Seraphine Vex wanted a throne and a people to kneel before it. For now she had a cellar, a borrowed crown of a scepter, and seven strangers who might leave before dawn. She stood over the pool of red that gathered at the base of her dark throne. The blood welled up from the stone and never spread past the edge. That was the only true miracle she had. The rest she had built with lies and velvet. The seven sat on crates and listened. A tanner with cracked hands. A widow who wept at anything. A boy who stole bread. They came because she promised the gods still spoke, and she alone could hear them. But curiosity is thin rope. She saw the tanner glance at the door. "You want proof," Seraphine said. "You should. False prophets are cheap." She lifted the scepter. The red crystal caught the lamplight and threw it across their faces. "Tonight the dead will bow to me. If they do, you will know what I am." She had no spell for this. She had a secret. Weeks ago she had found old bones beneath the cellar, the wings of some great beast long buried. She had spent those weeks fitting wire and pulleys into the joints. She had rehearsed in the dark until her arms ached. Seraphine struck the scepter against the floor three times. From the shadow at the cellar's far wall, the skeleton rose. The dragon's bones unfolded. Its skull lifted on a long neck. Its wings opened wide enough to brush both walls. The pulleys groaned, but the lamp smoke hid the strings. The widow screamed. The boy fell off his crate. The tanner dropped to his knees before his mind could argue. Then the creature did what Seraphine had not planned. The skull turned toward her on its own. The jaw opened. A low sound came out, like wind through a cracked horn. She had built no mechanism for that. The bones had moved past her strings. Seraphine froze for one heartbeat. Then she understood that fear would ruin everything. She spread her crimson robe and raised both arms. "You see?" she cried. "Even death kneels to me." The dragon lowered its skull until the horns touched the stone at her feet. All seven dropped down. The tanner pressed his forehead to the wet floor. The widow kissed the hem of Seraphine's robe. The boy whispered a name for her she had never taught him. God. They bowed and did not rise. Seraphine looked at the skeleton that had bent on its own. She did not know if she had woken something or only fooled herself along with them. Either answer was dangerous. She kept her arms raised and her face calm. She had her inner circle now. She also had a creature in her cellar that obeyed no string of hers.