Prologue.
"La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid"
The scent of smoke clung to her skin like a second death.
It burned in her lungs, thick and choking, as if the gods themselves had set the sky ablaze in mourning. The palace of Vallombre—once a sanctuary of white marble, sunlight-drenched courtyards, and lavender-perfumed halls—now lay in a heap of ash and blood. Its stained-glass windows, shattered. Its golden dome, cracked. Its silence, broken by the screams of the betrayed.
Séraphine D'Arcourt, barefoot and bloodstained, stood at the top of the grand staircase and watched the world she knew collapse. Her silken nightgown was torn, smeared with soot and the red of others—maybe her own, she didn't know. Her heart, once full of laughter and longing, throbbed with nothing but a black, blistering rage.
The flags bearing the silver moon of House D'Arcourt were torn from their poles, trampled beneath the boots of traitors. Her mother's pearl necklace had snapped during the struggle—she saw it lying at the bottom of the stairs, each bead rolling like spilled tears. Her father had been dragged from the throne room, his crown still warm from his brow when it clattered to the ground.
She saw it all.
The nobles who knelt before them only days ago now spat at her mother's face. The guards who had once protected her turned their blades on her kin. And Bastien de Vaudreuil, the empire's favored war hero—he stood above them all, cloaked in black, blood dripping from his sword, golden eyes glinting with cold purpose.
He looked up.
Their eyes met through the chaos, through the flame-lit haze. His gaze pierced through her like a blade. He did not flinch. He did not falter. And for a moment—an awful, eternal moment—he looked at her as if he knew exactly who she was.
"Run!" someone whispered—she didn't know who, maybe herself—and she did.
Down hidden passages, feet cut on jagged stone. Through the underground servant tunnels where she once played as a child. Past the kitchen where the maids used to sneak her sweets, now smeared with crimson and smoke. She bit down on her scream. She didn't cry. There was no time for grief—only the sharp, driving need to survive.
But she saw it all in her mind. Over and over again.
Her mother, screaming Séraphine's name as guards tore her away.
Her father's bloodied mouth, whispering *"live, my star"* before they struck him down.
The echo of steel against flesh. The silence that followed.
She ran until the world blurred.
And when her legs gave out and her body collapsed into the cold dirt at the edge of the woods, she no longer felt human. Her hands clawed at the soil like a feral animal. Her voice cracked as she tried to scream and found she had no breath left to give.
That was when Armanda found her.
Wrapped in gray velvet, eyes lined with kohl, the older woman stood like a ghost in the forest mist. Not startled. Not afraid. Only waiting.
"You have two choices, girl," Armanda said, voice soft and deadly. "Let your grief rot you from the inside. Or let it sharpen you."
Séraphine lifted her head, trembling, broken. "He killed them. All of them."
"Then let him pay." Armanda knelt, lifting the girl's chin. "Let him pay the way men like him never expect—slowly, beautifully, irrevocably."
Séraphine stared at her, breath quivering. "You'll help me?"
"If you pledge yourself to me, I will give you everything you need. A new name. A new face. A new weapon."
"A weapon?"
"You."
That night, the last princess of Vallombre buried her name beneath a bed of stars.
In her place rose a courtesan—velvet-voiced and unknowable. Séraphine would become a ghost with painted lips and poison in her smile. A woman who moved like smoke and sang like sin. Armanda's greatest creation. The empire's most desired jewel.
And one day, when the man with golden eyes reached for her in the dark—when he whispered her name in the hush of passion—she would slit his throat with the same lips that kissed him.
Not for justice.
Not for duty.
But for her father's crown.
For her mother's tears.
For the little girl who once believed in mercy.
She would not mourn anymore.
She would destroy everything.