Chapter One: Taken by Shadows
They came for me on the night of the blood moon.
I woke to the scent of burnt incense and the howling wind clawing at the shutters. My father's voice, low and desperate, murmured beyond the door. I knew that tone he had gambled again, and this time, he'd lost more than coin.
The door burst open.
"Liora," he choked, grabbing my wrists, eyes rimmed red. "You have to go with them."
Them.
I turned. In the doorway stood two cloaked figures, shadows clinging to their forms like smoke. Behind them loomed a carriage blacker than midnight, its wheels silent on the stone, its crest carved with a serpent coiled around a bleeding sun.
"The Prince waits," one rasped.
My knees weakened. No one meets the Prince of Shadows and lives unchanged. Whispers said he drank the souls of brides given to him. Others said he never touched them, only watched… until they went mad.
"I'm not going," I said, stepping back.
"You will," the shadow said. "The pact is sealed."
My father fell to his knees. "Forgive me," he sobbed. "He spared my life for yours."
I didn't scream. I didn't beg. I walked toward the carriage, barefoot on stone, the cold kissing my skin. The shadow guards opened the door, and inside nothing. Just velvet darkness.
The door shut.
And the world fell silent.
I don't remember falling asleep. I only remember him.
He sat across from me, eyes like polished onyx, watching.
His presence was suffocating tall, rigid, dressed in a tunic of dark leather and silver chains. Shadows curled at his boots like pets. His face was a carved sin sharp cheekbones, aristocratic mouth, and something wrong in his gaze, something unholy.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked, voice smooth as silk over razors.
"The Prince of Shadows," I whispered.
His lips curled into something between disdain and amusement. "Kaelith. Use my name. If you're to be my wife, you'll speak it."
"I didn't agree to marry you."
"You didn't need to," he said. "Your soul did the moment you were born under that cursed star."
"I belong to no one."
He leaned forward, and though the carriage was wide, I felt him everywhere. "You will. You already do."
I looked away, heart pounding, but the air pressed closer, hotter, as if the shadows themselves responded to him.
"Do you enjoy light?" he asked suddenly.
"What?"
"Sunlight. Warmth. Laughter."
I frowned. "Of course."
His smile died.
"Then forget it," he said, and the carriage jolted to a stop.
The door opened to a realm of eternal twilight.
The palace rose like a nightmare from obsidian ground spires piercing violet clouds, black roses lining the path. As I stepped out, their petals whispered against my skin. I flinched.
"They remember every soul that walks here," Kaelith said, stepping beside me.
He didn't touch me. He didn't need to. His voice was a leash.
I followed him through towering doors into a hall where chandeliers burned with blue fire. Servants bowed, never lifting their heads. Paintings on the walls depicted not royalty but monsters with eyes that bled.
Kaelith stopped before twin thrones.
"You'll sleep in the East Wing," he said. "Do not leave your room at night. Do not open any doors not yours. And if the shadows speak to you do not answer."
"Why?" I asked.
He finally looked at me fully and for a moment, the mask dropped.
Because they'll know you don't belong here, his eyes said. And they'll want to drag you into the dark where I found them.
But all he said was: "Because I said so."
Later, when I was alone in the candlelit room, the floor hummed beneath my feet. Whispers curled through the keyhole. I pressed my back to the door, clutching the necklace my mother once gave me a relic of light, now dim in this place.
Why me? Why would he choose a mortal girl from a forgotten village?
I didn't know yet.
But I would find out.
And when I did, I feared it would already be too late to run.
Because even now after only hours in his presence I could still feel his voice in my chest, wrapping around my ribs like a chain.