Years had passed since the night Selene's world burned to ash and bone.
Time had not softened her grief or dulled the edges of her hatred. If anything, the passing seasons had sharpened both to a razor's edge. The girl who once wept among the smoking ruins of House Valen was gone, burned away as surely as the tapestries that had told her family's story. In her place stood a woman forged in loss and tempered by purpose, her true name buried with the family who had carried it for five centuries.
She had spent those years learning to survive in a world that showed no mercy to the powerless. She had begged for crusts in market squares, slept in hay lofts and abandoned shepherd's huts, worked her hands raw in fields and taverns. She had listened to every rumor, followed every whisper, gathering intelligence about the kingdom and its ruler like a spider spinning her web. Each humiliation, each hardship, each night spent shivering in the cold had only fed the fire that burned in her chest—the promise she had made in that field of dry grass as dawn broke over her murdered family.
Now, that long preparation was finally bearing fruit.
The capital's gates loomed before her like the jaws of some great beast, their iron-bound oak panels carved with intricate reliefs of roses twined with thorns—King Damian's personal sigil, adopted after his coronation to symbolize beauty defended by strength. The craftsmanship was exquisite, each petal and thorn rendered with such detail that they seemed to breathe in the shifting light. Above the archway, banners of black silk emblazoned with crimson roses snapped in the morning wind, their rich colors a stark contrast to the pale stone walls that surrounded the city.
Selene kept her hood drawn low over her face, the rough-spun wool of her cloak scratching against skin that had once known only silk and velvet. To the guards lounging beside the gate—men in leather jerkins bearing the rose sigil, pikes held with casual authority—she was nothing worth noting. Just another peasant girl from the provinces, drawn to the capital by rumors of work and the promise of steady coin.
It was a role she had practiced for months, studying the way common folk moved and spoke, the particular blend of deference and wariness they showed to their betters. She had callused her hands with honest labor, let the sun darken her skin, learned to walk with the slightly stooped shoulders of someone accustomed to bending beneath the weight of others' expectations.
She had chosen her new identity with the same care a smith might select steel for a blade. Mira—simple, forgettable, the sort of name that belonged to kitchen maids and seamstresses. A mask she could wear until the moment came to cast it aside and reveal the truth beneath.
The city that sprawled within those towering walls was a living thing, pulsing with energy and ambition. The main thoroughfare was wide enough for three carts to pass abreast, paved with smooth stones that had been laid down by master masons generations ago. Merchants called from their stalls, voices raised in musical cadences as they hawked everything from Vaelthorne spices that cost more than most folk earned in a year to rough-woven cloth dyed in cheerful yellows and blues.
Children darted between the legs of cart horses and sedan chairs, their laughter bright as silver bells as they played games of tag and hide-and-seek among the forest of adult legs. The air was thick with a dozen different scents—fresh bread from the bakers' quarter, salt-sharp fish from the harbor markets, the green smell of herbs hanging in bundles from apothecary stalls, and underneath it all, the distinctive odor of too many people living too close together.
Selene's gaze swept over it all with cool detachment, cataloging details that might prove useful later. She noted which streets were wide enough to allow quick movement, which alleys provided cover, where the watch stations were positioned. She wasn't here to marvel at the capital's prosperity or lose herself in the bustle of commerce. She had one purpose, singular and absolute—to end the life of the man who had destroyed everything she held dear.
The royal castle rose in the distance like a mountain of white marble and pale limestone, its towers reaching toward heaven as if the architect had been trying to touch the realm of the gods themselves. Golden banners flew from every spire, their silk surfaces catching the morning light and throwing it back in brilliant flashes that could be seen for miles. The sight of it should have intimidated her—this monument to royal power, this symbol of everything she had lost—but instead it only fed the cold fire in her chest.
Let Damian hide behind his walls of stone and steel. Let him surround himself with guards and courtiers and all the empty pageantry of kingship. In the end, he was still just a man, and men could die as easily as anyone else.
She made her way through the winding streets toward the castle's outer ward, where a line of hopeful servants waited beneath the watchful eye of a matronly woman whose iron-gray hair was pulled back in a severe bun. The woman's face had the weathered look of someone who had spent decades managing the chaos of castle life, and her voice carried the authority of long practice as she barked orders at the assembled crowd.
"You there, girl with the brown cloak," the woman snapped when Selene stepped forward, her tone suggesting she had little patience for dawdling. "Name?"
"Mira, if it please you, ma'am." Selene lowered her eyes in the gesture of respect she had seen a hundred times in taverns and markets.
The housekeeper looked her over with the calculating gaze of someone who had learned to judge character quickly and accurately. She noted the calluses on Selene's hands, the careful mending of her cloak, the way she held herself—not quite subservient enough to suggest broken spirit, but not so proud as to promise trouble.
"Ever scrubbed floors before?"
"Aye, ma'am. Stone and wood both."
"Ever carried a loaded tray up three flights of stairs without spilling so much as a drop?"
"Many times, ma'am."
The woman's hawk-like eyes narrowed slightly, testing. "Ever held your tongue when your betters say things that would make a saint curse?"
Selene hesitated just long enough to suggest she was thinking seriously about the question, then nodded slowly. "I can learn to bite it when need be, ma'am."
The housekeeper gave a curt grunt of approval, apparently satisfied with what she saw. She thrust a bundle of rough linen into Selene's arms with the efficiency of long practice.
"Uniform. There's a changing room behind the kitchens—ask for Bess, she'll show you where. You're kitchen staff for now, which means you answer to Cook and whatever gods gave her such a foul temper. Report to her within the hour, and step lively about it. We don't tolerate slow feet or clumsy hands in this household."
Selene bowed her head with practiced humility. "Yes, ma'am. Thank you for the chance, ma'am."
As she made her way toward the servants' quarters with the bundle tucked under her arm, she felt the weight of her new identity settling over her like a second skin. A servant girl was invisible in all the ways that mattered—beneath the notice of nobles, trusted with access to private spaces, privy to conversations that supposedly important people never thought to guard. It was perfect camouflage for someone who needed to move through the castle like a ghost.
Days blurred into weeks as she learned the rhythms of castle life. Her hands, already toughened by years of hard labor, grew accustomed to the sting of lye soap and the burn of hot water as she scrubbed pots until her knuckles cracked and bled. She carried heavy trays up winding stone staircases until her shoulders ached and her legs trembled with exhaustion. She learned to keep her head down and her face carefully blank, to listen far more than she spoke, to blend into the background like furniture that happened to move and breathe.
The castle was a world unto itself, a sprawling complex of halls and chambers that housed not just the royal family but hundreds of courtiers, servants, guards, and hangers-on. It whispered constantly with secrets—which lords owed money to which merchants, which ladies were conducting discrete affairs, which knights had gambling debts that made them vulnerable to pressure. Selene gathered these fragments of information like a miser hoarding gold, filing them away for future use.
She learned the schedules of the guards, the routines of the kitchen staff, the hidden passages that servants used to move through the castle without disturbing their betters. She memorized every twist and turn of the corridors, every shadowed alcove that might provide concealment, every window that offered a view of the royal apartments.
All the while, her rage simmered beneath the surface, patient but utterly unforgotten. Each task she completed, each humble bow she offered to some sneering noble, each night she spent on her narrow cot in the servants' quarters was just another step on the path toward the blade she would one day drive into Damian's heart.
One evening, as autumn painted the castle's gardens in shades of gold and crimson, she was assigned to carry wine into the great hall for the weekly feast. The chamber blazed with the light of a hundred beeswax candles mounted in silver sconces, their flames dancing across walls hung with tapestries that told the glorious history of the realm. Long tables of polished oak groaned beneath the weight of roasted meats and delicate pastries, while nobles in their finest silks and velvets lounged in high-backed chairs, their voices rising and falling in waves of laughter and argument.
Selene moved through the crowd like a shadow, her tray balanced carefully in her hands despite the way her heart hammered against her ribs. Tonight, she had been told by the head butler, the king himself would grace the feast with his presence. After months of preparation, she would finally lay eyes on the man who had haunted her dreams and shaped her purpose.
She told herself she was ready for this moment. That all her planning and patience had led to this single point where fantasy would meet reality. But as she took her position along the wall with the other serving staff, she could feel something fluttering in her chest that had nothing to do with anticipation and everything to do with fear.
The herald's voice cut through the noise of the feast like a blade through silk, rich and resonant with the weight of ceremony. "My lords and ladies, His Majesty, King Damian of House Thorne, First of His Name, Defender of the Realm!"
The great doors at the far end of the hall swung open with ceremonial slowness, revealing the figures beyond. Guards in gleaming mail preceded the royal party, their weapons polished to mirror brightness, their faces stern with the gravity of their duty.
And then he entered.
Selene dared to lift her eyes, and the world seemed to tilt beneath her feet.
Damian strode into the hall clad in a long cloak of midnight black trimmed with cloth-of-gold, the rich fabric falling in perfect lines from his broad shoulders. A circlet of white gold rested upon his brow, simple in design but unmistakably royal in its authority. He moved with the unconscious grace of someone born to command, his presence filling the vast space before he spoke a single word.
He was tall—taller than she had expected—with the kind of build that spoke of both strength and speed. His face was carved in strong, clean lines that might have belonged to one of the marble statues that graced the castle's courtyards, and his dark gold hair caught the candlelight as he walked. But it was his eyes that truly commanded attention—green as summer leaves and sharp with intelligence, missing nothing as they swept the assembled crowd.
The courtiers bowed low as he passed, a wave of silk and satin rippling through the hall like grain bending before the wind. Selene found herself curtsying along with the other servants, but her gaze remained fixed on the king's face, searching for some sign of the monster she had built in her imagination.
She had spent years picturing him as a creature of nightmare—cruel-faced and twisted by malice, his features marked by the evil that lurked in his heart. She had imagined cold eyes that delighted in suffering, a mouth that smiled at others' pain, hands that signed death warrants with casual indifference.
But the man before her was impossibly, devastatingly human.
Regal, yes. Untouchable in the way that only crowned heads could be. Dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with physical threat and everything to do with the absolute power he wielded with such apparent ease. But there was no visible cruelty in his bearing, no obvious malice in his expression as he acknowledged the bows of his subjects with gracious nods.
Her hands tightened around the wine tray until the pewter goblets rattled against each other with tiny chimes that might have been silver bells. The sound seemed impossibly loud in her ears, though she knew it was lost in the general noise of the feast.
For the first time in years, her sacred oath burned hot on her tongue, but alongside that familiar fire came something else—something that made her chest tight and her breathing shallow. Her body trembled with an emotion she didn't recognize and didn't want to name.
This was the man she had come to kill. This was the target of all her hatred and planning and desperate need for justice.
And he was nothing like what she had expected.