Chapter 1
The castle smelled of rot and roses.
It was the roses that tricked outsiders — the lush vines curling across the blackened stone, their petals crimson as spilled blood. But I had lived here long enough to know better. If you breathed too deeply, the sweetness curdled into something fouler. The roses grew from poisoned soil, watered with cruelty.
My name is Seraphina. Eighteen years in this world, and most of them already felt stolen. When my mother died, they brought me here — dragged, sold, caged into servitude. My hands still bore the faint scars from scrubbing the blood of men I never saw, the ghosts of their screams clinging to the corridors like smoke.
Tonight, the lords dined upstairs. Laughter clanged like knives against iron plates, cruel and sharp. I was not permitted near their feasts, only the scraps. But sometimes, when the moon cut itself across the stone floor, I slipped lower. Deeper. To the forbidden places.
To him.
The first time I saw him, I thought he was a myth stitched together by desperate servants — a prisoner buried beneath the castle, chained for crimes too dark to name. But the stories were wrong. They said he was a beast. They said he was less than a man.
They didn't say he had eyes that burned like dying stars.
He sat in the corner of the dungeon, shackles biting into his wrists, chains heavy enough to anchor mountains. His hair spilled over his shoulders, black with the faint sheen of midnight. His body was carved, scarred, immense — like a statue broken by centuries of war and rebuilt by rage. Even bowed, even bloodied, he carried the weight of a king.
I froze in the doorway the first time, my breath stolen clean from my chest. The torches painted shadows across his face, and something inside me whispered: This is not a prisoner. This is power pretending to be caged.
And gods help me… I was drawn to him.
"Another lamb," he said, his voice low, rough with disuse, but threaded with a dangerous kind of beauty. "They send you to stare?"
I should have fled. I should have dropped to my knees, begged forgiveness for stepping into his shadows. But something inside me — something I had never trusted, a voice sharp as lightning — answered before I could stop it.
"No," I whispered. "I came to see if the stories were true."
A pause. His head tilted, just enough for the chains to groan. And then, a slow smile. Not kind. Not cruel. Something older, something hungrier.
"And what do the stories say, little servant?"
"That you're a monster," I said, my throat dry.
His laugh was low, rumbling, dangerous. It coiled through the dungeon like smoke, wrapping around my skin until I shivered. He leaned forward, and in the flicker of torchlight I saw it: a crown inked into his flesh, scarred deep across his collarbone. Not a prisoner's mark. A king's brand.
"Then perhaps they are right," he murmured. "Monsters are only kings who lost their throne."
The chains clinked as he shifted, and I realized how close I had stepped without noticing. His presence was magnetic, unbearable. Every instinct screamed danger — and yet my blood sang with something else. A pull. A worship I didn't understand.
I told myself I was only curious. That I came here to taste a story, to peek at the shadows. But that was a lie. Deep down, I knew the truth: I was already his, in some way I couldn't name.
And when his gaze caught mine — burning, unyielding, ancient — I thought I saw something shatter behind his eyes.
Not hunger.
Not rage.
Recognition.
As if he knew me.
As if he had been waiting.