Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 302 - 297: Change the Target

The wine was good—too good for the company he kept.

It sat untouched beside the stack of reports, the glass sweating onto silk-trimmed parchment, the crimson stain bleeding like old wounds across diplomatic insignias and decrypted ether maps. The chandelier overhead flickered as if reacting to his silence, its flames bending in half-formed deference.

He didn’t move when the knock came. He didn’t have to.

The doors opened anyway. A shadow stepped through—lean, trembling at the edges. The man bowed so low his forehead nearly kissed the marble.

"My lord," the messenger said, voice brittle as a dried leaf. "Callahan is dead. And George Claymore... lives. But barely. His mind is gone. They say he breathes, but he doesn’t wake. They’ve begun calling him the Hollow Duke."

Silence.

Then Hadeon looked up.

He did not shout. Did not curse. That would be an insult to fury.

Instead, he reached for the glass, finally lifting it—letting the crimson swirl as he turned to the nearest window, the sky outside too pale, too clean.

"So they sent the dog," Hadeon murmured, half to himself. "And the dog brought gifts."

"Yes," the advisor said stiffly, eyes fixed somewhere near the floor. "Six of them. One is Talay Callahan. The others are heads of houses that expressed their interest in... ruining the Imperial Consort." A beat. "Lady Rosaline is furious."

"Is she?" Hadeon didn’t look up. His voice was soft, but there was no warmth in it. "Let her rage. It will burn through her faster than my patience ever could."

He leaned back, fingers steepled, the firelight catching faintly in his silver eyes.

"Callahan was careless. Greedy. A tactician with no subtlety. I warned him not to overstep."

"You did, my lord." The advisor shifted, uneasy.

"What about the shard?"

"It’s stable," came the careful answer. "Or as stable as it’s been until now. The Consort is confirmed pregnant, but the bond between the shard and the fetus was still forming until recently."

"Monitor it," Hadeon said sharply. "If it dies, we lose everything. If it lives—that is the key to the throne."

Because the Emperor of Agaron was never just chosen by the people. Never elected by council or crowned by legacy alone. No, ether chose. Always had. It was why imperial bloodlines didn’t fracture like other kingdoms. Why attempts at rebellion fizzled into footnotes—unless the ether itself turned.

It had turned once.

And he had made sure of it.

The former imperial family had fallen under his hand—not with spectacle, but with the slow certainty of rot. Poison in crystal goblets. Blades drawn in silence. Treason woven into loyalty until the old bloodline bled itself dry. Hadeon hadn’t needed to lift a sword himself; his power had always been quieter, older, and more patient than steel.

He thought he’d carved the future open with his own hands. Thought the path to the throne had been cleared by ash and fear and years of calculated bloodshed.

But it was not his name the ether answered to.

It was his son’s.

Damian.

The boy who should have died. The boy he had exiled and then ordered killed without flinching. The boy who rose anyway—dragged himself from ruin, allied with Dominie, burned through armies, and rebuilt what Hadeon had dismantled.

And now he sat on the throne that should have been his, golden-eyed and merciless, with a mate of ether-bent lineage and a child in his belly that bore more than just blood.

Damian had become everything Hadeon wasn’t—and everything the Empire wanted.

Hadeon hated that most of all. Not because Damian had won, but because the throne had chosen him. The ether had chosen him. And Hadeon, for all his schemes and legacy, had been denied by the very force that once crowned his line.

Damian was supposed to be a weapon. A tool. A sharpened edge that would cut down enemies on command, then be sheathed without protest. A stepping stone. An echo of his father’s name and nothing more.

But he had become the storm.

And now, the only piece Hadeon had left—the final, flickering thread in a tapestry coming undone—was a shard.

His grip tightened on the stem of his glass, tension running up his arm like a fault line about to crack. The fine crystal groaned faintly under the pressure, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Rage vibrated beneath his skin, cold and electric, laced with the bitter knowledge that he would have to revise everything. Again.

He was at his wits’ end, and he knew it.

Damian was not just surviving—he was winning. Not with brute force alone, but with precision. Patience. Control. The same control Hadeon had once used to bend kingdoms now stared back at him in golden eyes and steady hands.

The last five years had been a war with no battlefield, a silent siege fought in whispers, trade routes, and bloodless coups. And still, Damian stood—ruthless, unshaken, and now surrounded by loyalty that couldn’t be bought. With Claymore at his right and von Jaunez at his left, the throne wasn’t just stable—it was ironclad.

And Hadeon was done pretending.

Done playing nice.

Done waiting for a chance that would never come without violence.

He set the glass down with surgical calm, the echo sharp in the too-silent room.

"Send word to our men," he said, his voice like a blade dulled only by restraint. Each word precise, measured. Meant to cut without leaving blood on his hands. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

"Change the target."

The air in the room shifted—like it understood the gravity before the attendant could.

"Let the nobles that still dream of the Empress’s position distract the Consort. Their vanity will serve us better than coin ever did."

He didn’t look up.

"This time, poison Damian."

Silence answered him, thick and reverent.

"He’s already aware we targeted Gabriel. That boy bleeds suspicion." Hadeon’s lip curled slightly, not with amusement—but with grim understanding. "But he won’t expect the blade aimed at his own throat. Not yet."

A pause.

A beat long enough to let the order settle like dust in a tomb.

"He would let his guard down for himself. For one moment. That’s all we need."

Then, softly, like a benediction:

"Make it count."