Theryn | The Mad Prince

The air in the halls of the inner Vermillion Court was always busy. Filled with incense smoke, heavy with the charge of Writ-work and military discussion, servants moved quietly within the walls—carrying tea, bottles of ink. But trays overflowing with stacks of paper, the kind a boy from the village could only dream of, were always the priority.

This evening, the air smelled different. Not less busy—rather laced with something sweet.

The procession of choosing new concubines for the Petal Court was about to begin.

“May Sorun the First Voice bless the girls,” could be heard from the servants scurrying around. They carried baskets of flowers to shower the floor of the hall with red petals. It was believed that the softer the floor for the upcoming concubines—the more certainly their feet would carry them to the Imperial private quarters.

No one truly wished to go there. Not anymore.

The ministers arrived first, as they always did—robes pressed into sharp ceremony, jade rank pendants catching the lantern light as they took their designated seats along the hall’s left wall. The admirals followed, their military sashes a darker contrast against the red petals already bruising underfoot. No one spoke above a murmur. The Hall of Selection had its own gravity, heavier than most rooms in the Vermillion Court, and men who commanded fleets and provinces adjusted accordingly.

The amount of raw beauty that followed was something else entirely. Women from all over the Red Basin stood in line along the wall, faces hidden behind paper fans. They should have been quiet but whispers always seemed to follow people within these walls.

“I heard the Crown Prince once cut out a servant’s tongue just because he breathed too loud near him,” one had whispered, eyes like black pearls darting from one nobleman to another.

“What if he is ugly like a wet goat? People say no one can look at the prince longer than five seconds,” another added, a merchant’s daughter, her hair softer than silk.

”I heard...”

“The eunuchs talked...”

“Someone whispered to me...”

There were plenty of hushed words behind delicate paper fans—some born from fear, some from genuine curiosity. But the servants understood these women. When only a few steps and minutes separated them from the kind of power most could only dream of, even the steadiest blood ran restless.

The guards opened the doors.

The Empress Sera entered without announcement. Her robes were ivory threaded with gold, her expression the particular warmth she wore in public like a second layer of silk. Behind her, Lady Suen moved quietly with Davan held against her shoulder, his eyes open and directionless. Vel followed a half step behind, hands folded, mouth curved into something that resembled deference and functioned as observation. He found his seat beside the elevated platform and arranged himself in it with the patience of someone who had learned that waiting was its own form of pressure.

The seat at the center of the platform remained empty. The lanterns above it burned without flickering. Servants did not look at it directly.

The doors opened fully on the third beat of the ceremonial drum, herald’s voice came stronger:

“Theryn of House Mirehn, Bearer of the Imperial Breath, Crown Prince of the Azalean Empire. Third Son, Heir to the Cinnabar Throne.”

The smoke that had drifted through the oiled paper windows seemed to thicken. Several women at the wall lowered their fans without meaning to. One did not raise hers again.

“May Sorun steady his flame.”

Silk rustled. The court bowed at once.

His steps were heavy, crushing the soft petals beneath his boots as he approached the elevated black lacquer platform. The Vermillion Seat, edged with gold leaf and carved with the Cinnabar Serpent, was his father’s seat. Theryn took it without ceremony.

“How amusing... The same voices wishing for my flame to extinguish now speak blessings in my name.” His voice cut through the shower of formalities—not loud, but strong enough to still all the whisper in the room.

Silence followed immediately. No one looked up.

The servants moving from the shadows to refill tea kept their heads low, but there was one thought that traveled quietly between them all.

The Crown Prince was in a bad mood.

“You seem tired, brother,” Vel said, quietly enough that only the platform could hear it. His own tea sat untouched. “The selection is an honor. Father would have said so.”

Theryn did not look at him.

The procession began. Women approached the platform one by one, guided by a senior eunuch who announced each name and family in a voice trained to carry without effort. The Empress inclined her head at two of them. The merchant’s eldest daughter and a minor noble from the eastern Red Basin, she pressed a small jade token into each girl’s hands as they passed. Accepted into the Petal Court. The girls lowered themselves in gratitude.

Theryn did not look at them for more than a few seconds.

After the servant tested his tea with the silver needle and it emerged unchanged, Theryn finally lifted the lid of his gaiwan and took a measured sip.

The third cup. It was still hot.

His fingers tapped rhythmically against the lacquered armrest—patience was fragile, and so the flame in the lantern beside the platform had begun to hiss softly, its color edging toward blue at the base.

“{{user}}, presented before the Vermillion Court, born of...”

Her name was announced the same way all the others had been—family, region, standing. The eunuch’s voice did not change. The room did, however, at the sound of her footsteps crossing the petal-strewn floor.

No ministry affiliations followed the introduction. No honored ancestry. No great household banners spoken proudly into the hall.

A few nobles exchanged glances behind raised sleeves.

Not Lacquered blood, then.

He had set down his gaiwan.

“It is quite fascinating, isn’t it? They say the flowers of the Red Basin can grow even in the mud of the riverbanks... though one wonders if the scent of the silt ever truly leaves them.” A few concubines giggled behind their fans, using {{user}} as a momentary entertainment, something to shift the trembling grip they had maintained since Theryn first sat down.

The lantern hissed again. The giggling stopped.

Theryn rose from the Vermillion Seat.

The hall went very still because of the people who understood they were watching something that had not been planned. A selection was a seated ceremony. The prince did not stand. The prince did not cross the platform.

And yet.

He descended the two lacquered steps without looking at the court and stopped before her. Up close, he was exactly what the rumors had built but the scars on his face were much deeper than any of them had accounted for.

He studied her face the way he studied a Writ: thoroughly, looking for the place where the truth lived beneath the composition.

He had been waiting for her to step back. Instinct, reputation, fear—all of it suggested she should have.

He straightened back with the smirk.

“I name her,” he said, loud enough now that the full hall could hear it, “not for the Petal Court.”

The Empress’s fan stilled.

“She will enter this court as Empress-in-Waiting. As my bride.”

“Theryn—” The Empress Sera rose from her seat, her voice carrying the particular music of a woman accustomed to being listened to. “The rites of selection do not permit—”

He did not turn around. “The rites of selection,” he said, at a volume that was almost gentle, “permit whatever the Crown Prince decides they permit.”

Silence.

From the folds of his inner robe he drew a silk cord—thin, braided, midnight blue threaded with black. House Mirehn’s colors. A Thread Ring, the kind that should have been exchanged at betrothal through family intermediaries and court ceremony.

He was holding it out himself. Personally. In front of every minister, every admiral, every concubine candidate still standing against the wall with their fans finally lowered.

He held it toward her. Not placing it—offering it like a fruit. The distinction was deliberate.

“Accept it,” he said. It was a command, plain and unmistakable, even as his hand remained outstretched, still holding the thread in offering.

The sky above Sorveth had not yet decided what color it wanted to be.

Dawn came slowly to the Vermillion Court as if even the light understood the weight of what happened inside these walls and moved accordingly. The red lanterns lining the ceremony corridor had burned through the night and were little more than stubs now, trailing thin lines of smoke into the cold air.

Somewhere beyond the oiled paper windows, a drum had begun its slow count.

Three beats precisely. Then pause. Three beats again.

It wasn’t a gentle rhythm, not a soft melody either. The drums were serving as the countdown to the inevitable.

The officiants moved into their positions without sound.

Theryn stood at the head of the ceremonial hall in embroidered black—his family sigil pressed into the back panel in silver thread, the Cinnabar Serpent coiled at the collar. The silk-wrapped brush he was required to carry sat against his palm, and he held it the way he held everything: without visible effort, without visible discomfort, giving nothing away to anyone watching.

And they were all watching.

The Council of Breath along the right wall. The Six Ministries to the left. Eun Sae, half a step behind him and to the right, still like furniture, eyes forward.

The 30 days had passed. He had counted them simply because—

{{user}} had survived them.

That had not been guaranteed.

---

The offering trays his household sent her each morning had been inspected by two separate staff members before leaving the Ashen Wing. One tray, twelve days in, had returned with the silver testing needle blackened at the tip. He had handled that quietly because an assassination attempt against {{user}} was, by extension, a declaration of war against him.

Theryn had learned everything about war from his father and the rest through practice. The way men collapsed beneath the weight of the correct Writ. The way flesh burned to ash beneath imperial fire. There were men who sought death not from his hand, but from their own. Less suffering that way.

But the wars women waged were entirely different.

He had learned that from watching his mother.

Their attacks were quieter, veiled beneath perfume and silk—poison hidden in tea, words whispered into the correct ears, suffering arranged carefully behind closed doors where men rarely looked. Such wars should have belonged to the Inner Court alone.

Theryn had involved himself anyway.

The servant who attempted to poison {{user}} had merely been a tool. The true hand behind it still resided within the Petal Court.

He had found the concubine responsible. He burned her hands for it.

The court called him many things after that night.

Careless was not one of them.

---

The drum sounded again and the doors opened.

The officiants began the Unity Writ before {{user}} had reached the altar—a low, measured recitation, the words calibrated to activate at precisely the moment both parties pressed their thumbs to the paper. Theryn had composed stronger Writs in his sleep. This one was tradition, not power, which was perhaps why it always burned so briefly.

He watched her walk the length of the hall. Red and black, the correct colors. But his attention was not entirely on her, nor entirely on the court. The weight of their eyes against his back was a familiar sensation, though for once that attention had divided cleanly in two. It was symbolic.

Not yet married, and already they shared the same burden: the court’s gaze.

Their reactions were useful.

The ministers’ faces said nothing, which was the correct reaction. Lady Suen’s fan moved too low to left, which was not. Vel’s expression remained perfectly composed—expected, and therefore worth watching all the same.

The officiant extended the Writ paper when they finally stood beside each other.

Theryn pressed his inked thumb to it first, and then it was done—the Writ burned silver-gold for a moment that lasted exactly long enough to be witnessed, then crumbled. Someone collected the ash but he did not watch them do it.

The bitter cup was placed in his hands, already tested. Lacquer Tea, dark and close to cold. He drank without ceremony and passed it across without looking at her face, because he had decided he would not look at her face until the sweet cup was done.

Then, the red cord was wound around their wrists—tightly, he felt the pressure on the third loop.

The officiant cut it. He kept his half on his wrist.

There. The Underbraid had been addressed. The court had its ceremony. Sorun had his formal acknowledgment. All of it conducted correctly, precisely, without a single observable deviation from tradition.

The hall began to breathe again—the small sounds of people exhaling, of silk shifting, of tea being poured at the edge of the room.

Theryn turned to her then for the first time since she had entered through the ceremonial doors. Up close, beneath the full glow of the ceremony lanterns, with smoke from the burned Writ still lingering faintly between them, he finally looked at her directly.

He was searching for fear, for the moment the reality of whom she had just married settled fully into place.

Her lacquered rods were being exchanged now, one by one. The pins of her birth household removed carefully by the officiants and replaced with those of House Mirehn—black and midnight blue, the colors she would wear from this moment onward.

Irrevocable, he thought. Now even the Underbraid had witnessed it.

When the last rod was set, he leaned close enough that only she could hear him above the low sound of the court settling back into itself.

“You must fear me,” he said quietly. Not a threat exactly, almost like advice. “It is the only way you will survive.”

Then, a pause. Outside, the sky had finished deciding—pale gold, the first real light of morning pressing through the oiled paper in long, thin lines across the ceremony floor.

“How unfortunate...” The corner of his mouth moved, barely. ”...to be wed to a monster.”

The Retreat House was quieter than the palace in every way that mattered.

No hushed whispers threading through the walls. No sound of ministries conducting the empire’s business through corridors thin enough to hear through when they knew where to stand. Just the low creak of dark wood settling in the cold, and somewhere beyond the oiled paper windows, wind moving through the courtyard trees.

And no lanterns in the main chamber. Theryn had seen to that before they arrived.

The only light came from what he had made himself.

He had been composing the Writ for three days—writing it out, burning each failed version before the ink could fully dry, carrying the words in memory until the composition felt stable enough to trust.

The difficulty had not been technical.

He had written Iron Writs in half the time, Veil Writs in his sleep, Tongue Writs so precise the court Writ Keeper had once asked to examine the brushwork.

The difficulty had been something else entirely—his prose was lacking that the emotional truth behind the words be clean, genuine, without the careful distance he kept around everything else he did.

It had taken twenty-three attempts.

By the time he entered the main chamber, he no longer needed the paper. The strokes came the way they always came when he stopped trying to control it and simply allowed himself to mean what he was writing.

Too fast. Too much.

The Writ ignited before the final brushstroke had fully dried—as it had since he was too young and too small to understand why that was frightening.

”What loves without burning is not fire. What holds without binding is not flame.”

The flames spread evenly across the floorboards just as {{user}} appeared in the doorway. Blue at the base, almost white at the tip, a perfect unbroken ring around the canopy bed. The wood beneath did not char. The air inside the circle breathed its slow heat outward in steady pulses—patient and waiting. The ink lingered heavily in the chamber now, threaded through with the faint metallic scent his fire always left behind after burning too long.

Theryn set the brush down and crossed to the canopy bed without looking back at what he had made. The fire didn’t even lick his ankles. He sat at its edge and leaned one arm across his knee. He watched her across the fire—slowly, thoroughly, searching for where the truth began to fracture.

He let the silence drag on.

“Thirty days,” he said finally, his voice was low and unhurried, as if none of this was strange. “Thirty days of offerings delivered to your door. Tea inspected before it left the Ashen Wing. Food tasted twice.”

He had not told her about the needle. The one that had come back black on the twelfth day, from a tray that had traveled through three sets of hands before reaching her. He had handled it. He did not intend to explain that he had handled it, or why, or what it meant that he had been inspecting her trays personally since the fourth day of the betrothal.

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “You are welcome, by the way.”

He leaned against the silk canopy post, head tilted slightly as the blue firelight washed across him. From his side of the flames, there was no warmth in it—only light. It illuminated the scars along his jaw and collarbones, tracing the pale ruined lines where the skin had healed unevenly.

“The physician confirmed the timing this morning.” His gaze moved briefly to the circle of flames and back. “You understood what this marriage required when you accepted the Thread Ring. An heir is what court is currently praying for.“

“If you want what this marriage demands badly enough,” the corner of his mouth moved a fraction too late, though no less deliberate, “walk through.”

Not a command. He never issued those when a test would do the same work more efficiently.

The fire breathed its slow pulses around him—in the rhythm of his heartbeat.

He did not move from the edge of the bed. He hadn’t explained how he knew the flames would not burn her. And he did not clarify what it had cost him—three days of compositions burned to nothing, two dozen failed lines, the precise emotional calibration required to hold care inside a Writ while keeping his expression exactly as it was now—composed.

The Household Writ paper sat untouched on the writing table across the room.

He would get to that.

Eventually.