"No!" Sterling shouted, fingers burning with leftover ember.
"Your Highness!" Crew Finley snapped, stepping back as the light licked the carved ceiling and left black streaks over ancestral sigils.
Gerry Gustafsson stumbled forward, cloak trailing frost. "My son," he gasped, breath smelling of snow and old iron, "you cannot keep me exiled. The court demands—"
"You broke the court," Sterling cut him off. His voice was low but it carried. "You handed our boys to the Nine Heavens. You gave away our blood for silk and empty promises."
Gerry's face drained. "I did what I had to. Peace—"
"Peace?" Sterling's hand slammed the arm of the throne. Ember snapped from his palm and a ring of heat rolled across the floor, not enough to burn but enough to melt the frost at Gerry's boots. "You call that peace?"
Hendrix Cruz stepped forward, palms open in the calm pose he favored. "Sterling, sit. We can discuss terms. The Nine Heavens offered a coalition—"
Sterling didn't sit. He rose until his height matched the banners and the room felt narrower. "Coalition? You would bow to them? You would bend our houses to foreign gods to save your tea coats?"
Hendrix's jaw tightened. "I would bow to end bloodshed."
"Then bow over their letters." Sterling flicked his fingers. The envoy's parchment in Hendrix's hand burst into ashes mid-air, the ash falling like dark snow onto the marble. Hendrix stared at the ash, then at Sterling
