I completed my eighth job for that bastard, Duke Solimar. It's ironic I'd call him a bastard, considering I'm the one born with that title. Five of his men died on this mission. It was a bloody slaughter. Blood still cakes my nails, still on my clothes and face. The metallic smell mixing with my own foul stench. But my sword is clean now. Just like I was taught by his weapons master.
The Duke makes a small almost imperceptible look of disgust. This time, I made him enough gold to buy ten of the brothels I grew up in, and that's the part that stings. Not the blood, the danger, or even his disgust. The profit.
He looks at me like a prized hound. Measuring the leash. Everyone sees it. The hate. The hunger. But he pays well. Always has. The problem is, every job ends the same way.
With an offer.
The first time, he offered to take me in as a squire. The second, he wanted to knight me. It's always escalated. He can't control me. So he tries to own me. He speaks, his voice as smooth as velvet soaked in poison.
"Dreniel Pinklight–Blackmere."
He always pauses before Pinklight. They all do. No one likes to say the name meant to shame me. The name I kept.
"You are absolutely astonishing, my boy."
He calls me his boy like he owns my blood. He doesn't.
"I want to make you an offer you cannot refuse," he says, smiling like this is a gift and not another chain.
"As you know, I have no sons. Only daughters. I believe the gods have cursed me… But with you, I have been blessed."
My jaw tightens.
"Marry any one of my daughters, Dreniel, and I will name you my heir. I don't need a son. I need a sword that obeys."
I remain silent. Not out of respect. Not out of fear.
Out of control. Does he think that just because he's dangling a daughter in front of me, I'd be stupid enough to accept? I know what this is. He doesn't want me. Just my power tied to him permanently. The runes branded into my skin aren't meant for someone like me. They belong to royal bloodlines, not bastards.
The Duke has three wives, of course. Common for the nobility. It gives them options. All of his daughters are either slightly older than me or close enough in age that it doesn't matter. He's covering the board. He's offering me a choice. But it's a no.
"I'm sorry, my lord," I say, my voice flat but polite, too polite. The kind of pretty speech his tutors drilled into me when I was still stupid enough to think being civil meant being safe.
"I must decline your generous offer."
He doesn't flinch. Of course he doesn't. He was expecting it. He calls for them anyway.
"Bring my daughters in."
And they come. Five of them. Draped in silk and soft light. Each one lovelier than the last.
Skin like porcelain. Eyes like jeweled daggers.
Prettier than any woman I ever knew in the brothels, and that's saying something. They line up like a display. A selection. Still, I decline but he doesn't stop. He raises his hand, and the air before me shimmers. Magical projections of each of the other women appear. All twelve of his beautiful daughters. Moving. Laughing. Practicing spells or riding horses or pouring tea like they've been trained since birth to be adored.
"Look at them, Dreniel," the Duke says smoothly.
"You may choose whichever pleases you most."
I keep my gaze distant. Unmoved. Until her. The image shifts. There she is. The youngest. She's barely a year and a half younger than me, and her hair, gods, her hair, It really is the color of spun gold. Pale and glowing like sunlight caught in silk. I tell myself my eyes linger because of the color.
The magic of it. The shine. The aesthetic. But I know that's a lie. Because I didn't look away fast enough.
I swear the image glares at me. A small smirk curving her full lips. Of course, the Duke notices.
"Ah," he says, smiling like a viper basking in light.
"My youngest. Auralynne."
He says her name like it's sacred. Like it should mean something to me It doesn't. Not yet.
"She was born of my most beloved wife, may she rest with the gods," he continues.
"And she looks just like her mother."
I don't respond. Because I already know where this is going.
"The King has expressed interest in marrying her to his second son," the Duke says.
"But I've always believed she deserved more."
The King's second son. Prince Vaelric known in my area as"The Silk Reaper."
I've met him. Cool. Polished. Smiling like glass. Unkind doesn't begin to cover it. He visits the brothels like he's buying fruit. He came through my sector once. I told him if he ever returned, I'd kill him. Because he doesn't just sleep with the women. He kills them.
I found him in the smokehouse on Sable Street, behind the red-curtained lounge.The girl, barely sixteen, was bleeding from the mouth, dress torn, one arm bent wrong. He was standing over her, shirt open, knuckles raw.
She looked at me. Not crying. Not begging. Just waiting to die.
I told the guards to leave. They didn't move. Not until I looked at them. The Prince smiled and said some shit about paying for his time. I said nothing.I just picked up a bottle from the table, slammed it against the wall, and jammed the jagged neck against his throat. He didn't smile after that. I didn't kill him. But I could have. He knew it. I told him if he ever returned, I'd kill him. And I meant it.
The girl lived. But she never worked again. I still dream about that look sometimes. Not fear. Not pain. Just the quiet resignation that monsters win.
He is a monster. The Kingdom protects him because the King's firstborn is an imbecile who'll be assassinated long before he wears a crown. Prince Vaelric? He's the future. And the Duke? He's ready to give his daughter to him. Just like he tried to give her to me.
I refuse again. Still polite. Still calm. Still civil in all the ways his people taught me to be.
"Your daughters are lovely," I say, and I mean it."Even the golden one." I don't say her name. I won't.
The Duke watches me carefully. That same serene, serpentine smile on his lips, like he already knew I'd say no. Like this was the answer he wanted all along.
"Pity," he murmurs, voice soaked in smug. "I suppose you'll die with no name, no title, no legacy. Just a bastard with broken magic no one will remember."
That was the line. He stepped over it. So I remind him why I am the best.
I raise one hand, no flourish, no chant, and the room stills. The silk curtains stop mid-sway. The fire in the hearth freezes, flames sculpted in air. Even the dust hangs suspended, glittering like stardust. Magic hums beneath my skin, low, deep, inevitable. The runes etched into my body light up in sequence, crawling from wrist to neck like living ink. Reality bends.
The chandelier above us cracks. Not explodes. Just... splits. Seamlessly. Perfectly. One clean cut, through enchanted crystal and tempered gold, as if the universe itself blinked wrong. No threat. Just proof.
The Duke says nothing. His lips are parted, his breath shallow. One of his daughters begins to tremble. The projection of Auralynne flickers, then vanishes.
"Let this be the last time you forget," I say quietly."I don't need a legacy. I am one."
"Your next job will be in the Frostlands," he calls after me. Like that frozen wasteland is a punishment. I don't look back. I've faced worse things than snow.
**Later Dren's Room**
The tavern below me is loud. It always is. I've learned to sleep through the clatter. It's not the noise that keeps me up tonight. It's the her. The Golden Daughter.
I roll onto my side and stare at the cracked ceiling beams, wondering how long it'll take to forget the way her image lingered.
Knowing I won't.