Chapter 1: The Night the Princess Froze a Man
Okay, let's be real: I was having a truly spectacularly bad day even before the assassins showed up.
The Grand Sun Gala was my personal version of hell, just with better champagne and significantly more glitter. The Hall of a Thousand Suns wasn't just a name; it was a promise. A promise of endless, relentless, eye-searing golden light. It was like being trapped inside a giant, enthusiastic paperweight. Every inch of the place gleamed, from the marble floors you could see your terrified reflection in, to the ceiling that shot concentrated sunshine directly into my retinas.
And in the middle of it all, trying to look like I belonged: me. Princess Elara, the human equivalent of a slightly wilted houseplant in a room full of prize-winning orchids.
My brother Theron was, of course, the star of the show. Over by the dessert table, he was making a tiny, glowing eagle do loop-de-loops for a bunch of wide-eyed foreign diplomats. "A trifle!" he was saying, in that voice that was all charm and dental hygiene. "Just a little focus!"
I could do focus. My focus was currently dedicated to the single, monumental task of not accidentally turning the head of the Tarkanian Trade Minister into a popsicle.
See, I have a secret. It's not a fun one, like a hidden tattoo or a secret talent for jazz flute. My secret is that deep inside me, where normal people have a spleen or a sense of self-worth, I have a knot of something cold and terrifyingly bright. Starlight. Not the nice, twinkly, romantic kind. The kind that exists in the screaming vacuum of space. The kind my great-great-aunt Allegra supposedly used to accidentally flash-freeze an entire invading fleet before she also, you know, went completely off her rocker and tried to rearrange the constellations "for aesthetic reasons."
So, my entire life's work was Containment. Don't get too excited. Don't get too scared. Don't feel too much. Be small. Be quiet. Be the slightly disappointing princess everyone expects.
"Elara, my dear! You're not even glowing."
I flinched. My cousin Gavril materialized at my elbow, holding two flutes of bubbly wine like they were trophies. He had a smile that looked like it had been professionally whitened and starched. He was what would happen if a used chariot salesman won the genetic lottery.
"Headache, Gavril," I mumbled, taking the glass because it gave me something to do with my hands. "The light's a bit... enthusiastic today."
"Of course," he said, his eyes doing that dismissive slide from my simple silver gown to my probably-frizzing hair. "It must be so taxing. All this... radiance." He drifted away, already scanning the room for someone more useful.
I took a gulp of champagne. It was delicious. It did nothing for the low-grade, panicky hum in my chest, the one that felt like a trapped hornet made of frost. That was the other fun part of my secret. Crowds, strong emotions, and apparently, really aggressive interior lighting made the cold knot inside me stir. It wanted out. My job was to remind it that we had a lease, and it was not allowed to redecorate the world in glacial chic.
I was concentrating so hard on not exploding that I almost missed the subtle change in the room. Not a sound. More like... a dip in temperature that had nothing to do with me. A shiver that wasn't mine traced a path down my spine. I glanced around, my heart doing a little tap-dance of alarm.
Nothing. Just a hundred glittering people being important. I was being paranoid. Probably.
Which is, of course, the exact moment I decided to embody my role as Royal Disaster.
I went to put my glass down on a passing servant's tray. My wide, stupid, silver sleeve caught the stem of another, full glass on a decorative column.
Clink.
A hush fell over our little corner of the party. All eyes swiveled to me as the crystal flute did a graceful, slow-motion pirouette off the column and met the marble floor with a sound like all my hopes for a dignified life shattering.
Crash. Sploosh.
Pale, expensive wine shot across the floor, drenching the exquisite satin slippers of Countess Ellendra, a woman who had perfected the art of looking down her nose even when she was looking straight at you.
A wave of titters, quickly smothered behind gloves and fans, washed over me. My face felt like it was on actual solar fire. "Oh, stars, I'm so sorry—" I bent to help the servant who was already scooping up the shards, my vision blurring. Not from magic. From good old-fashioned, humiliating tears.
"Please, Princess, don't trouble yourself," Countess Ellendra said, her voice syrup-sweet. "We know these things happen." To you, her tone added, clear as a bell.
It was the perfect, soul-crushing distraction. So perfect, in fact, that none of us noticed the main doors until they weren't there anymore.
The explosion wasn't loud. It was a whump of displaced air, followed by a rolling cloud of black smoke that swallowed the glorious sunlight at the entrance. From the darkness, men in matte black armor poured in, moving with a terrible, silent purpose. The sigil on their shoulders—a sun broken into shards.
Umbra League. Shadow terrorists. Here. At the gala.
The screaming started for real.
Chaos is a weird thing. It slows down. I saw Theron's happy little sun-eagle vanish as he threw himself in front of our father, a shield of raw daylight flashing into existence around them. I saw Lyra try to throw a net of pretty lights at an attacker, only to be backhanded so hard she spun into a buffet table, sending a tower of petit fours avalanching to the floor.
And I saw one of them, a mountain of a man with a blade that seemed to eat the light, smash through Theron's guard. My brother's own sword of light flickered and died. He stumbled, off-balance, his eyes wide. The mountain-man raised his shadowy blade.
And I stopped thinking.
The panic, the humiliation, the constant, grinding pressure—it all fused into one white-hot point of no.
The careful walls I'd spent a lifetime building in my mind didn't so much collapse as develop a single, hair-thin crack. Just enough.
My hand came up. Not a grand, royal gesture. It was the same jerky, frustrated motion I used to swat at a persistent fly. I didn't speak a spell. I just thought, with every fiber of my being: STOP.
A thread of light shot from my fingertip. It wasn't gold. It was the color of moonlight on fresh snow, of a diamond in a place no sun ever touched. It made no sound. It didn't warm the air. It defined it, cutting a line of sudden, profound cold.
It touched the shadow-blade.
The darkness didn't shatter. It just... ceased. The thread kept going, a needle of impossible cold, and tapped the attacker's chest plate.
He froze.
Not "stopped moving." Froze. Solid. One moment he was a living, breathing threat; the next, he was a very detailed, very startled ice sculpture. Frost radiated out from him in a perfect circle on the floor. You could see the individual pores on his nose, the glint of shock in his now-frosted eyes.
The silence that followed was louder than the explosion.
Everyone near Theron stared at the new, frosty art installation. My brother looked from it, to me, his mouth hanging open.
My breath came in ragged, smoky puffs in the suddenly chill air. The hollow, spent feeling after the crack opened up was almost worse than the pressure. I felt naked. Exposed. Like I'd just screamed my deepest secret into a megaphone in the town square.
My gaze, desperate and scared, swept the room. It landed on a man.
He was standing off to the side, near a pillar, dressed in unremarkable grey. He wasn't running. He wasn't screaming. He was just... watching. And he was looking directly at me.
Our eyes locked.
His weren't the wide, shocked eyes of everyone else. They were dark, calm, and they held a look of pure, unvarnished recognition. Not "Wow, the clumsy princess can do magic!" It was the look a geologist gives a fascinating, volatile fault line. It was the look a hunter gives his prey right before the arrow flies. He knew. He knew exactly what I was, and he had been looking for it.
My blood, already cold, turned to slush.
Then, he did the strangest thing. He gave me the tiniest, almost imperceptible nod. Not friendly. Clinical. Acknowledging a datum.
And then he took a single, smooth step backwards, into the deep shadow cast by a giant statue of some heroic ancestor. The shadow didn't just hide him. It seemed to swallow him. One second he was there, the next, he was just... gone.
Shouts erupted. Guards swarmed the frozen man. Theron was yelling. My father was staring at me, his face a mask of confusion, fear, and something that might have been hope.
I just stood there, my hand still slightly raised, in the middle of the sparkling wreckage. The smell of shattered crystal, spilled wine, and the faint, ozone-like chill of my own power hung in the air.
The party was definitely over.
And I had the sinking, ice-cold feeling that for me, the real trouble had just decided to make a very dramatic entrance.