The throne room of Aelthorne reeked of blood and betrayal. Once a place of power, where King Aldric had ruled with unwavering command, it was now a mass grave. His most trusted council—men who had sworn allegiance in the light of day—had driven their blades into him beneath the of night.
And with his fall came the slaughter of his bloodline, a purge so thorough that not even the youngest heirs were spared. The torches lining the marble halls burned long into the night, crackling against the wails of dying nobility. House Caervale, one of the oldest and most formidable noble families, did not fall that night—but it was stained, its legacy fractured by the actions of one woman.
Lady Evelyne of Caervale who had defied her family in the most unforgivable way. She had given birth to a son. A son whose father was not of noble blood, nor even a man of renown. Just a warlord—some nameless, wandering conqueror who had left as easily as he had come.
But Evelyne had never cared. From the moment she knew he existed, she had loved her son more than name, title, or honour. Even when her own kin turned their backs, when whispers of her disgrace spread like wildfire, she held her head high.
Because Vorian was hers.
And she would give up everything to keep him.
But the world does not smile upon bastards, and Caervale would never allow an illegitimate child to inherit their legacy.
The moment he was born, he was marked for death—no more than an inconvenience to be erased. Evelyne knew this.
And she knew that love alone would not keep her son safe. Desperate, she turned to the only power strong enough to shield him from the noble families that wanted him gone.
She went to the Church. She went to the High Priest of the Crimson Sun and begged him to take her son, to raise him in secret, to let him live. And the Priest, ever a man of divine justice, agreed. But instead of sparing the boy, he condemned him.
Instead of offering sanctuary, he took a blade of holy iron, pressed it to newborn skin, and carved into his flesh the Mark of Brutus.
The Betrayer's Brand.
The symbol of treason itself—etched into the chest of a child who had not yet taken his first steps. A chubby, helpless, just-born baby. "So the world would always know his nature." And Evelyne let it happen. Because there was no other choice. Because it was either this or death. But when Vorian's first cries turned to screams, when his tiny fists clenched in agony, when the air filled with the scent of burnt flesh, all she could do was hold him. Hold him and weep, whispering apologies he would never understand, praying he would never know how much it broke her to let it happen.
***
Vorian did not remember his mother's face.
He tried. Every night, he tried.
When the other children of the Church slept soundly in their warm cots, dreaming of simple things—of sweet bread and sunlit fields, of kind fathers and mothers who still lived—Vorian lay awake, eyes fixed on the wooden beams above him, tracing the outline of a woman he could not see.
He imagined dark hair, soft hands, a voice like the lull of a river. Sometimes, he thought he remembered the scent of lavender, the brush of fabric against his cheek, the warmth of arms wrapped around him. But memory was cruel. It crumbled like stone under water, smoothing away the details, stripping away the color, until all that remained were the broken edges of what had once been whole.
What he did remember was the pain.
The Mark on his chest, that he still did not quite understand, still ached, even years after it had been seared into his skin. Sometimes, when the seasons changed, the old wound flared, as if his body still remembered the day it had been carved into him. He would press a hand over the scarred flesh, as if to smother the heat that still pulsed beneath it. It never worked.
He remembered the way the priests looked at him. Not with hatred—no, that would have been too human. Hatred required passion, feeling, something visceral. The priests regarded him with something far colder, more detached. Reverence, maybe. Or pity. The kind reserved for broken things. Caged things. Something unnatural. Something that should not have been.
"You are a child of treason," the High Priest had said.
Vorian had not known what that meant at the time. But he knew it must have been something terrible, because the other boys flinched when they heard it. Because no one ever spoke to him unless they had to. Because the Mark on his chest made them recoil.
"Your own blood forsakes you."
He had thought, once, that maybe if he was good enough, quiet enough, obedient enough, his mother might come back. That this was just some long punishment, that if he endured, if he waited, she would return and explain everything. She would tell him that it had all been a mistake, that she had never truly left him behind. That she had never wanted to go.
But she wasn't coming back.
"Do not weep for what is already lost."
But Vorian was six. And he had to weep.
So he buried his face into the thin, lumpy mattress of his cot, biting his lip to keep from making a sound, and wept until there was nothing left inside him. Until his throat burned. Until his chest ached. Until his body trembled with the weight of something he did not know how to carry.
No one came. No one ever did.
When dawn arrived, Vorian did what he had always done.
He rose. He dressed in the too-thin robes given to him, the fabric rough against his skin. He ignored the stares. The whispers. The careful distance the other children kept between them, as if he carried a sickness that might spread with a touch.
He swallowed down the grief that still clawed at his ribs.
And he endured.