Long ago, before Seraphine's time, before Valen's rage, two kingdoms stood side by side.
The Kingdom of Virex - her home bathed in light and fire.
The Kingdom of Noctarion - his home veiled in eternal twilight.
Once allies, their people had forged a bond sealed by an oath so sacred.
An oath to never turn blade against blade.
An oath to protect one another against all else.
But oaths are fragile things in the hands of mortals.
When famine struck Virex, it was the immortal vampires of Noctarion who were blamed - accused of hoarding the rains, of cursing the soil.
Fear bred suspicion;Suspicion bred hatred.
And when famine turned to war, Virex had drawn first blood.
In a single, bloody night, they had broken the sacred oath.
Noctarion never forgave.
Noctarion never forgot.
Valen never forgot.
Even if centuries had passed, the sin was written in the marrow of their bones.
And now, history prepared itself to repeat - but in crueler hands.
The throne room lay drowned in silvered moonlight, but it was not the room that held power - it was the king seated within it.
Valen.
A symphony of beauty and danger.
His back rested against the throne, one leg bent lazily while the other stretched before him like a predator at rest. His black cloak draped around him like nightfall.
He was cruelly handsome - in the way storms are beautiful just before they destroy everything in their path.
His dark hair, falling around his sharp cheekbones, his jaw tight with silent thought. His skin pale , kissed only by the moonlight that filtered in through the glass windows, casting a sliver glow across his sharp features. And his eyes... Gods,those eyes. Dark. Endless. Watching.
Silent rage filckered beneath his stillness. But so did something else - something dangerously close to longing.
His fingers curled around the armrest as if imagining it were her throat. Or her waist. Or both.
He had sworn to end her kind. To bring down the bloodline that nearly ended his own.
But now...
He couldn't stop thinking about her.
His dark gaze lowered, cold calculation drowning the rage inside him.
There was no mercy left in Valen's heart - only the ruthless hunger of a man who had already lost too much, and would not lose her.
Not again.
Not to them.
Not to the golden cage they built around her under the pretense of duty.
He had seen the signs - the way Evander's gaze faltered, the way ambition tightened it's fingers around his soul.
Evander was a prince... But he was still a man. And men always bowed to the crown that fed them, not to the heart that loved them.
"He will trade her for power, " Valen thought bitterly, a smile ghosting over his lips, "As all weak men do. "
He welcomed it.
He needed it.
Because when Evander turned against her - when the blood soaked the earth, and the kingdom she bled for cast her like a discarded relic - Valen would be there.
Not as her savior.
Not as her hero.
But as the sinner she would have no choice but to cling in her ruins.
The first thread had been spun the night he first saw her.
Tonight, the second thread would be woven - silent, invisible... inevitable.
From the towering window, the vampire king stared at the kingdom beyond the mountains,
"Let him betray her. Let her kingdom she bled for betray her.
And when all she knows is ash and silence, she will have no sanctuary but me. "
Valen smiled, the monster and the lover in him at last becoming one.
In the distance, unseen by all but the gods, Seraphine slept - still clutching the Phoenix chain close to her heart.
Still unaware of the dark fate coiling around her like an unseen crown.