They gave her one hour.
Sixty minutes to pack up a life, say goodbye, and prepare to be forgotten.
Elira stood in the bedroom she'd shared with her mother and Davi since she was small, her hands shaking as she folded a thin cloak and tucked it into the satchel. Her fingers brushed the carved wooden wolf her father had made her before he disappeared into the war. She slipped it into the bag without thinking.
Outside, hoofbeats thudded like a funeral march. The king's men waited with iron patience. She hated them for it.
Her mother clung to her at the door, fingers digging into Elira's arms like she could hold her back through sheer will. "Don't speak of magic. Don't speak of dreams. Don't let them see your fear."
"I won't," Elira whispered, even though she didn't know if it was true.
Davi didn't cry. He held her gaze like a mirror, wide-eyed and ancient. "You'll come back," he said.
She nodded. She lied.
Then she turned away.
The cart they loaded her into wasn't gilded or ceremonial—it was a prisoner's cage on wheels, its wooden bars stained from storms and worse. She wasn't alone, either. Two other girls huddled at the far end, one already crying, the other with a face like a closed door. No one spoke. No one asked names.
The soldiers didn't look at them as people. Just offerings. Tokens.
The road out of Hearth Hollow was one she'd walked all her life. Past the blackened wheat fields, the collapsed windmill, the bones of once-proud statues half-swallowed by vines. As the cart creaked away, Elira stared at the ruins and wondered what part of herself she was leaving behind.
By nightfall, the hills turned to stone.
They reached the capital the next morning. Velmore was a city choked in shadow, its towers clawing at the sky like dying trees. The gates swallowed them whole, and for a moment, Elira could feel something pressing against her skin—like invisible hands, reaching.
The palace loomed at the center, not white and shining like the stories claimed, but gray and crumbling, its walls veined with ivy and rot. At the gates, a line of girls stood beneath a great arch. Maybe twenty. Maybe more. All chosen. All silent.
The guard shoved Elira toward them.
A herald appeared—a man with slick black hair and gold rings on every finger. He didn't smile as he addressed them.
"You have been summoned to preserve peace," he said, as if peace were a word with meaning. "Tomorrow, one of you will be taken to Draemor. The rest will return. There is no need for fear."
The girls didn't believe him. Neither did Elira.
That night, she didn't sleep. She watched the stars through the iron lattice of her chamber window and wondered if Prince Kaelen was watching them too—from whatever twisted throne he kept in the cursed land.
She'd heard the tales. That he bore the face of a beast, that his voice could drive men mad, that no bride had ever lasted more than a season.
Elira touched the wolf carving in her satchel.
She did not believe in fairy tales.
But she believed in monsters.
What happens when they arrive in Draemor? Let's find out.....