Chapter 4: Jewels for an Unimpressed Empress

By the third morning of Draevor Kaine’s residence, Silverhall had ceased asking whether the northern emperor intended to behave strangely and had moved on to the far more practical question of how many servants would collapse from witnessing it.

The answer, Halrem suspected, was several.

She entered the southern audience chamber shortly after sunrise to receive merchant petitions and provincial complaints, expecting at minimum a tedious but manageable morning. Instead, she found the center of the marble floor occupied by six northern soldiers standing in a rigid line beside an object so enormous it appeared to have been delivered by siege equipment.

It was a chest, though not an ordinary ceremonial coffer. The monstrous blackwood trunk was reinforced with iron and marked with the wolf insignia of the Black Dominion, while the two servants standing beside it looked as though they had personally carried the thing out of hell itself.

Halrem stopped at the threshold.

Chancellor Edrin, who already appeared profoundly exhausted by life, bowed stiffly. “Your Majesty.”

Halrem looked at the chest, then slowly at him.

“What is that.”

Edrin cleared his throat. “A diplomatic offering.”

“From whom.”

He gave her a long suffering expression that suggested he no longer believed in meaningful questions. “The northern emperor.”

Halrem ascended the dais and took her seat with regal displeasure before calmly ordering, “Open it.”

One of the northern soldiers immediately stepped forward, unlocked the iron clasps, and lifted the lid.

Light exploded across the chamber so brilliantly that even Halrem’s attendants leaned forward despite themselves.

Inside the chest lay layers upon layers of jewels, goldwork, and polished stones arranged over black velvet. Rubies the size of quail eggs, ropes of pearls, emerald pendants, diamond tiaras, sapphire bracelets, carved opal rings, and enough gold filigree to bankrupt a minor principality had been packed into the trunk with no apparent regard for moderation. It looked less like a diplomatic gift and more like the concentrated tax revenue of a conquered nation.

A murmur spread through the audience chamber. One court lady made an audible gasp.

Lord Vassel whispered, “By all gods.”

Halrem stared down at the glittering avalanche in complete silence.

Edrin, who clearly hated his own curiosity, asked, “Your Majesty… your thoughts?”

Halrem reached down, picked up a ruby necklace, inspected it against the light for two seconds, and set it back.

“The gem cuts are common.”

The chamber went silent.

She lifted a gold circlet.

“The metalwork is heavy-handed.”

She picked up a diamond cluster brooch.

“This arrangement lacks imagination.”

She sat back.

“It resembles the inventory panic of a wealthy man who believes expense and taste are synonyms.”

No one spoke for several long moments. One of the northern soldiers blinked in silence while Selene lowered her head to hide the fact that she was biting the inside of her cheek. Nearby, Chancellor Edrin slowly looked toward the heavens with the exhausted expression of a man silently begging invisible forces to end his suffering.

“Your Majesty,” he said weakly, “this is… an extraordinary treasury.”

“Yes,” Halrem replied. “An extraordinarily unimaginative one.”

She waved a hand. “Send it back.”

The room collectively stopped breathing.

Edrin thought he had misheard. “Send it… back?”

“With a note.”

“What note?”

Halrem considered for half a second.

“Inform Emperor Kaine that if he intends to blind Silverhall with reflective surfaces, he should at least do so artistically.”

Edrin made no effort to conceal his despair, while the northern soldiers, disciplined though they were, looked deeply uncertain whether returning an emperor’s gift qualified as diplomacy or the opening movement of a massacre.

Halrem, meanwhile, had already moved on.

“Begin petitions,” she said.

The morning proceeded, but not well. No one in the audience chamber could focus on merchant taxes while an entire conquered kingdom’s worth of jewelry sat in the center of the floor awaiting rejection. Halrem herself gave sharp rulings and signed decrees with efficient impatience, though every few minutes she caught servants glancing toward the chest as though they still hoped she might spontaneously develop greed.

She did not.

By noon the petitions were concluded, the nobles were scandalized, and the jewel chest had been hauled back to the Obsidian Wing under Edrin’s supervision and what looked very much like funeral resignation.

Halrem retired to the palace gardens for the singular purpose of reclaiming silence.

Silverhall’s southern gardens were designed as an exercise in symmetry and cultivated peace. White gravel paths wound between winter roses and silverleaf hedges, while marble fountains reflected the pale sky in undisturbed pools. Halrem often came here when ministers became repetitive. Plants, unlike politicians, generally understood the value of quiet.

She had barely seated herself beneath the western arbor with a physician text in hand when footsteps sounded on the gravel.

She did not need to look up.

“No.”

Draevor’s shadow fell across the page. “No what?”

“No, you may not continue this habit of materializing wherever I go.”

He stepped into view and regarded her with infuriating composure. “I received your note.”

“How resilient of you.”

“You disliked the jewels.”

“I disliked the lack of taste.”

Draevor folded his arms. “They were taken from the treasury of Luthen after its surrender.”

“How touching. Pillaged wealth with sentimental value.”

He actually laughed.

It was not a loud sound, but it was the first time Halrem had heard anything from him resembling open amusement, and she found it disproportionately annoying that the sound suited him.

“I have fought kings less difficult than you,” he said.

“And yet here you are, losing to a seated woman with a book.”

Draevor’s gaze dropped briefly to the physician text in her lap. “You reject riches without blinking.”

“I possess my own riches.”

“That chest could fund a province.”

“Then perhaps you should have gifted me a province. At least land can be reorganized.”

There was a brief pause during which Draevor looked at her as though she had said something extraordinary rather than practical.

Halrem returned to her manuscript.

“You may go now.”

Instead of leaving, Draevor sat on the stone bench opposite her.

She slowly lowered the book.

“Did I invite you to sit?”

“No.”

“Then why are you sitting?”

“Because if I stand over you, you accuse me of looming.”

“I still accuse you of existing too near me.”

His eyes held hers, and again that strange composure remained, the calm of a man who had discovered that resistance entertained him more than surrender ever could.

Halrem decided conversation was less exhausting than murdering a foreign emperor and causing paperwork.

“What exactly is this?” she asked.

Draevor lifted a brow. “This?”

“This persistent sequence of intrusions, gifts, appearances, and generally barbaric refusal to leave me in peace.”

His answer came without hesitation.

“Courtship.”

Halrem stared at him for a full second before laughing.

It was not a warm laugh. It was the crystalline, disbelieving sound of a woman confronted by imperial absurdity.

“You call this courtship?”

“Yes.”

“This resembles military occupation.”

“There are strategic similarities.”

She gave him a look so flat that even the nearby gardener pretended not to hear.

“In civilized kingdoms,” Halrem said, “courtship usually involves grace, restraint, and some measurable level of social intelligence.”

“In northern kingdoms, it involves persistence.”

“How primitive.”

“How effective?”

“Not remotely.”

Draevor leaned back against the bench, studying her in that same relentless way that made Halrem feel less like an empress and more like a problem he intended to solve.

“Most women would have kept the jewels.”

“Most women are boring.”

“You are not.”

“I am aware.”

The answer slipped out with such effortless vanity that Selene, standing several paces away, nearly smiled.

Draevor’s gaze sharpened instead of softening. “That certainty is rare.”

Halrem closed the manuscript. “Confidence should not be rare. Incompetence should.”

For the briefest instant, neither of them spoke.

The garden remained quiet around them, fountain water murmuring in the distance, winter roses stirring under a light breeze. Yet the silence between emperor and empress did not feel peaceful. It felt charged, edged with the peculiar friction of two people who refused to yield conversational ground.

Finally Halrem stood.

“I am returning inside.”

Draevor rose as well.

She narrowed her eyes. “Do not.”

“I was merely standing.”

“You were preparing to follow.”

“Yes.”

Halrem shut her eyes.

Somewhere behind her, Selene made the wise decision to become invisible.

When Halrem opened her eyes again, she fixed Draevor with imperial frost.

“If you appear in my chambers next, I will have you thrown from a balcony.”

Draevor looked entirely unconcerned.

“I look forward to discovering which balcony.”

Halrem turned and walked back toward the palace before she did something diplomatically irreversible.

As she crossed the white gravel path, she heard him laugh once behind her, low and unbothered, as though being threatened by an empress had become the most enjoyable part of his residence.

She hated that sound.

She hated it even more because by the time she reached the corridor doors, she was already anticipating with deep irritation what outrageous offense he would commit tomorrow.