CHAPTER ONE

The wavering candlelights painted golden strips across the stoned walls as the scent of myrrh hung heavy in the air, carefully chosen to stimulate desire.

Unfortunately, King Kaelric felt nothing.

A young maiden lay bare beneath him—her stomach dipping with each fearful breath she took, her breasts warm and nipples erect.

Kaelric parted her legs like broken bread offered on an altar and thrust his firm length into her wetness. She gasped softly, her fingers clawing into the mattress, voice trembling with words he didn’t care enough to discern.

He moved with the efficiency of war, a hammer pounding without pause, feeling himself grow within her tight walls, as his hands braced on either side of her form.

She was beautiful, everything a king of his status could ask for—young and prepared, fair-skinned, supple thighs, and a virgin with only a flush to her cheeks and not a word of protest in her mouth.

He pulled out, the veins on his manhood throbbing as he flexed her leg, anchoring her knee sideways, and pushed his fullness into her core. She bit hard on her lower lip, trying to keep her moans sealed, the metallic taste of blood on her tongue.

She had been warned to rather die than irritate the king with cries of her womanly emotions. The priestesses had cleansed and scented her in sacred oils, the subtle curve of her waist marked with symbols drawn in lunar ink, meant to bless her womb.

All of it meant nothing if she failed to nurture his seed.

Kaelric’s duty for an heir fastened his thrusts, deeper and more deliberate, each one landing with greater intensity. Her breath hitched; a soft moan escaping, before her teeth quickly claimed her lower lip.

She silently prayed he didn't hear but the king’s mind was far away, staring beyond her, beyond the bed, beyond the palace walls, and into a dying kingdom. There was no softness in his touch, just fire in his ember eyes, consuming and red.

She didn’t dare look him in the eye, fixing her gaze on the silk canopy above or closing them whenever her toes curled from the jolting strokes against her clit.

He barely made a sound as he finished, his breath steady, pressing one last time into her warmth before stilling. He didn’t hold her or kiss her or collapse into her bosom breathless.

Instead, he withdrew with quiet precision and rolled off her, not sparing her a second glance. Rising from the bed in complete nakedness, Kaelric reached for the black satin robe folded at the edge of his armchair.

His back was hard and broad, mapped with scars of battles, his torso toned with muscles and marked with wounds that could've killed any ordinary man—the largest scar running from his collarbone down to the hollow of his ribs

But King Kaelric of Arkenholt wasn't ordinary, he was born of a bloodline forged by the dragon's breath, a warrior who never lost a war, a warrior who was indeed cursed.

The satin robe hissed softly as he pulled it over his shoulders and fastened the ropes around his waist. The young woman remained on the bed, not uttering a sound since his weight left her, her body shuddering like she’d been abandoned in the cold.

A knock echoed at the chamber door but Kaelric didn’t look up. “Enter,” he said, his voice flat and low.

The heavy oak door creaked open, and Advisor Maevin stepped inside, his bald head glinting, his robe rustling like dried leaves. “My king,” he bowed low, eyes sharp and knowing as he glanced briefly at the girl lying silent beneath the sheets.

“We will take it from here.” Maevin turned and nodded toward the waiting priestesses outside the room and they entered in their plain white gowns, their hair veiled in white scarves.

Swift and silent, they wrapped the girl’s body in white linen, her bare feet dragging softly on the floor as they led her away.

Only when the chamber door slammed shut did Kaelric speak. “What if she doesn’t bear my child?”

Maevin folded his hands behind his back, his expression unreadable beneath the soft candlelight. “Then we try again, my king,” he said smoothly. “There are more eligible maidens where she came from.”

Kaelric’s jaw tightened, his gaze dropped to his hands—rough, steady, capable of ending lives, yet powerless in the one task that truly mattered. “How many now?”

“Thirty-two, Your Majesty. All chosen by blood divination, all ritually prepared.”

Kaelric exhaled a quiet, dangerous sound as vapor escaped his flared nostrils.

But it didn’t stop Maevin from adding, “The last maiden lost the child yesterday, it didn’t survive past the first moon.”

Outside the palace walls, Arkenholt was dying. The trees withered in their roots, rivers ran low, and children were born with weak lungs and weaker hearts. His people needed an heir—a direct descendant of the royal bloodline, one born of his seed and strength.

But the gods had grown silent, turning each attempt into a blood bath of miscarriages and sometimes the death of the maiden.

Maevin took a step forward, upholding a reverent calm, as if speaking to a wounded god. “The people grow restless, they need hope, they need proof that the king's blood is not cursed.”

Kaelric turned his head slightly, “And if it is?”

Maevin met his eyes, undeterred. “Then we make them believe otherwise. Belief is power, my king. And power…is what we still hold.”

For a moment, silence reigned between them. Not peace—Kaelric had never known peace—but an understanding. An unspoken pact, for if a kingdom could fall on whispers, it could rise on lies, too.

“There’s an auction tomorrow,” the advisor said in an effort to lighten the king’s spirit. “I heard the merchant brought in rare magical goods, artifacts, and cursed relics. Perhaps something divine will catch your eye.”

Kaelric didn’t answer. He walked past the dying candles and toward the arched window that overlooked the vast, pale mountains beyond the palace—once green, now bone-white, the sky above heavy and cloaked in grey.

“The gods might be slow to listen, but they are not deaf.” His mother used to say, telling him about the event of his birth as she was over two hundred years old when she conceived him, his father almost five hundred years.

And here he was, three hundred and twenty years later suffering the same destiny.

Below, the cries of a grieving mother echoed faintly behind the palace walls, another child lost and Kaelric wondered how many more bodies he would have to bury before the gods gave him what was owed.

“Let’s have hope, my king.” His advisor—Maevin said and bowed once more, slowly turning on his heel and exiting the king’s chamber.

Somewhere out there, into the withering distance, Kaelric wanted to believe the right vessel waited.

And when he finds her, Arkenholt’s fate would change.