I didn’t exist anymore.

Nobody told the story of the man who was there before the Emperor arrived.

And then—as if taking my wife and my woman wasn’t enough—Kaelen had cut off my funds. Stripped my allowance. Reduced my court privileges until I was little more than a clerk in the trade ministry, stamping documents for merchants who didn’t even bother to learn my name.

"Prince Gareth? Really?" one of the junior officials had said on my first day, barely hiding his smirk. "I thought they’d at least give you something with a window."

They hadn’t. My desk sat in a basement corridor. No window. No title. Just stacks of customs forms and the faint, constant sound of laughter from somewhere above.

I’d fantasized about killing him. I wasn’t proud of that, but I wasn’t ashamed of it either. Countless times. A blade across his throat while he slept. Poison in his wine at a state dinner. A crossbow bolt from a rooftop during a military parade.

But I never had the nerve. That was the truth of it. I was a coward. I knew it. Seraphine knew it. Even the rats in this miserable room probably knew it.

I couldn’t kill him with my hands. So I’d kill him with hers.

---

It had started roughly six months ago.

There’d been a celebration at the palace. Some minor diplomatic achievement—a border treaty or a trade agreement, I couldn’t remember which. I’d slipped in through the servants’ entrance. Not invited, obviously. But the kitchens were generous during these events, and I hadn’t eaten properly in a while.

I was standing near the wine table, stuffing my pockets with bread rolls, when she appeared beside me like a ghost.

Seraphine de Valcourt.

I’d seen her at court before—always impeccable, always composed, always hovering just close enough to Kaelen’s orbit to catch his reflected light. Beautiful, in that sharp, calculated way. A woman who weaponized every glance and gesture.

"You look hungry," she’d said.

"I look like a man stealing dinner from his brother’s party."

She hadn’t laughed. Hadn’t even smiled. She’d just studied me with those cool, appraising eyes, and then said the words that changed everything.

"I have a proposition."

We’d found a quiet alcove. She’d spoken quickly, efficiently. No wasted words.

She was in love with Kaelen. Had been for years. Long before Elara arrived. She’d served faithfully, waited patiently, endured watching him fall for another woman while she stood in the background arranging flowers and seating charts.

"I gave him everything," she said. Her voice didn’t waver, but something behind her eyes was fractured. Dangerous. "My youth. My loyalty. My dignity. And he looked straight through me. Every single day. As if I were furniture."

I understood that feeling intimately.

"The Queen," Seraphine continued, and the word dripped from her tongue like acid, "has everything I deserve. His love. His bed. His crown. His children. She walked into that palace and took the life that should have been mine."

"And what exactly is your proposition?"

She’d leaned close. Her perfume smelled expensive—the last remnant of a life she was watching slip away.

"We take it all back. Not by force. By design. We make him destroy it himself. His marriage. His trust. His precious, perfect family." Her eyes had glittered in the torchlight. "I know his weaknesses. You know his habits. Together, we can dismantle everything he loves, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left."

I’d stared at her for a long time.

"And what do you get out of it?"

"Him. Broken. Needing someone. And I’ll be the only one standing in the wreckage."

It was insane. Twisted. Delusional, even.

I’d agreed immediately.

---

Now, six months later, lying on my damp cot in my rotting room, I could say with absolute certainty—it was the best decision I’d ever made.

Elara was gone. Kaelen was spiraling. The invincible Emperor was choking women and throwing money at problems he couldn’t solve. And he had no idea—not the slightest suspicion—that his own brother had orchestrated the whole thing from a basement room that didn’t even have a working fireplace.

The enchanted wisp returned through the window crack. It carried a reply.

I unfolded it.

Three words in Seraphine’s elegant script:

Everything is proceeding.

I smiled, the wicked alliance we forged burning bright in my mind.

"So we destroy them," I said shortly. "We take everything they have."