Chapter 1 — The Mark of the Moon
Part 1 — Silk and a Strange Sky
The first thing I felt was silk against my cheek.
Not the slippery market kind. This silk breathed, warm where I was warm, cool where the air touched it. When I opened my eyes, I wasn't under my low, peeling ceiling. A painted sky arched above me—deep blue with thin clouds, constellations gilded so fine they caught the light and held it. A chandelier hung from the center like a quiet galaxy, crystals chiming whenever the air moved.
I sat up too fast. Curtains the color of poured wine framed windows taller than a house. Outside: spires like raised spears, domed roofs bright as coins, bridges arching over silver canals. The air smelled faintly of jasmine and smoke, the kind of scent that clings to celebrations and secrets.
This was not my apartment. This wasn't my city. Maybe not even my world.
"Hello?" My voice landed small in the huge room.
The door opened with a hush. Three women entered in gowns the color of deep water. Pearls threaded their braids; their expressions were careful the way hands are careful around glass.
One bowed, palms together. "My lady is awake."
"Your—what?" I pulled the sheet up, as if cotton could fend off this dream. "Where am I?"
"In the Moon Palace," the lead woman said, as if naming the weather. "Capital of the Halcyon Empire."
I laughed once—too bright, unconvincing. "No. I was home. There was a storm. A horn, lights—and then—"
Memory came sharp: headlights, rain, metal shrieking, my name ripped out of my throat. I grabbed my ribs, expecting pain. Nothing. Just breath, too quick.
"Please," I said. "Tell me this is a hospital with a very dramatic decorating budget."
The woman's gaze flicked to my wrist. "May I?"
I nodded, because pretending to understand was easier than admitting I didn't. She took my hand, turning it gently.
That's when I saw it: a thin sigil on the inside of my wrist, two crescent moons threaded together, silver-faint and somehow… alive. Warm under my skin.
"What did you do to me?" I whispered.
"It is not ink," she said softly. "It is a Mark."
"A mark of what?"
"Of choosing."
The word landed like a dropped stone. "By who?"
"By the moon." She bowed a fraction deeper, as if the name itself were holy. "My lady was found at the river gate at last bell. The royal seers examined the Mark before dawn. The Empress has decreed it formal." She lifted her chin. "You are the Fated Bride."
My laugh split in the middle. "Bride to who?"
The three women looked down at the same time. It felt rehearsed. The lead one whispered, "To His Highness, Crown Prince Kael."
The name meant nothing. The weight behind it pressed the air thin.
"And what's wrong with him?" I asked, because something always is.
Silence frayed. Beyond the windows, bells tolled three slow notes. The floorboards seemed to hum with them.
When the woman finally spoke, her voice was barely a thread. "Every woman who has touched the Prince has died."
The chandelier chimed—just a soft music of glass, but it sounded like warning.
"That's not a curse," I said. "That's a death sentence."
"The Empress believes the Mark is mercy," she answered quickly. "It means the moon has given the Prince one chance to live without killing."
"And if I'm not mercy?"
Her eyes didn't rise to meet mine. "Then you will be miracle."
Part 2 — Rules for Not Dying
They moved like a chorus that had practiced for years. One wheeled in a low copper tub steaming with citrus and bay. Another unfolded linens white as breath. The third carried boxes of combs and pins that flashed like little knives.
"We must prepare you," the lead woman said. "The Empress will summon you soon."
"For what? A wedding? A wake?"
"For survival."
They bathed me. The water smelled like lemons and wet stone. Hands washed and rinsed with practiced care. The lead woman spoke while they worked, her cadence steady, like reciting a prayer.
"Rule the First: Do not touch the Prince's bare skin until the blessing is sealed."
"Blessing?"
"The wedding." She wrung water from my hair. "Rule the Second: Do not draw blood in his presence. Even a pinprick invites the curse to drink."
The other girls stilled when she said curse, as if the word could hear.
"Rule the Third: Do not speak his name at midnight."
"That's superstition," I said, clinging to something familiar.
"In this palace," she answered, meeting my eyes in the mirror, "superstition is the language of survival."
They dressed me in layers: linen first, whispering over skin; a silk undergown cool as river shade; an outer dress weighty with embroidery—tiny birds stitched in flight, silver thread catching in the light. A sash crossed and tied. A chain settled at my collarbone, opal at its center—a small moon trapped in stone.
They left my wrist bare. The Mark pulsed once, warm as a breath.
"Your name," I asked. My voice needed something to hold.
"Sera," she said.
"Sera," I repeated, a knot tied in moving water. "How many before me?"
Her hands paused the smallest fraction. "Five."
I swallowed. "How?"
"Different ways," she said. "But touch came first."
"And you think I… won't break?"
Sera's mouth softened without turning into a smile. "I think the moon doesn't make mistakes."
"And if she has a sense of humor?"
"Then laugh second," she said quietly, pinning my hair. "Not first."
A rap sounded—a precise, polite knock. A man in dove-gray stood in the doorway with a scroll and a face that could iron shirts. "The Empress awaits. The Fated Bride will present herself."
Sera tightened the sash, then squeezed my shoulder for exactly the amount of time you can get away with in a palace. "Breathe," she said. "And endure."
Part 3 — Halls of Silver Water
The Moon Palace was a geography lesson in power. We crossed a courtyard paved in dark stone veined with silver; crossed bridges over slender canals where white fish turned like dropped coins; passed gardens where trees were trained into half-moons. Servants moved like wind at our edges. Guards stood like the idea of iron.
I tried not to stare and failed. Tapestries along the hallway told stories in thread: ships with sails like wings, mountains with temples carved into their bones, a woman in a mask holding a bowl of light.
"The Halcyon Empire," the man in gray recited without checking notes, "stretches from the Jade Steppe to the Salt Range. The Moon Palace sits at the confluence of four canals and three roads. The Empress rules in winter and in law. The Crown Prince holds the border and the blade."
"Does he hold funerals too?" I asked before I could stop myself.
The man's mouth did not believe in humor. "You will curb that tone, or it will be curbed for you."
Ahead, a pair of doors of carved blackwood stood open like a mouth. Before we reached them, whispers slipped from an alcove—a rustle of silk, a clink of bangles, the hush of people trying not to be heard.
"…the Mark glowed? In front of the seers?"
"…the river brought her. That must mean—"
"…or it means the moon grew tired of bleeding our daughters."
A woman stepped out at the edge of my vision: older than Sera, eyes lined in kohl, mouth like a drawn line. She looked me up and down as if the truth were written somewhere on my hem. "Pretty," she said. "Pretty breaks the same as plain."
Sera, shadow-quiet behind me, breathed, "Lady Naya," and the woman faded back, leaving perfume and warning behind.
At another turn, we passed a shrine no higher than my knee: a bowl of water, a crescent of hammered tin, three rice grains, a scrap of ribbon. Someone had left a child's marble beside it, blue shot through with light. I wanted to kneel. I didn't know how.
We reached the final hallway. The ceiling rose and rose until it was theory. The floor became glossy black stone that held the room like a mirror. I saw myself small in all that shine—hair pinned, dress heavy, eyes too bright.
"Do I bow?" I asked, because falling on purpose is better than falling by accident.
"You kneel," the man said. "And you don't speak unless spoken to. You will address Her Grace as 'Your Majesty' or 'Your Grace.' You will keep your gaze lowered."
"What if I faint?" I said.
"Then faint beautifully," he answered, and for the first time I thought maybe he could smile, if it ever occurred to him.
Two guards crossed their spears and then drew them back. "The Fated Bride," one announced.
"The Empress," said the other, "grants audience."
Part 4 — Winter on a Throne
The throne room made sound behave. The low murmur of courtiers, the soft chime of crystal, the faint patter of water from hidden rills—all of it gathered and settled instead of echoing. Light fell in straight lines from high windows, laying bright bands across the floor like rules.
The Empress sat as if the chair had been built around her: still, exact, inevitable. Her hair was braided like a crown of night. Her gown was black edged in pale silver, a winter sky sewn into cloth. Her face did not announce anything. The room waited for her to feel.
I knelt. The stone was cold through the layers of dress. I kept my gaze low and saw the Empress's slippered feet, the hem of her gown, the line where shadow began.
"Rise," she said. Her voice wasn't loud. It didn't have to be.
I stood. The opal at my throat flashed once, catching light. The Mark under my skin warmed, a tiny second sun.
The Empress tilted her head the smallest degree. "Your name."
"Eva," I said, and tasted the lie. The truth of my other life felt like something this room would swallow.
"Eva," she repeated, testing the shape. She lifted two fingers. An attendant stepped forward with a shallow bowl of water clear enough to make the idea of water jealous. The surface reflected a moon that shouldn't be there. It wasn't night. It felt like the water didn't care.
The Empress touched that reflection and flicked droplets toward me. Cold kissed my cheeks and the inside of my wrists. The Mark flared—silver bright, then banked again.
"The river chose," she said. "The moon agreed."
Something loosened in the room, then tightened again as the back doors opened.
A line of soldiers in dusk-blue entered and fanned to either side. Their armor was quiet, their faces set. Between them, a figure in black walked forward with the world parting without asking. He moved like a fact.
Crown Prince Kael.
He was not beautiful like paintings; he was exact like edges. Dark hair pulled back with a leather tie, high collar, coat without ornament save a crescent clasp. His eyes were a steadiness you could cut yourself on. He did not glance at the courtiers. He looked once at the Empress and then at me.
It felt like being measured by someone who had built the ruler.
"Your Highness," the man in gray intoned from somewhere near my elbow, "the river brought her marked. The seers confirmed. The Empress decreed."
Kael stopped two paces away. That close, the air changed—denser, as if the room had remembered a storm. I could see the fine scar that crossed his thumb knuckle, the smallest imperfection, proof he bled.
He looked at my wrist. The Mark warmed under his gaze like a shy thing remembering its own name. He returned his eyes to mine.
"What is your name?" he asked. His voice was low and unhurried, mountain-dark.
"Eva," I said. The room listened to the lie and didn't flinch.
"From where?"
"Far," I said, because there wasn't a word for from before.
A flicker—an almost-smile that had lost its nerve. "Do you understand what happens if you are not what that mark claims you are?"
"I die," I said. "Or you do."
The hush sharpened. Somewhere to my left, fabric rasped as someone shifted. Sera, in the shadow of a pillar, pressed her fingers together.
Kael lifted his right hand. Black leather glove, plain. He held it between us like a bridge. The man in gray inhaled too quickly.
"Protocol—" he began.
"I am protocol," the Prince said without looking away from me. "If you intend to be my wife, we begin with truth."
Glove meant no skin. It should have been easy. It wasn't. Not with every rule I'd just learned knotted into the tendons of my hands.
I lifted my palm. The opal at my neck flickered—a trapped star. The Mark tingled. Kael didn't blink.
I set my hand against his gloved one.
The contact was nothing and everything. Leather under my skin. His grip precise: not cruel, not kind. The room exhaled a fraction, a sound like a prayer halfway remembered.
The water in the bowl shivered.
Kael released my hand. The glove creaked quietly. He lifted his left hand.
Bare.
No leather. No barrier. A palm and fingers, warm toned, tendons fine under skin, that small scar across his thumb knuckle again. The curse sat there like a sleeping animal deciding whether to wake.
Sera's lips formed my name without sound. The man in gray forgot how to breathe.
"Do you trust your mark," the Prince asked, voice softer and therefore worse, "or do you trust your fear?"
His bare palm hovered an inch from mine. The air between us felt thin enough to tear.
I didn't move. The Empress did not speak.
The bowl's moon rippled. The chandelier answered with a thin, bright chime.
My hand shook. I hated that it shook. I thought of the five before me. I thought of Sera's "Endure." I thought of the painted sky above a bed that wasn't mine and a city built on water and rules.
I lowered my hand, inch by dangerous inch.
The last space between our palms held its breath.
—and the doors at the far end slammed, a voice cutting the room like a blade:
"Your Majesty! An omen on the eastern canal!"
The sound shattered the moment. My fingers hovered a hair above his, heat trembling there like lightning that hadn't chosen a path.
Kael's eyes didn't leave mine.
"Later," he said, as if the word could command fate.
The Empress turned her head a degree toward the messenger. "Speak."
And my hand—my disobedient, living hand—still hovered in a future that might kill me.
[End Chapter 1]