1
HIDDEN HEIR
Ellandria’s heart thundered in her ribs, too loud for a night that demanded silence. She crouched in the shadow of a crumbling archway, her breath rising in soft clouds before her face. Stone walls climbed in jagged outlines around her, barely visible through the mist that clung like ghosts to the ancient streets of Dravaryn. Beyond them, the castle loomed, unknowable and untouched by any map she had ever seen, its foundations guarded by wards older than language.
Gods. The relic had better be here.
She swore under her breath and pressed a hand to her side where the skin was torn from the night before. Her muscles ached, her knee was slick with blood, and yet there was no time to measure the damage. It had taken her years to make it this far into Dravaryn, and she would not falter now. The stronghold was myth wrapped in granite, and everything beyond the city borders was rumored to be impenetrable, the castle most of all.
She had clawed her way across two kingdoms and countless miles of enemy territory. Rewired the very essence of herself to survive. And now, finally, here she was outside the castle theysaid no foreigner could reach. The castle that held secrets even the most powerful refused to speak aloud.
And she had no gods-damned plan for what came next.
All she knew was that the flame inside her, that deadly quiet truth she had nursed for years, was growing harder to contain. The unfurling heat was not only her nerves fraying but her magic igniting. Her hand flew to her collarbone, just beneath her cloak, where her tattoo curled like a thorn across her chest. She had waited for the mark,trainedfor it, longed for the day her fire would awaken, as was tradition among her people. Among Orchid’s royal line, the ink was a symbol of pride, control, and power.
Now it pulsed beneath her fingers, warm and untamed, wrong in a way that unsettled her bones. She swore louder this time and yanked the cloak tighter.
No, not here. Not this far from home.
Magic belonged to the soil that birthed it, each kingdom’s unique abilities woven into its land. Beyond those borders, her flame power should have gone quiet. Stranger still was her mark, the tattooed sigil on her chest that should have been dormant so far from Orchid. She should not feel the thrum of magic this deep in Dravaryn territory, familiar yet volatile, echoing the way it had before she learned to harness it. Before she became dangerous in all the wrong ways. Perhaps she was unraveling.
Ella forced herself to focus, to make a plan. She pressed a trembling hand to the stone at her back, the cold seeping into her bones.
Don’t think. Don’t remember.
But her memories clawed upward anyway: orchid fields bathed in moonlight, the scent of her mother’s hair as she bent to kiss her forehead, a voice soft and amused,
“Ellandria, darling, if you don’t get those bare feet back inside, you’ll catch your death in the dew. And try to eatsomething more than air and pride, just once, to ease your mother’s heart.”
The memory caught in her chest, tainted with guilt for leaving without saying goodbye. She had always been a mother first and a queen second to Ella, which she loved. Her father had been the opposite, King Eryndor of Orchid before all else, duty before family, which she respected.
But growing up with a king instead of a father had left its cracks. She’d learned early that needing someone was a weakness no royal could afford, so she stopped needing anyone at all.
She longed for the simpler ache of her mother fussing over bare feet and forgotten meals. She missed the girl she had been then.
That warmth flashed and was gone.
Pride no longer drove her forward; now it was purpose.
Leaving Orchid had always been inevitable.
Living with the guilt of it was the part she hadn’t prepared for.
Staying would have cost more than her life. It would have endangered her people, her bloodline, her future. She had left in pursuit of a prophecy she had stumbled upon by accident, one that warned of the Veil sealing the realms now beginning to fracture. Her parents, the Queen and King of Orchid, had never spoken of the prophecy, nor had any member of the royal council. Perhaps they had not known. Or perhaps they had chosen silence, defying the fates to protect her. Either way, they had not realized what Ellandria had discovered, words that altered her very being, until it was too late to stop their only daughter from leaving.
She had waited for a signal, a sign that time was running out. It came to her in a dream she barely remembered, save for one word, one name that lingered.Octavia.
The pull of the prophecy had been undeniable, and she knew then that she must go. So she left. She changed her name. She buried her power so deep that she forgot how it felt to let it breathe.
So far from the soil of Orchid, her strength had waned; she had not felt it spark or seen her sigil stir upon her chest in so long.
Until now.
Until this cursed kingdom began to wake a wild, old, and eager magic within her.
Her mark pulsed beneath the tattered fabric of her cloak. Once, the tattoo that curved like thorns over her collarbone had glowed softly with ancestral magic. Now it burned low and strange, and she gritted her teeth as she looked down. Still invisible, yet it felt wrong, as though her sigil knew this soil, as though it remembered this land in ways she did not.
This kingdom should not recognize me.
