Prologue - For the Eyes of Rowyn Vale Only

For the Eyes of Rowyn Vale Only"

I always knew I’d die ugly.

Not dramatically. Not screaming in a blaze of glory. Just… ugly. Alone. Forgotten. Probably in an alley behind some broken down potion shop with a knife in my back and a curse in my throat.

Because that’s the kind of life you get when you're born in Grave Hollow, the part of the realm the nobles pretend doesn’t exist.

No enchanted lanterns lighting the streets. No guards patrolling to protect you. Just broken windows, cracked magic wards, and whispers about who got dragged out of their flat at midnight and why. I grew up stepping over drugged out fae shaking in gutters and learning that silence kept you safe. Especially when the smell of iron told you someone was bleeding two doors down.

My mom and dad? Fae. Poor as dirt. Magic weak enough to barely light a damn candle. They didn’t fall from grace, they were never allowed near it.

They ran relics. Smuggled potions laced with corrupted shadowroot. My mom used to say we were "just doing what we had to do to survive," but really, she just liked the coin and the high. By the time I was thirteen, I could pick a pocket clean, lie under a truth ward, and steal from enchanted stalls without getting caught.

Survival wasn't a skill. It wasy fucking religion.

We ate when we got lucky. Starved when we didn’t. I learned to braid my hair with broken glass just so the older boys wouldn’t get handsy. And the worst part? I never expected more. I never even wanted more. Not really.

Not until she tried to sell me. Three days ago, my mom offered me up like a side of meat to some sleazy back alley warlock with a coin pouch and a greasy smile.

"Ten thousand crowns and she's all yours," she slurred, leaning against the chipped counter in our mold ridden flat. "Virgin, too, if that’s your thing."

She said it like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.

Her eyes were glassy, pupils blown from shadowroot and gods know what else. She was wrapped in some tattered silk robe that didn’t belong to her. I was seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty seven fucking days old (18 tomorrow actually) and she was trying to cash me out like I was a bottle of black market nightshade.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t scream. I just left.

Ran until my lungs burned and my magic, what little I thought I had, buzzed under my skin like a swarm of hornets. The next day, I showed up to school like nothing had happened.

Tired. Wired. Hollow.

My best friend Kyla, sweet, anxious, too soft for this world, tried to act normal, bless her fae heart. She handed me half her breakfast and asked if I wanted to skip class. I said no. I still don’t know why.

Maybe part of me wanted one last taste of the world before it turned to ash. Maybe part of me wanted to burn it down.

The day it happened, the sky was the wrong color. Not stormy, not clear, just that sickly kind of pale, like the world itself was holding its breath. I should’ve known something was coming. Should’ve felt it in my teeth. But instead I walked through the gates of Hallowmere High like a ghost, jaw clenched, fists tighter, my heart dead quiet.

The school wasn’t for kids like me.

It was for polished, mid-caste fae whose parents sold bespoke enchantments or healed noble pets for a living. Not street scum from Grave Hollow. Not the girl who smelled like smoke and bad decisions and didn’t know which fork to use at banquet days.

I got by because I kept my head down. Until they came for Kyla. Kyla was the kind of person who still believed in people.

She was born with healing magic so weak it could barely close a paper cut, but she tried anyway. She made flower charms that wilted in your pocket and always smelled like honey. If I was the blade, she was the balm. My opposite. My only soft thing.

And they hated her for it.

Three of them. Golden glamoured, silk laced, venom tongued fae girls with too much power and too little soul. Mistra Goldenhair, Lira Faevyn, and that little hellspawn Selene Frostvale, daughter of an Ice Court noble, I think. Thought her shit didn’t stink because her family paid off headmasters.

They had Kyla backed into a row of lockers, laughing too loud and fake sweet.

“Still sitting with the Hollow trash, Kyla?”

“Did she rub some filth on you? You smell... poor.”

“Maybe Rowyn’s mom should’ve sold her after all....could’ve spared the rest of us the stench.”

I don’t remember crossing the room. I don’t remember pushing Kyla behind me. I don’t remember screaming.

What I do remember is the silence that came before the blast. And then...Light.

Blinding. Violent. Ancient Light.

It tore out of me in a full body explosion. Not fire. Not lightning. Something older. Something that remembered. A pulse of pure magic, raw and unfiltered, that cracked the walls and melted the sigils etched into the school’s enchanted floor.

The windows shattered. The lockers crumpled like paper. Selene screamed, clutching her face. Blood poured from her eyes. Lira was on the ground, twitching. Mistra fainted with her mouth still open mid insult.

Kyla was safe. Wrapped in some kind of glowing barrier I couldn’t explain. Eyes wide. Terrified. Of me. By the time the magic faded, I was already on my knees. My hands were glowing. My vision was blurred. My ears were ringing like a funeral bell.

And then the guards arrived.

No trial. No priestess to measure my aura. No chance to speak. They slapped iron bindings on my wrists, cold enough to sting, and dragged me through the streets like I was some kind of monster. The noble fae stared. Some cheered.

They threw me into the Hollowhold, the oldest prison in the city. The one built for fae who didn’t just break rules, but rewrote them. I was sentenced to execution at dawn.

Eighteen years old. Orphaned by choice. Alone. Filthy. Forgotten.

I thought that was it. That maybe dying would be the kindest thing that ever happened to me. And then... she came.

It started as a shimmer. A tiny glint of gold and green in the moonlight bleeding through the bars of my cell window.

I blinked rapidly trying to focus. Thought maybe it was a hallucination. Or some sad joke the gods were playing on me as a final fuck you.

But nope, she was real. A wood nymph no bigger than a teacup, glowing like dawn wrapped in wings. She zipped into my cell like she owned the place, trailing sparkles and sass. No fear. Just determination.

She didn’t speak.

Just dropped a small black envelope into my lap, winked like this was all very normal, and darted back out into the night air like a leaf on the wind. The envelope pulsed. Like it had a heartbeat.

Shaking, I lifted it. My name gleamed across the front in silver ink: For the eyes of Rowyn Vale only Open if you dare…I laughed. Laughed so hard I collapsed backward into the straw and filth, chest heaving. The kind of laugh that doesn’t sound sane. The kind you let out when you’ve finally snapped.

Because inside the envelope were six words that changed everything:

The Calling is upon you. You are summoned to Eidolon Academy.

I sat there for a long time, my eyes locked on the letter, heart clawing its way out of my chest like it remembered something I didn’t.

And then I whispered to the shadows around me. "I’m not dying here. I’m not done."

Let the Trials come. Let the gods watch.

Rowyn Vale is ready fuck shit up.