The city never slept. Its towers gleamed like blades, stabbing into the night sky. Power decided who lived at the top, and power was never inherited freely—it had to be seized, crushed out of rivals, protected with blood.
In one of those towers, the Ather mansion loomed, a palace of glass and stone where two little girls stood before their father. The room smelled of cigars and leather, the weight of empire pressing down on the carpet beneath their small feet.
"Look at me." His voice was thunder, his stare heavier than the marble pillars surrounding them. "You are Ather. This name will feed you, but it will also bury you if you falter."
The elder twin lifted her chin. Lunox's eyes were like dark glass—cold, unflinching. "I won't falter, Father."
Her sister, Freya, tilted her head, lips tugging into a mischievous smile even though her knees trembled. "If power is something to be taken," she said softly, "then I'll take it with a smile. People lower their guard when they trust you."
The man stared at them both, and for a fleeting moment, a shadow of pride flickered. "The moon and the sun. One cold, one blazing. The world will learn to bow to both."
Years carved their differences deeper. Lunox stayed close to the boardroom, memorizing figures and contracts, speaking little but seeing everything. Freya chose the ballroom, dancing through parties, charming allies their father could never buy. Two sides of the same dynasty—opposites, rivals, and yet inseparable.
And when their father's sudden death came, the empire did not crumble. It shifted, hard and sharp, into their hands. Lunox became CEO, Freya COO. Two young women on thrones men twice their age had coveted. They were beautiful. They were dangerous. And they were alone at the top.
Far from Ather's glittering world, another family ruled—a dynasty even older, but poisoned from within. Its patriarch was a man of unmatched cruelty, a tycoon whose wealth stretched across oceans. He had taken eight wives. Eight women, eight bloodlines, countless heirs. Each child was a pawn and a rival, raised not with love but with expectation: to fight, to betray, to outlast, until only one remained worthy of the crown.
In a quiet wing of the sprawling estate, away from the chandeliers and banquets, a boy sat with his mother. She was the eighth wife—the one the others mocked, the one with no seat at the patriarch's table, a woman spoken of only in whispers.
He was younger than most of his half-brothers. At sixteen, he was already taller than her, his shoulders wiry with promise, but in that house, he was invisible.
"Don't look at me like that," his mother whispered one night, when he returned from a dinner where no one spoke his name. Her hands were soft as they cupped his cheeks, her eyes trembling yet fierce. "You are not less. You are not forgotten."
He didn't answer. Words meant nothing in that house.
"You listen to me," she pressed, voice breaking. "One day, they will see you. One day, they will regret overlooking you. You are my son. And you are stronger than among all of them."
The boy's silver-grey eyes burned in the candlelight. Not with tears, not with weakness. With hunger. With something sharper than ambition—something carved from being overlooked, underestimated, cast aside.
He would not be the chosen heir. He would not be the one paraded at galas. But he would carve his own place in the world.
He was younger. He was unwanted. And fate, cruel and playful, was already setting his path toward two queens who ruled under the name Ather.