Chapter 1

Chapter 1

S ix Weeks Later

Betrayal was a poisonous, curious thing.

Many believed it a devouring force, a sickening that drained the soul and ate away at all things good and happy.

But they were wrong. Betrayal did not devour; it nurtured. Fostered a sour growth, a sickly tumor to take hold and fester in the heart, guaranteeing no light would ever shine again.

The growth of betrayal in Mariah Salis’s chest—right where her heart should be—shifted and pressed against her lungs. She rolled from her back to her side, the coils of the flimsy mattress digging into her shoulder as the metal frame creaked.

She had no pillow, but her arm sufficed, body curling around itself as she pulled up her legs and tucked into a ball, desperate to fight off the chill of the dark, disgusting cell.

It was so, so cold. An iciness that greeted the betrayal beneath her ribs like an old companion, a friend welcomed home after a long journey away.

She should be used to it by now, this ever-permeating cold. A trapped victim of her naivety for six weeks, if the routine of stale meals delivered once a day to her cell were any indicator. But deep underground, in the bowels of what had to be a castle, with no source of light—from either the sun or the moons—to help Mariah track the days, she was all but blind to the time slipping away.

The loss of light … With each wasted hour, it was another thing that fed the betrayal in Mariah’s chest. Like a piece of her had been amputated, losing those once-familiar, brilliant threads of silver and gold that had twined and twisted in her soul had left her empty and hollow.

Lifting her hand, Mariah glared at the slender black and gold shackles clamped around her wrists. She’d scratched desperately at the stone for each of those long weeks she’d been trapped there, her wrists raw and chafing, the skin raised and red and unhealing with blisters that burned despite the frigid temperatures in the dungeon.

She wasn’t quite sure how she hadn’t fallen sick yet. Why her body held out against the cold and infection clearly taking root in her wrists.

While she spent most of her time fighting and raging … there were still times when she wished the chill would snake into her lungs, when infection would wrap around her heart and pull taut until it stopped.

Mariah settled heavily back into her anger and shifted again on her thin, disgusting mattress. Everything she’d come to cherish in the past few months was just … gone. In a flash of hands and stinging betrayal, power and bonds she’d learned to lean on were snuffed out, leaving behind an empty, shadowed hollowness where light once blazed. Her magic and power had whispered away before she could so much as think, before she could do so much as convey a single warning to those six minds who’d shared a bridge with her own.

A shiver raced up her rag-covered body, and she curled tighter around herself. If she was right, and six weeks had indeed passed, then the new year had long since come and gone. They were now creeping up on the first hints of spring. Flowers would soon start pushing through the frost-cracked ground into the still-frigid air.

Her faith in the gods had fled, but she still prayed the six brave, good men who’d once been bound to her were not still searching.

They would be, despite her prayer. Sebastian, especially, would not be one to let her disappearance go forgotten. A quiet, broken part of her still hoped that despite their desperation, they could recognize all she wanted was for them to ensure the advances she’d made on the Winter Solstice weren’t in vain. That the surge of magic and brilliantly lit lunestair beside the throne would be enough to guard her city, her kingdom, from whatever threats might linger in the far reaches of the continent.

That slowly, more and more women across the kingdom would come to realize their power in this world that strove to keep them weak.

In the cold darkness, it was easier to focus on dreams of what could be rather than where she currently was—frozen and bleeding and starving in a dirty cell with nothing but a rock-solid mattress and a waste bucket to keep her company.

Mariah released a heavy sigh, breath frosting around her face. She uncurled herself enough to slide her palm to the mattress, pushing into the metal springs. The muscles in her arms tremored, straining under her meager weight, and she groaned with effort as she forced herself upright.

Her neglect in this place was palpable. The single, disgusting meal each day offered her no real sustenance, and in the darkness, her toned muscles had atrophied past the point of recognition. Her arms and legs were weak, her ribs now visible beneath pallid and sickly skin.

Mariah brushed a shaky hand across her collarbones, scratching her dirty skin and moving the tangles of her hair. Once long silky strands of the deepest brown brushing her lower back, her hair was now a matted and tattered mess around her head. Clumps had begun to fall from her scalp, after she’d tried to brush her fingers through the knots, so she’d stopped trying.

She might be heartbroken and damaged, but she refused to let herself go fucking bald.

Despite it all, Mariah could tolerate the neglect. It meant she was forgotten here, in this miserable darkness. And for that, she was grateful.

“Too cold for even the rats,” Mariah mumbled to herself. It was something she’d found herself doing increasingly more often as the days passed. Her croaks echoed around the cramped space, her only companion in the dark.

She eyed the threadbare blanket knotted at the foot of her mattress, and with another low groan, reached out and wrapped it up around her shoulders.

One other thing her gracious hosts were kind enough to bestow upon her. A mattress, a single daily meal, a shit bucket … and a too-thin blanket.

“But at least there’s no rats,” she whispered into the shadows.

Not long after the only man she’d ever been weak enough to love had snapped cold shackles around her wrists and thrown a burlap sack over her head, Mariah had come to terms with the reality that she would likely die here, in this small cell, surrounded by bitter cold and the smell of her excrement.

And she’d once dared to call herself Queen .

In the distance, a door slammed, followed by heavy, booted steps.

A sound she hadn’t heard in weeks, not since she’d been hauled into her miserable prison, abandoned and forgotten and left to wither away.

The servants who brought her meals were always female, shuffling in and out on quiet feet like dutiful mice.

These steps … they did not belong to a servant.

The steps grew louder, and the hallway beyond her iron-grated cell door filled with the silver-gold light of an allume lamp. Three tall shapes emerged, keys clinking as they neared.

Dread pulsed deep in her gut in time with the light, right alongside her hunger and betrayal. After weeks of solitude and isolation … why was she receiving a visit now ?

Whatever the reason, it couldn’t be good.

She may be weak and starved and cut off from her magic, but she still had some fight in her. If these men were brave enough to see what they could scrape from a destitute, fallen queen, she was prepared to fight.

They’d likely win, but she’d make it clear that no matter how much they abused her body, they would never touch her soul.

Never again would she be so weak.

The moment the light shifted to touch the faces of the approaching men, all her resolve vanished like smoke on a breeze, carried into the clouds to dance with the gods who’d forgotten their chosen.

Two of the men were strangers, faces cut into harsh lines and dressed in the red and black livery of House Shawth. But the third … he was so achingly, painfully familiar. His onyx hair was longer than before and fell into characteristic loose, errant waves over his eyes, brow slightly arched as his lips tilted into that devastatingly beautiful smirk he wore so well.

His eyes, though—those brilliant, wild, magnificent tanzanite eyes—held an edge of madness to them, something unreadable dancing in their depths.

Andrian Laurent, the only man she’d ever loved, stepped to the bars of her cell, eyes gleaming brighter.

A guard slid a key into the lock, pushing the door open on squealing hinges.

Andrian’s smirk morphed fully into a smile.

“My, my, princess. I must say, you’ve never looked better.”