The capital bled.
Not with blood—not yet. With movement. With sound. With the grinding, clashing, inexorable machinery of two factions that had coexisted in brittle silence for twenty years and that had just been given a reason to shatter. The First Queen's guards wore silver.
The Crown Prince's guards wore white. In the golden morning light of the capital, the streets looked like a river of mercury colliding with a river of milk—two currents that should not mix, that could not mix, that tore at each other when they touched.
The first skirmish happened at the eastern gate.
