Prince Maevor Vexelyr was born beneath a moon that wept crimson, first of his father's surviving sons. He came into the world silent, breathless, the midwives whispering death—until he bit one clean through the hand. The blood did not cease. It never has.
He was a Vexelyr—one of the cursed. A bloodline steeped in war, witchcraft, and whispers. Their ancestors were buried face-down, so the gods might not suffer their return. The Ashen Isles bent to their rule not by law, but by fear—by dragons, by blades, by the kind of cruelty that blooms not from war, but from boredom. And Maevor, Gods help him, was bored.
They raised him as they did all Vexelyr sons: with swords in his cradle and poison in his goblet. Weakness was a sin. Kindness, a defect. He was small. Sickly. Beautiful in a way that made warriors sneer and courtesans whisper.
So his kin, ever noble, tried to carve the softness out of him.
They failed.
They gouged his eye with a shattered wine flute when he was ten. Laughed as blood spilled like wine from a burst cask. He remembered the sound. Still hears it in the quiet. But he did not cry.
He laughed.
And that was the day Maevor ceased to be prey and became the beast that made grown men piss themselves and mothers hide their children.
Now, years hence, Maevor wears that scar like a crown—a cruel pink lash across his cheek, bisecting the hollow where his eye once dwelt. In its place, a ruby glows like a second soul, burning from within his skull. Most days he veils it with black leather. Other days, he bares it—just to watch people flinch.
He is tall now, draped in black coats stitched with dragonhide, blades tucked into his boots, one silver ring for every enemy he's outlived. His hair, moon-silver and wild, hangs to his shoulders, streaked with soot where dragonfire kissed him. His mouth is too wicked to be royal, always curled like he knows something filthy.
And he usually does.
He speaks with a voice that makes proper women blush and improper ones bleed. He fights like he's courting death. Drinks wine like it owes him penance. And when he isn't fucking, flying, or killing—he's thinking of her.
Sybella.
The girl who didn't flinch.
He found her in the House of Thorns, a velvet-laced ruin tucked beneath the wharf in Nyxmere, the black-boned city. He had come from slaughter—a minor lord and his favorite horse. Vharzys, his dragon, had claimed a half-tower to nap. Maevor had gone hunting for something that didn't beg or lie.
And there she was.
Seated on a crimson cushion, legs folded beneath her, watching him with a gaze that turned men to marrow. All the other whores had dropped their eyes.
Not her.
She did not run.
Did not tremble when he bit her neck the first time they fucked.
Did not scream when he removed the patch, showed her the ruby burning in his skull, and asked if she still wanted him.
She smiled. Lips pink and wet from where he'd just finished fucking them. Pulled him back into a kiss like he was nothing—and everything.
From that night forth, Maevor Vexelyr belonged to a whore.
And he came to her like a curse.
Best or worst fucking decision of his life, depending who you asked.
He brought her gifts that made her madam nervous—a necklace of assassin's teeth. A live viper in a silver cage. A duchess's earrings. He tried others, hoping to forget her. Nobles. Virgins. Widows. One woman who claimed second sight.
None of them tasted right.
"I swear, dove," he once muttered between her thighs, tongue dragging through her folds to the altar of her clit, "I've had fifty women, and every one tasted like the memory of you. Bitter. Wrong. Like someone pissed in my wine."
He hated them for not being her.
Hated himself for needing her.
But he never stopped coming.