A Young Princess's Guide to Usurping The Throne | Chapter 5 (Patreon)

The doors to Iroh’s office were shut with heavy force sealing away the noise of the palace corridors and the distant clatter of servants moving through their duties. Inside, the room felt oppressive, with the brazier in the corner giving off a low, steady warmth, but even that could not soften the tension hanging in the air.

Lu Ten sat across from his father, his posture rigid, his hands clasped tightly in his lap. He had been trying to make sense of everything he had seen, everything he had heard, ever since the attack on Fire Lord Azulon. The memory of it still sat in his chest like a stone. His mind tried to make sense of everything. Azula—small, sharp-eyed Azula—standing in the middle of it all with a fire in her hands that from reports had killed the attempted killer of their grandfather.

Iroh looked older than he had in years. Not in body, but in spirit. His shoulders were heavy, his expression drawn tight with a grief Lu Ten had rarely seen in him. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and measured, as though he were choosing each word with great care.

“Even in my years, it never gets easy,” Iroh said, “I never wished for such things to happen in the presence of family."

Lu Ten frowned. “Father, your heart is heavy. But this was as unexpected as any other, you have no fault in this, it was an unknow–"

“No.” Iroh’s voice sharpened, and Lu Ten fell silent at once. Iroh exhaled slowly, then leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk between them. “You saw a performance. A farce. A carefully arranged piece of theater meant to look like one thing while serving another.”

Lu Ten stared at him, confusion knitting his brows. “I don’t understand.”

“I know.” Iroh rubbed a hand over his face as if trying to gather his thoughts from some dark and distant place. “Your uncle Ozai is many things, Lu Ten. He is ambitious. He is patient when patience serves him. He is willing to get his hands dirty if he must, but more often than not, he prefers words. Promises. Influence. He bends people the way fire bends dry grass—slowly, until they do not even realize they are being consumed.”

Lu Ten went silent, wondering what his father was getting at before his eyes went wide in disbelief.

Lu Ten’s mouth went dry. “You think Ozai ordered the assassination?”

Iroh did not answer immediately. His silence was answered enough.

Lu Ten’s eyes widened. “But why? Why would he want the Fire Lord dead?"

"You are the thrones rightful heir in that instance, regardless of how anyone might think, it is your birth right. It makes no sense!"

“Open your mind and let your heart still with ease and telll me...when is a dragon, not a dragon,” Iroh said quietly.

Lu Ten blinked, digesting the words.“When it loses its flame...."

Iroh’s gaze drifted toward the brazier, the flames flickering gold across his face. “Ozai means to have me removed from our siege, to deliberately bind me to the palace."

"But why? Wouldn't that undermine everything he wants to achieve?" Lu Ten argued, his mind desperate for an answer.

Irohs eyes grew softer at his son's question, "It is because even if I were to become Fire Lord it does more harm, though I have many friends in the nobility my true friends rest in the soilders we fight along side."

Lu Ten finally understood, "He wishes to keep you a watchful eye....because you can't dismiss him or any of the plans he has because it would start a civil war..."

Iroh nodded, "And it seems my niece is also intertwined in his plans."

Lu Ten looked as though the words had struck him physically. “Azula? But she’s just a child.”

“Yes,” Iroh said, and there was pain in the word. “That is precisely why it matters.”

He rose from his chair and began to pace slowly behind the desk, his hands folded behind his back. The movement was restrained, but Lu Ten could see the tension in every step.

“When I saw her,” Iroh continued, “it was the first time I had ever seen her firebend.”

Lu Ten’s expression shifted to confusion. “You’ve never seen her bend before?”

“No. Not once. Not in any meaningful way.” Iroh stopped and turned to face him. “And that is what makes this so troubling. Most of the time, she is a sweet child. Polite, clever, eager to please when she chooses to be. I have loved her since the day she was born. You know that.”

Lu Ten nodded slowly. He did know. Whatever else could be said about the royal family, Iroh had always shown genuine affection for both his niece and nephew. He had spoken to each with a warmth, that borderline fatherly.

But Iroh’s face had gone pale, and his eyes had taken on a haunted look Lu Ten had never seen before.

“Father?” Lu Ten asked carefully.

Iroh’s jaw tightened. “What I saw was not a child frightened by violence. It was not a child acting in panic. It was a child whom my dear brother had already begun to mold in his image.”

"Her smile already proves me right."

Lu Ten frowned. "Smile?"

Iroh nodded once, grimly. “Not a small smile. Not a nervous one. It was wide. Wider than I had ever seen on her face. Twisted. Delighted.” His voice roughened. “She watched the assassin cry on the floor while their face burned, and she smiled as though she thought it was the most amusing thing ever."

Lu Ten went cold.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The room seemed to shrink around them, the silence pressing in from every side. Lu Ten’s mind struggled to reject what he had just heard. It did not fit with the Azula he knew—or thought he knew. She was sharp, yes. Proud, certainly. But cruel? Sadistic? No. That could not be right.

His father must have been shaken. Shocked. Misled by the horror of the moment.

“Father,” Lu Ten said slowly, “you were under a great deal of stress. Maybe you misread what you saw.”

Iroh’s head snapped up.

The force of his expression made Lu Ten flinch. There was no anger in it exactly, but there was something far more frightening: certainty.

“I have burned men, women, and children in war,” Iroh said, each word deliberate and heavy. “I have seen what fire does to flesh. I have watched people die screaming because of choices I made when I was younger and more foolish than I am now. Those memories have followed me every day of my life. Do not insult me by suggesting I can not recognize fiction from reality.”

Lu Ten’s face drained of color. He had never heard his father speak so harshly, and the shame in his chest came immediately, hot and sharp.

Iroh’s voice softened, but only slightly. “I have seen cruelty. I have seen fear. I have seen men take advantage of women, soldiers abuse power, and children taught to enjoy suffering. I know the difference between shock and reality.”

Lu Ten swallowed hard. “Then… then you really think Ozai planned this?”

“I think Ozai is capable of anything if it serves his purpose,” Iroh said. “And I think this served more than one.”

He returned to the desk, but instead of sitting, he placed both hands on its edge and leaned forward. His eyes were tired but focused.

Iroh gave a humorless laugh. “Even now, that smile haunts me, even in my dreams and within this lifetime or the next I will never forget it."

He looked past Lu Ten, as though the memory had carried him far away.

“We were stationed together during a campaign in the Earth Kingdom. The enemy had us pinned down. Boulders were falling from above, smashing the ground around us, and for a moment, it seemed we would be buried alive. I watched good men, try to return fire."

"Watching as friends, were crushed and crippled but then Ozai marched forward. He had been injured, blood stained his teeth as he ran forward without restraint."

Iroh’s eyes narrowed, remembering.

“He then laughed in glee as he turned three men to ash.”

Lu Ten’s breath caught.

Iroh continued, his voice low and distant. “His smile brought fear to the Earthbenders and even some of our own men. It was unsettling as he marched; his eyes showed nothing but glee. Pure, unrestrained glee. I remember thinking, even then, that something in him was wrong. He did not merely enjoy victory—he enjoyed destruction.”

"Even then, I swore the men in silence for what they saw. Most of those men still remained silent to this day, and within those few who still lived, they called my brother, The Red Jester."

He looked directly at Lu Ten then, and the weight of his gaze was almost unbearable.

“Azula had that same smile.”

Lu Ten could not speak. His hands had begun to tremble, and he curled them into fists to hide it. The room felt too warm now, the fire in the brazier suddenly oppressive. He tried to imagine it—Azula standing over a burning assassin, smiling as they screamed—and the image made his stomach turn.

At last, he managed, “If that’s true… if Ozai really planned it… then what does it mean?”

Iroh’s expression changed. The hardness in it gave way to something gentler, though no less serious.

“It means,” he said, “that we must be there for her.”

Lu Ten blinked. “For Azula?”

“Yes. Before Ozai drags her any further into the darkness that lives inside him.”

Iroh straightened slowly, the weight of his own thoughts visible in the set of his shoulders.

“Azula is young,” he said. “Young enough to be shaped. Young enough to be harmed in ways she may not yet understand. If Ozai has begun using her, teaching her to associate power with cruelty, then we must act fast to reach her.”

Lu Ten looked down at his hands. “And if we don’t?”

Iroh was quiet for a long moment.

“Then she may become exactly what he wants her to be.”

The answer chilled Lu Ten more than any threat could have. He had always thought of Azula as his sweet little cousin, with a mind as sharp as a blade was dangerous, something to be respected, perhaps feared later into the future but still just a child. Now, that image had begun to fracture.

He lifted his head. “What do you want to do?”

Iroh’s face softened at the question, and for the first time that evening, some of the tension in the room eased.

“I want to speak with her,” he said. “Not as a prince. Not as a general. As her uncle.”

Lu Ten nodded slowly, though uncertainty still lingered in his eyes.

“I want to understand how far Ozai has sunk his talons into her,” Iroh continued. “I want to know what she has been taught, what she has been made to believe, and whether there is still a part of her that can be reached before it is too late.”

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