Chapter 1
The sharp edge of a jagged stone tore through the fabric of my coarse servant’s tunic, biting deep into my knee. I didn’t cry out. I had learned a long time ago that in the mountain fortress of Oakhaven, tears were nothing but fuel for the cruel.
“Move faster, rat,” Lord Malakor hissed, his hand twisting tighter into my hair. He threw me forward, and I slid across the wet, mud-slicked earth of the sacrificial pit.
The midnight rain was freezing, stinging my skin like a thousand tiny needles. Around us, the high stone walls of the fortress loomed, illuminated only by the erratic, orange dance of iron torches. Dozens of palace guards stood along the ridges, their faces masked, watching the spectacle with cold indifference.
Malakor, the King’s High Minister, wiped the rain from his bearded face and looked down at me with absolute disgust. To him, I was just a nameless, mute orphan who scrubbed the grease from the kitchen cauldrons. A piece of garbage easily discarded to appease the ancient beast that guarded the mountain passes.
“The prophecy requires a pure sacrifice to quiet the beast for another decade,” Malakor announced, his voice booming over the sound of the thunder. He stepped on my trembling fingers, grinding them into the dirt. “And who better than a worthless mute who cannot even beg for her own life?”
I pressed my face into the cold mud, my left hand desperately clutching a small, cracked wooden doll hidden inside my sleeve. It was the only thing I owned. The only link to a past I could barely remember.
From the dark cavern at the edge of the pit, a low, guttural growl vibrated through the earth. The massive chains anchoring the beast rattled violently. Two glowing amber eyes, huge as carriage wheels, slowly blinked open in the darkness.
“Bring forth the King!” Malakor shouted toward the heavy iron gates. “Let his Majesty witness the cleansing of our lands!”
The gates groaned open. King Alistair stepped into the downpour, his heavy velvet commander’s cloak dragging in the mud. His face was hollow, aged by a decade of unbearable grief since the day his beloved Queen vanished during the western wars. He looked at the pit, his eyes dead, caring nothing for the ritual, merely going through the motions of a ruler who had lost his soul.
Malakor grabbed the collar of my torn tunic, pulling me up to face the cavern. “Look at it, girl. It is the last thing you will ever see.”
With a brutal jerk, he ripped the wet fabric completely away from my left shoulder, exposing my bare skin to the freezing wind. He meant to humiliate me one last time before the court.
He didn’t know that the freezing midnight rain was already washing away the thick layers of soot and ash I had used to hide my skin for ten long years.
King Alistair took one step toward the edge of the pit, his eyes casually drifting over my shivering form. Then, he froze.
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Chapter 2
The silence that followed was louder than the thunder.
King Alistair stopped so abruptly that his personal guards nearly collided with his back. The dead, vacant look in his eyes vanished, replaced by a sudden, terrifying intensity that made the surrounding soldiers instantly grip the hilts of their swords.
“Malakor,” the King’s voice was dangerously quiet, cutting through the roaring wind. “Step away from her.”
The High Minister blinked, confused by the sudden shift in his monarch’s demeanor. He forced a strained, sycophantic smile. “Your Majesty, the ritual has begun. The beast is hungry, and this wretched girl is—”
“I said,” the King walked forward, his heavy, armored boots crushing the gravel with an ominous weight, “step away from her. Right now.”
Malakor let go of my hair and took a hesitant step back, his hands raised in a gesture of peace. I collapsed back onto the wet rocks, gasping for air, clutching the torn front of my tunic to my chest. The freezing rain poured over my exposed left shoulder, completely cleansing the skin.
There, stark white against the red scratches of the jagged rocks, was a thick, raised scar. It wasn’t an accidental wound. It was an intricate, beautifully shaped brand of a soaring phoenix wrapped around a silver rose—the highly personal, sacred emblem of the late Queen Evangeline.
It was a mark known only to three people in the entire empire: the Queen herself, the King, and the newborn daughter who had been stolen from her cradle the very night the Queen was murdered.
“It cannot be,” Alistair whispered, his voice cracking with an emotion no one in Oakhaven had heard from him in a decade. He fell to his knees directly into the mud, ignoring his royal status, ignoring the guards, ignoring the terrifying growl of the beast that echoed from the cave.
He reached out a trembling, calloused hand, his fingers stopping just a fraction of an inch away from the scar on my shoulder. “Evangeline’s mark… My little bird…”
I looked up at him, my lips shivering, a single tear slipping down my cheek to be lost in the rain. I couldn’t speak—the smoke from the fire that consumed my nursery had ruined my throat a long time ago—
