Most people forget my face within the hour.
Not because I'm ugly, heavens no. I'm what they call… "pleasantly ordinary." Brown hair, brown eyes, fair height. Handsome enough that tavern girls don't spit in my ale, but not so handsome that noblemen want me executed for breathing near their daughters.
And to me? That's perfect. Forgettable is profitable. At least, that's the motto I recite when I look in the mirror every morning. A man who looks like every other man can slip through doors, slide coins from purses, talk his way into banquets and out of dungeons. A man like me can be no one… and everyone.
But I wasn't always this—what do they call me now? Sweet-talking, smooth-handed, half-thief, half-gentleman? A swindler, perhaps. I used to be a boy with quick fingers and quicker ideas. While the other brats were bruising their knees chasing a leather ball through the mud, I built things. Bridges of wood scraps, towers of stone, machines that spun when you poured water in. By twelve, I was repairing roofs for coins. By fifteen, I was sketching fortresses. By eighteen, they pinned a title on me: Master Builder of the Empire.
Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Trust me—it pays less than it sounds.
Still, I built cities. Walls that still stand, bridges caravans cross, keeps that kings claim as their own. And somewhere between all that stone and sweat, I started slipping coins out of the ledgers. Just a little at first—enough for a loaf, a cloak, a few candles. Then more. A bag here, a jewel there. Never too much, never too little. Just enough to keep the poor from starving and myself from looking too saintly.
Because here's the thing: people remember saints. They sing about saints. And me? I wanted to be forgettable.
So no, I wasn't robbing the Empire. I was, let's say, "adjusting payments." The way I see it, a coin in my pocket buys bread for three families and a pair of boots for a child who'd otherwise freeze in the winter. And if that same coin was rotting in a duke's treasury, then I'd say the gods themselves would prefer my version of bookkeeping.
But lately… my purse has been too light. And when you've got more mouths to feed than your own, a light purse feels heavier than chains.
So I told myself: bigger game. If I wanted to keep up my little redistribution of wealth—and my taste for wine, dice, and the occasional feather mattress—I'd need a fountain, not a stream. A place where gold poured like rain.
And where else, if not the wealthiest of the wealthy in all Asterion?
The Duchess of the North.
Seraphina Evaelith Ebonveil.
A name wrapped in silk and shadow. They said her lands bloomed with eternal spring and glistened with wondrous winters. They said her coffers overflowed with enough wealth to drown a man. They also said she hadn't stepped outside her Keep in three years, that her beauty could turn men to stone, and that her heart was colder than the frost on her mountains.
Witch, saint, ghost—take your pick. Every tavern had a different tale.
One drunk insisted she kept the corpses of her suitors frozen under her floorboards. Charming. Another swore she was dead and her servants were running the duchy like puppeteers. The dreamers whispered she was lovelier than dawn and crueler than midnight, with golden hair and eyes sharp enough to cut glass.
Me? I didn't believe any of them. Not really. But I didn't need the truth. I just needed a way in.
For weeks I chased rumors and shadows. And I was ready to give up—curse the whole plan, go back to picking pockets and charming merchants' daughters—when fate, dressed in black and navy, walked right past me.
A butler. Formal, upright, shoes shining like mirrors. But it wasn't him I noticed first. It was the pin.
A golden rose.
The sigil of Ebonveil.
My heart stuttered.
"Got you," I muttered. "My golden ticket."
I followed the carriage, through markets, down roads, over stone bridges, until there it was. Rising against the northern sky like a dream carved from ice and stone: the Ebonveil Castle. Time had worn at it, yes, but the grandeur remained—glittering in the pale light of winter like a fortress plucked from a fairy tale.
Of course, the knights told me to shove off the moment I stepped too close.
So I did what any resourceful swindler would do: found a wall, tested the stones, and started climbing.
For the record, scaling frozen stone is not as romantic as the bards make it sound. My boots slipped. My fingers burned. At one point, I dangled like a fish on a hook, cursing my life choices and promising the gods I'd never gamble again if they let me live through the night.
And then… I felt it.
A gaze. Heavy, sharp, colder than the frost beneath my hands.
I looked up. And for the first time in years, I forgot how to breathe.
She was there.
Not a rumor, not a tale. A woman in the flesh, framed by the pale light of her balcony. Golden hair like sunlight caught in silk, eyes like winter skies, her face a sculpture too perfect for this world. But her expression… her expression was ice. No warmth, no pity. Only silence, as though she could turn me to stone just by looking.
The Ice Queen of the North.
Seraphina Evaelith Ebonveil.
And me, Cassian Deylinn—swindler, Master Builder, accidental philanthropist, and occasional idiot—dangling from her wall like a fool.
"Blast me to Kalum and back…" I whispered, grinning despite the frostbite biting my fingers. "I think I just found my duchess."