Drip… drip… drip…
A slow, hollow echo pulled Lira toward consciousness. She expected the hiss of a wrecked engine, the wail of sirens. Instead she tasted copper and damp stone. Her eyelids fluttered open to shadows.
She lay on straw, wrists shackled, ankles chained.
Hospital restraints? No. These manacles were forged iron, their rings etched with strange red symbols that glowed as if painted in embers. She wore no jeans, no hoodie—only a torn gray shift that left her shoulders cold.
Heart jack‑hammering, she stumbled upright. The cell walls sweated moisture; torches sputtered beyond rusted bars. Every breath hung white in the air.
"This is a dream," she whispered. But the chain jerked her arms with brutal weight, and the cold bit her bare feet.
A memory surfaced—no, not her memory. A ballroom gilded in gold, nobles whispering behind feathered fans…
"Lady Irinel Valehart will ruin us all—"
Names and faces tumbled across her vision, none belonging to Los Angeles, but each carved so deep they felt older than bone.
Bootsteps echoed. Two guards in black‑and‑silver armor halted outside the cell. One unlocked the door. "On your feet, traitor."
"Wait—" Lira tried, but a gauntleted hand clamped on her elbow. A chain was hooked between her cuffs, and she was yanked into the corridor.
They marched her uphill through twisting passages glazed with centuries of soot. On the walls, brass sconce‑plates bore sigils of serpents curled around suns. Panic threatened to claw through her ribs. Car accident… hallucination… coma. None of those explanations survived contact with the iron around her wrists.
In the blink of an eye, a modern woman had awakened in someone else's body—days before that body's execution.
The tunnel ended at a rune‑barred doorway. A gaoler muttered a counter‑spell; crimson glyphs crawled like living sparks before fading. The door groaned inward, disgorging torchlight and oppressive heat.
A round chamber awaited, lit by a single brazier hung far overhead. At its center, rising like a sacrificial altar, lay a slab of black obsidian veined in blood‑red crystal. Shackles jutted from every side.
Balconies circled the upper walls, crowded with nobles draped in silk. Their whispers slid across Lira's skin like knives: "Villainess," "regicide," "burn her."
A cleric in scarlet robes stood before the altar. "Lady Irinel Valehart," he intoned, voice amplified by the chamber's cruel acoustics, "you stand accused of sedition, high treason, and forbidden sorcery. Have you any confession?"
Lira's heartbeat thundered. She opened her mouth—and heard a voice that was hers and not hers say, "You condemn the wrong woman."
Gasps fluttered. The priest's smile curdled. "We shall judge that. Bind her."
The guards shoved her forward. The obsidian burned with impossible cold when her back met its surface. Shackles clamped over wrists, ankles, throat. Red sigils ignited, threading under her skin like molten wire.
The priest began a guttural chant. Light raced across the altar, forming a cage of fire. A hooded headsman hefted an axe that gleamed star‑silver.
Overhead, on the grandest balcony, sat a regal woman in gold brocade—the Empress, cold as a polished blade. Her eyes glittered like frost.
The axe rose.
Two deaths crashed together in Lira's mind: headlights and steel; fire and stone. She gasped, tasting iron—
"Stop."
A single word cracked through the court. The axe froze mid‑air; the headsman trembled.
Boots strode from the far archway, echoing deliberate authority. A man stepped into the brazier's cone of light. He wore armor scaled like onyx dragon hide, a crimson cloak billowing behind him. Raven hair brushed a high collar. But it was his eyes—liquid gold, burning from within—that silenced every breath.
Crown Prince Kaelith Dravenhart.
Whispers turned to fearful hush.
He surveyed the tableau—altar, priest, prisoner—with glacial composure. "Unshackle her."
The priest stiffened. "Your Highness, the Imperial sentence—"
"I am the Imperial sentence." Kaelith's tone was unhurried, but sparks crackled at the edges of each syllable. "If you doubt, test me."
Silence. Keys jingled in shaking hands. Irons sprang open; the sigils dimmed. Lira slid from the slab, legs wobbling.
The prince remained still until she found her footing. Only then did he speak, not to the priest but to the court. "Lady Valehart leaves with me, alive and unharmed. I invoke the Right of Draconic Claim."
A collective gasp. That ancient prerogative allowed the dragon‑blooded heir to seize any person or asset deemed vital to crown security—unchallengeable even by the Empress.
From her balcony, the Empress's voice drifted, silk over ice. "My son, surely you have considered appearances?"
Kaelith did not glance up. "Appearances bend to will. Not the other way around."
He raised his hand. The guards hesitated—but obeyed.
The chains dropped.
Lira collapsed onto her side, gasping. Her skin burned where the metal had seared it.
Kaelith knelt beside her.
He reached out, as if to steady her.
And she touched him.
Just fingertips. Nothing more.
But the moment their skin met—
The air cracked.
Kaelith hissed—and fell back, clutching his chest.
Scales shimmered across his arm.
The fire at the edges of the room flickered blue.
Whispers rose.
"He's cursed—"
"Not now—"
"He's changing—"
Kaelith's jaw clenched. His body shook.
And Lira, somehow, without thinking, touched his hand again.
The scales retreated.
The fire calmed.
The silence was deafening.
Kaelith stared at her.
"You… calmed it."
"I don't know what I did," she whispered. "I just—"
He took her wrist. Not roughly.
But not gently, either.
He looked up at the Empress.
"Your Majesty," he said. "This woman is under my protection. She is now—my wife."
The silence broke like a mirror.
The Empress rose to her full height.
"You overstep."
"I command your armies."
"And I wear the crown."
Kaelith's grip on Lira's wrist didn't loosen.
"She carries Irinel's blood. But her soul… is not the same. You said it yourself—the ritual failed. If she is not Irinel, then she has committed no crime. And if she is—then she calmed the dragon's curse. The Empire needs her."
Lira's mind raced.
What the hell was happening?
What curse?
What marriage?
But Kaelith's eyes met hers again—and something burned in them.
Not kindness.
Not yet.
But heat.
Possibility.
The Lantern Hall
They wound through a corridor lined with pewter lanterns. Somewhere below their feet, the roar of the brazier faded, replaced by the steady pulse of Kaelith's footsteps.
Only when they reached a secluded alcove did he halt. He turned, studying her with that unsettling molten gaze. Up close, the heat of his skin rolled like a forge—yet it calmed the chill coiled around her heart.
"You begged no mercy," he said.
"I doubted it would be given."
"Good." His lips twitched—almost approval. "I require allies, not supplicants."
He lifted a gauntlet, thumb brushing the red grooves the shackles had left on her wrist. The contact sparked warmth that sank to her bones, dulling the sting.
"You are not the woman the court expects," he murmured.
"You saved me," he said.
She laughed once, bitter. "I didn't even know who I was."
"You touched me. And it stopped."
"What stopped?"
He raised his hand. Rolled back the sleeve.
The skin there shimmered—bronze and black, scaled like a serpent's hide.
"The curse," he said.
"I don't understand."
"Irinel was my only anchor. Her magic… it soothed the beast. When she died, it worsened. But you—" He paused. "You steadied it."
"I'm not her."
"I know."
His voice softened.
"But you feel like her. You burn like her."
Lira's heart thudded.
This man—this prince, this stranger—had spared her life. Claimed her as wife.
Because she calmed something inside him.
And because the court believed she was someone else.
"Why did you stop the execution?" she asked.
He didn't answer right away.
Then: "Because when I looked into your eyes, I didn't see the end of something."
He stepped closer.
"I saw the beginning."
She swallowed.
His hand brushed hers again.
No fire this time. Just warmth.
Dangerous warmth.
He tilted his head. "Tell me your true name."
The question dangled between them like a blade. To speak Lira Morgan felt like dragging her dead world into this impossible one. Yet to live a lie forever…
"Lira," she whispered.
"Lira," he repeated, tasting the foreign syllables. "Then hear your options, Lira Valehart. Publicly, I require a wife to anchor my claim and thwart my enemies. Privately, I require… silence within my blood." His gaze flared, as though a dragon's heartbeat pulsed beneath his ribs. "When I stepped into that chamber, the curse inside me calmed for the first time in a decade. Explain that, and you will have bought more than your life."
The corridor seemed to narrow. "I can't explain anything. I only know I died on a road that doesn't exist here and woke up in chains."
His expression didn't change, but something in his eyes—recognition?—softened. "Then we barter. Marry me, play the devoted consort, and you will have protection, tutors, and every scroll in the imperial library to search for answers. Refuse, and the priest will reclaim you before nightfall."
The ultimatum was ironclad. Lira's pulse hammered against fresh bruises. She thought of twisted metal, of a life already lost, of the axe-blade frozen above this borrowed throat.
Survival first.
Understanding later.
"Very well," she said, forcing strength into shaking knees. "But I will not be a silent pawn."
Kaelith's smile flickered—sharper than any sword, yet oddly genuine. "I would not marry one."
He offered his hand—bare now, gauntlet removed—palm up, waiting.
Lira placed her hand in his, felt his fingers close with surprising gentleness.
"Then stand tall," he said, voice low but fierce. "Because the court will strike harder now that you breathe."
He guided her on. At the corridor's end, wrought‑iron doors burst open to reveal the Grand Hall, ablaze with chandeliers and stupefied nobles. Gasps rippled as the Dragon Prince escorted the villainess who should have died.
Lira drew a breath, lifted her chin, and matched his stride.
I was fated to die twice tonight, she thought, but somehow I'm still here.
And if she had anything to say about it, the woman who walked into that inferno would never again accept the story others wrote for her.