Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 314 - 309: Echo of the Execution

Hadeon despised the Empire’s southern borders—sun-bleached, hollow lands full of weak nobles who thought ambition could be mistaken for strategy. He had stopped counting the number of fools who believed they could touch Damian and live. But Patricia? Patricia was meant to last a little longer. She had connections. Influence. A house that moved wealth through the south like blood through a vein.

And now, there was nothing left.

The report arrived before noon, sealed in imperial crimson. Patricia had been executed. Publicly. With no statement from the Emperor, only a herald and the sword. What remained of her mind had been paraded through the capital before the blade fell.

But Damian hadn’t stopped with her.

House Duarte had been struck from the records before sunset. Their name was already gone from the registries. Their vaults seized. Their lands reassigned. Every servant loyal to them was branded, every cousin hunted. Entire lines wiped from inheritance. The only one still breathing was Elliot, exiled and disgraced—left alive more as a warning than mercy.

Hadeon didn’t curse. He didn’t raise his voice.

He simply sat back, fingers steepled, watching the southern wind pull dust across the floor. The firelight flickered against the stone walls, dancing over the sealed documents piled at his feet.

His firstborn had made a move. And this time, he hadn’t hidden the message.

Gabriel was off-limits.

The Emperor had moved in the last two weeks more than he had in years, one calculated strike after another, each one bleeding through the cracks of Hadeon’s networks like poison through a shared cup. Every ally was being cornered, every neutral house nudged closer to the crown by the weight of fear alone. The map was shifting, not by inches, but by fault lines. And if once they were equals—two predators circling the same territory—now Hadeon was trailing.

Behind.

And worse, bleeding influence by the hour.

He clenched his fists, the pressure sharp in his knuckles, then reached beneath the carved edge of the desk for the embedded button. It clicked once—soft, mechanical.

A door hissed open in the next chamber.

"How much longer until one of these allies becomes useful?" he asked, voice low, sharp with a fury too cold to crack. "Tell them to move. Tell them the next delay will be seen as treason, not caution. If they hesitate again, I will make their betrayal public—and if that doesn’t motivate them," his tone dipped lower, darker, "tell them I want that golden-eyed bastard dead before he hands the Empire to his little consort in full daylight."

There was no response.

Just the sound of someone moving quickly through the next room, and the echo of a message already on its way to men too afraid to act—and too desperate to back out now.

—

Rosaline sat alone in the east chamber, surrounded by silence that pressed like a noose around her throat. The room was beautiful—of course it was. Every inch of Hadeon’s estate reeked of taste and age and wealth meant to intimidate. Marble floors. Velvet drapery. Doors that opened without sound. Windows that looked out onto gardens she didn’t care to admire.

But it wasn’t the palace.

It wasn’t Damian’s palace.

Her jaw ached from how tightly she had clenched it. Her fingers were red where her nails had dug into her own skin.

She should have been beside him.

Not Gabriel. Not that simpering, clever little whore with a perfect face and quiet bite that made the court swoon. No. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t just.

He was the Emperor, her Emperor. He was supposed to see her. He did, once. He kissed her wrist at the Winter Solstice banquet. He told her she was radiant in moonlight. He said her scent reminded him of frost and myrrh.

And now? He stood beside Gabriel with a hand on his back and a crown on his head like the Empire was complete without her.

She saw the broadcast. Everyone did. Patricia’s screams had been sealed, her mind already gone—but the silence of the execution was louder than anything Rosaline had ever heard.

She should have been up there, in silks the color of imperial fire, standing where that traitorous omega stood, hand wrapped in Damian’s, eyes hard with victory.

Instead, she was here. Forgotten. Disposable.

And every time Gabriel appeared on screen, with that clipped little voice and the tilt of his chin like he knew he was untouchable, her fury grew teeth.

She didn’t cry. Rosaline never cried.

She plotted.

She rose from her seat with measured grace, walking across the marble floor with the quiet arrogance of someone who still believed the world owed her something.

The folder was waiting—unassuming, ivory-bound, left like an afterthought on the far table near the window. One of Hadeon’s many nameless aides had likely meant it for someone useful, someone with status and clearance and a name still worth announcing. But Rosaline opened it anyway.

She didn’t ask permission.

The first few pages were technical. Names, locations. Reports from the Capital. Her fingers moved past them with practiced indifference—until they stopped.

Patricia’s execution.

House Duarte: extinguished.

Except... not entirely.

There were names listed further down. Faint. Scrawled in a different hand, ink slightly smudged. Survivors. Bastards. Half-bloods. Illegitimate daughters married off in the provinces. Distant cousins hiding behind false banners.

Embers.

Her lips curved—not in a smile, but something far uglier. Something raw. Like a wound that had refused to close.

Gabriel had taken her place. The Empire had erased her name. Damian had turned his back, as if she were disposable, as if she had not endured the weight of his rut, the silence of his desire, the power of being chosen, even briefly.

But he hadn’t destroyed everything.

And Rosaline had always been good at surviving off scraps.

She could still bleed this Empire dry, if she wanted.

No—not if.

When.

She would gather the remnants. Stir the blood of what remained. Call it vengeance if they needed a reason. Call it justice if they needed a cause. Let the bastards crawl from their corners and carry her fury like fire.

Let them burn for her, since the Emperor had chosen a pretty corpse to keep his bed warm.

Let them remind the world that House Duarte never truly died. It simply changed shape.

And this time, it would bite.