Ch 1

The night didn’t fall apart all at once.

It started with a single clang — heavy, jarring, the kind that made your ribs feel hollow. Then came another. And another. Bells, but not the kind that meant weddings or festivals. These were rough, metal throats warning of fire, blood, and men who didn’t stop once they started.

Heat pressed at the walls, sneaking in through cracks in the marble. The air already tasted of ash. Serenya ran barefoot, her nightdress catching on splinters as she gripped a candle in one hand — a useless, flickering little thing against the dark that was swallowing her home.

“Serenya!” A voice from somewhere behind her, smothered by the smoke.

A crash. The ceiling groaned like it was tired of holding on.

She didn’t turn back. People in old stories always looked back and paid for it. Maybe they turned to stone. Maybe to ash. Either way — you didn’t survive by staring at the thing chasing you.

Her palm slid along the wall as she counted doors — nursery, study, the blue parlor — until she slammed into someone solid enough to feel like hitting a wall. An arm, heavy with armor, clamped around her waist. She kicked, clawed, bit — the only things left that were hers. Her elbow caught something soft under a rib; the soldier grunted, loosened his grip, and she slipped free—

—only to run into someone else.

This man didn’t touch her. He just stood there, the smoke curling around him like it knew its place. Black hair, a face carved in angles and shadows, and eyes that pinned her where she stood. No armor. No helm. Just a dark coat trimmed with gold that caught the firelight like it belonged there.

“Lady Vale,” he said. Her name in his mouth felt like a decision.

Prince Kael Dravaryn. She’d seen him once, years ago, at a winter court gathering — too perfect to be real, too cold to be safe. That night he’d been a distant figure. Tonight, with her home burning down around her, he was close enough to be dangerous.

“My men,” he said, voice even, “are risking their lives to keep your roof from falling on you. Don’t make them waste the effort.”

“I don’t like being stolen,” she said. Her voice wasn’t steady.

Something almost like a smile tugged at his mouth. “You’ll learn theft is a matter of perspective.”

He moved his fingers — just a flick — and the soldier who’d grabbed her stopped dead. Even the fire outside seemed quieter when Kael looked at her.

“Bring her.”

They moved as one, Kael at the center, Serenya caught like a heartbeat in their grip. She caught flashes as they carried her out — the chandelier crushed into the banquet table, the harp in her mother’s music room split down the middle, the painted eyes of her ancestors smeared with soot. The night air outside was cold and wet, full of horses stamping and people crying in ways that made her teeth ache.

No one put her on a horse. They walked her — displayed her — between lines of soldiers whose dark uniforms drank in the firelight and bled it back in glints of scarlet. The Prince didn’t once look over his shoulder. He didn’t need to. She was already moving where he wanted her.

The palace rose from the fog like something too old and heavy to have been built by human hands. Inside, it was all polished stone, warm firelight, and the faint scent of flowers she didn’t recognize. Her ash-marked feet left prints on the floor.

They took her to a room so beautiful it felt like a trick — silk curtains, steaming water, a fire that whispered instead of roared. Kael dismissed the soldiers. The quiet after they left was heavier than the noise had been.

“What do you want?” she asked.

He stepped closer. His eyes caught the firelight like glass over a dark river. “Order.”

“You burned my home for order?”

“Your home burned itself when it stood in the wrong place,” he said without heat. “You are not my prisoner. You are… an investment.”

Her laugh came out wrong. “How generous.”

“How precise,” he said. “No one will touch you without my word. You’ll have guards, a lady in waiting, a teacher who knows how to keep you alive here. In return—”

“In return?”

“You’ll do what I ask, when I ask it.”

Her pulse hammered in her ears. “And if I refuse?”

He stepped close enough that she caught the scent of rain on him, threaded with something sharper. “Then I let the men at the gate decide who gets you first.”

The world tilted. She hated that she didn’t look away. “You’ve already taken everything. You don’t need my yes.”

Something flickered in his eyes — there and gone — before a maid appeared in the doorway, arms full of pale silk.

It wasn’t white. It was the color of cream poured over gold, the kind of shade that lied about innocence.

“No,” Serenya said.

“Yes,” Kael answered, voice as calm as if they were talking about the weather.

He didn’t touch her. He didn’t need to. The room did it for him — the heat of the fire, the promise of the silk, the way the candlelight pulled at the edges of the shadows around him.

“When they bow,” he said, pausing at the door, “bow lower. And when they whisper, smile. You are no one’s pity.”

The door shut behind him.

The maid’s voice was soft. “It will fit. It was made to.”

Serenya didn’t ask how. She stepped into the bath, into the sting of water on scraped skin, and when she came out, the silk slid over her like a lie she wasn’t ready to believe.

In the mirror, she didn’t see herself anymore. She saw someone the court might underestimate — but only once.

The door opened again. A man in black livery stood there, broad-shouldered, a thorn-shaped pin catching the light at his collar.

“My lady,” he said with a bow. “I’m to escort you.”

“Where?”

“Where you’ll be seen.”

And there, at the end of the hallway, Kael waited — all dark angles and unreadable eyes — like the night had delivered her straight into his hands.