If anyone had asked Ruria what life with the Emperor of the Dead Country was like, she would not have known how to answer.
There were no screams echoing through the halls each morning. No constant battles. No endless cruelty performed for spectacle. Instead, there was routine. Predictable, almost unsettling routine.
She woke before dawn most days.
Vaelor was always already awake.
Sometimes he stood by the balcony, watching the lands he had conquered alone, hands folded behind his back, expression unreadable. Other times he sat at the table, reading ancient texts or reports that appeared without messengers, summoned by magic alone. He rarely acknowledged her waking beyond a glance that told her he had known long before her eyes opened.
Kaelis joined them most mornings.
She moved like someone who had learned to exist quietly in dangerous spaces. Efficient. Controlled. Never wasting motion. Her presence no longer felt like an intrusion, but it was not comfortable either. It was like living with a drawn blade placed carefully on the table between them all.
Breakfast was sparse.
Vaelor ate little. Ruria ate more out of habit than hunger. Kaelis ate as if she were never certain when the next meal might come.
Vaelor noticed this.
He noticed everything.
"You eat like someone who expects scarcity," he remarked one morning, eyes still on his book.
Kaelis did not look up. "I was raised with it."
"You are no longer required to be," he said.
She paused, then continued eating anyway.
Ruria watched this small exchange with quiet unease. Vaelor did not repeat himself. He never did. His words were offerings, not instructions. Accept them or don't. The consequences were rarely immediate, but always exact.
Training followed.
Some days Ruria trained alone with magic, learning control rather than force. Vaelor insisted she master restraint before power. Other days she sparred with Kaelis, whose style was fast, brutal, and efficient. Vaelor observed from a distance, occasionally correcting a stance, a movement, a hesitation.
When he corrected Ruria, his tone was calm.
When he corrected Kaelis, it was almost playful.
"Too slow," he would say mildly, watching her struggle to recover.
"Predictable."
"Again."
Kaelis endured it without complaint most days. On the days she did complain, Vaelor only smiled, as if the sound itself amused him.
Despite everything, there were moments that almost felt… normal.
Ruria and Kaelis spoke quietly in the evenings. About nothing important. About training. About food. About places Kaelis had seen and Ruria had only read about. Sometimes they laughed, surprised by the sound.
Vaelor listened from the shadows.
He never joined those conversations. But he never stopped them either.
That alone was permission.
They traveled occasionally.
Vaelor did not announce it. One moment they would be in the castle, the next the world would fold and rearrange itself, and they would stand in a distant city under foreign skies. He walked openly, unguarded, his presence alone enough to freeze crowds into silence.
No one challenged him.
Merchants bowed. Nobles lowered their eyes. Even criminals knew better.
Ruria noticed something strange on these walks.
Vaelor liked observing people.
Not with interest. With curiosity.
He watched lovers argue, children play, thieves run, guards sweat. Sometimes his lips curved faintly, as if something about human behavior pleased him.
Kaelis noticed it too.
"You could rule them directly," she said once. "Why let them pretend they're free?"
"Because pretense is educational," Vaelor replied. "People reveal more when they believe they are unobserved."
Ruria shivered at that.
It was during one of these walks that everything broke.
They were passing through a narrow street near the outer districts. The air smelled wrong. Old smoke. Rotting wood. Something sour beneath it all. Ruria slowed unconsciously, her chest tightening.
She heard chains.
Metal dragging softly against stone.
Her gaze snapped to the side.
A wagon.
Covered in dark canvas. Iron bars at the back. Figures huddled inside, faces hidden, bodies pressed together. Guards walked alongside it, laughing quietly, exchanging coin.
One of them said something crude.
Ruria's vision tunneled.
The world shifted.
She was no longer standing beside Vaelor.
She was younger.
Smaller.
Standing at a window as men dragged her sister away. Hearing her scream. Seeing her fight. Remembering the way no one came back from those wagons. The way her parents had never said her sister's name again.
Her breath hitched sharply.
"No," she whispered.
Vaelor stopped walking.
He followed her gaze.
He understood immediately.
"Continue," he said calmly, already turning away.
Ruria grabbed his sleeve.
Her hands were shaking.
"Please," she said, voice breaking. "Vaelor. I know you don't care. I know. But please. Just this once."
He looked down at her hand.
Then at her face.
His expression did not change.
"They are irrelevant," he said. "Remove your hand."
Her throat burned.
"My sister was taken like that," Ruria said. "I never even found her body."
Kaelis stiffened beside them.
Vaelor's eyes were cold.
"And yet the world continued," he replied. "Tragedy does not earn intervention."
Ruria felt something inside her crack.
"So you won't help?"
"No," he said simply.
The word landed heavier than any blow.
Ruria released his sleeve.
She took a step back.
Then another.
Kaelis turned toward her sharply. "Ruria."
Ruria wiped her eyes, jaw set.
"I won't ask again," she said. "I'm going."
Vaelor watched her calmly.
"You will die," he said. Not as a threat. As a fact.
"Then I'll die doing something," she replied.
She turned to Kaelis.
"Are you coming?"
Kaelis hesitated only a moment.
Then nodded.
"I owe you my life," she said. "And I hate men like them."
They moved quickly, slipping into the crowd, following the wagon as it turned down a narrower road.
Vaelor remained where he was.
Watching.
Not intervening.
Not stopping them.
As Ruria disappeared from sight, something like anticipation flickered briefly across his face.
"Interesting," he murmured to himself.
And for the first time since she had met him, Ruria walked into danger without the Emperor of the Dead Country at her back.