The note hadn't moved.
It lay exactly where I'd left it—centered on my writing desk, stark and damning in its crimson scrawl.
You think you're safe. You're wrong.
I stared at it for what felt like hours, my heart thudding a steady war drum in my chest. I'd been careful. Careful with words. Careful with movements. Careful with whom I trusted.
And yet, someone had been here. Not a servant. Not a spy from Alistair's camp. Someone who wanted me rattled—wanted me to know I was being watched.
"Miss Seraphina?" one of the palace maids called softly from beyond the chamber door.
I snapped out of my trance. "I'm fine. Just… preparing for the ceremony."
I hid the note inside a hollowed book, locked it in my personal chest, and exhaled slowly. Whoever they were, I wouldn't let them see me break. Not tonight.
The palace bloomed like a rose dipped in venom.
Spires were strung with golden silks that fluttered in the dusk breeze. Guests from every corner of Solara gathered in the high halls, dressed in their finest—feathers, velvet, shimmering chainmail lace—each detail a declaration of power.
The Gathering of Crowns occurred only once every five years. In theory, it was a reaffirmation of peace and diplomacy among the noble houses and vassal states. In truth, it was theater. Masks and monologues. Every smile concealed a knife.
And tonight, I was walking onto the stage with my throat bare.
I moved through the grand vestibule, heels clicking against marble. I wore a gown of twilight blue and silver thread, cinched tight at the waist with a corset of jet-black embroidery. My hair was pinned with obsidian combs shaped like wings.
Lyria walked beside me, radiant in violet, a subtle silver circlet woven into her braid. Her eyes scanned the crowd with soldier's precision, her smile reserved but piercing.
"You sure you want to do this?" she murmured, not looking at me directly.
"No," I whispered. "But I have to."
She squeezed my hand once before she disappeared into the sea of noblemen and ladies.
The main ballroom stretched endlessly, columns rising like cathedral towers, chandeliers blazing with enchanted light. I spotted diplomats, minor royals, foreign envoys—some familiar, some not.
And then him.
Alistair waited at the base of the marble staircase, a vision of icy calm in deep charcoal and crimson. His cloak was fastened with the Thorne sigil, and a blade sheathed at his hip—a silent reminder that he was not just a prince, but a weapon.
"Nice of you to come to the execution," he said under his breath when I reached him.
I tilted my head. "Will you cry at my funeral?"
He smirked. "Depends on if they serve wine."
The Queen entered to the sound of chiming bells.
Draped in a robe of black feathers threaded with gold, her crown was less a circlet and more a coiled viper—too intricate to be anything but menacing.
She stepped onto the high dais, raised her goblet, and her voice rang across the hall like silk torn by glass.
"To the people of Solara. To unity. To loyalty."
The nobles lifted their glasses in solemn mimicry.
I stood as she drank. My hands trembled—so slightly only I noticed—but I steadied them.
"I would also offer a toast," I said.
The words landed like a rock through stained glass.
Eyes turned. Murmurs rippled. Lyria's head snapped toward me across the ballroom. Alistair's jaw tensed. The Queen did not move, but her gaze sharpened.
"I raise my cup not to loyalty—nor to unity," I said, "but to truth. To freedom. To a future not bound in tradition, but forged in courage. To those who walk unseen, unheard… yet refuse to kneel."
Silence.
The kind that swallowed whole empires.
Then—one voice.
"To the future," Riven said from the eastern row, lifting his goblet.
Lyria followed. "To freedom."
Lord Thorne raised his glass without hesitation. Lady Maren, eyes narrowed in curiosity, did the same. One by one, others joined. Some slow. Some with conviction.
But not all.
Some glared. Others whispered into gloved hands. And the Queen—
The Queen's goblet remained lowered.
Her lips curled ever so slightly. "Bold words," she said, "from a girl who forgets her place."
I didn't blink. "I've simply remembered who I am."
Then—
Darkness.
The chandeliers extinguished in a blink.
Chaos.
Screams cracked through the hall like whips. Metal clanged. Somewhere near the eastern entrance, the sound of glass shattering. Panic spread like fire.
I felt a hand grab mine.
"Lyria?" I breathed.
But it wasn't her.
The grip was too small. Swift. Familiar in a way that scared me.
"Come with me," the masked figure whispered.
"I'm not leaving without—"
"No time."
I was pulled through the crowd, slipping past clumps of nobles and guards. We exited the ballroom through a servant's passage veiled in velvet.
The masked figure didn't hesitate, leading us down shadowed corridors. They moved with certainty—this wasn't their first infiltration.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Somewhere safe."
I yanked my hand free. "Safe isn't real."
They turned slowly. Their cloak fell back just enough for moonlight to catch the side of their face—barely. But their eyes… one green, glowing like emerald fire, the other scarred and sightless.
"You," I breathed. "You left the note."
They nodded.
"What do you want from me?"
"I want to keep you alive."
A crash—closer this time. The stairwell door blew inward.
Three shadows burst into the stairwell—dark leathers, no colors, no banners.
Assassins.
I was shoved behind the cloaked figure as twin daggers hissed from their sleeves.
The first attacker lunged—and was caught mid-air, blade plunged through his neck.
I didn't stay still.
I ducked low, drawing the slim dagger hidden beneath my gown. One attacker turned toward me. I feigned fear, then drove the blade into his side as he swung. He screamed. Collapsed.
The cloaked woman finished the last one—quick, clean, brutal.
When it was over, we stood panting, blood painting the cold stair tiles.
"You shouldn't have done that," she said.
"I don't like being helpless."
Slowly, she removed her mask.
Short dark hair. Dusky skin. A scar across her left eye, the iris clouded. But her right eye burned—green and defiant.
"I'm Nysa," she said. "I serve the Shadow Guard. Or I did. Until they betrayed me."
"Why help me?"
"Because you lit the match. Now someone has to make sure the fire spreads."
We didn't go back.
Instead, we slipped through lesser-used servants' halls to the abandoned west towers, places the Queen's loyalists had long dismissed.
There, among dust and crumbling brick, Nysa secured the bolted door. Outside, bells tolled. Fires flared in the lower gardens. The palace glowed red, as if already bleeding.
"They'll say it was an act of treason," Nysa murmured. "Some rebel uprising. They'll use it to clamp down harder."
"But people will remember what happened. What I said."
"Exactly."
I sank onto the cold floor, skirts pooling around me. My head throbbed. My heart did worse—ached in strange places I thought I'd buried.
"I thought I was ready," I said. "But I'm not."
Nysa didn't smile. "You're more ready than any royal I've ever seen."
I thought of Alistair. Lyria. Riven. The nobles who raised their glasses—and the ones who didn't.
"I won't survive this war by being inspiring."
"No. You'll survive by being relentless."
We sat in silence. Outside, the wind howled against ancient stone. My blood hadn't stopped rushing. My hands still trembled.
But in that dark, ruined tower, something new stirred in my chest.
Not fear. Not doubt.
Resolve.
Because for the first time in two lives—I wasn't alone in the dark.