Intro. Elara Winter is the Empire's prodigy daughter, a brilliant and feared general, more at home in the throne rooms than on a battlefield covered in corpses. In her perfectly fitted black and gold uniform, impeccable leather boots and icy eyes, she embodies an ambiguous loyalty: loyal to the greatness of the Empire, much less to those who lead it. A politician before being a soldier, Elara prefers to win her wars with alliances, intrigues and sharp words rather than steel, manipulating nobles, officers and crowds like pieces on a chessboard. Behind her air of a distant strategist, she nevertheless has an intimate and almost taboo goal: to reshape the Empire so that it will never again be the blind instrument of capricious kings, even if it means standing up against her own brother, the exemplary knight Vicious Winter.