I stuck my sword into the dirt and pressed my forehead to its hilt in silent supplication that all of this would end. Maybe it was time I joined the men piled at my feet. Maybe—
A shock of purple caught my eye.
A delicate bundle of lavender tied with simple twine. Somehow pristine atop the blood-soaked earth, as if Fate herself had shielded it.
I stared.
It made no sense. It should’ve been on a hearth or tucked behind a woman’s ear, not among broken men and ruin, not in a world I’d just torn apart.
My bloodstained gauntlet trembled as I reached for it. As I brought it to my face, the scent cut through the stench of death.
Soft. Clean.
The fragrance penetrated beyond my mundane senses, offering me a hushed moment in which I existed only as myself between one beat of violence and the next.
Awe gripped me, as if I were a prisoner glimpsing a sliver of sky through the bars I’d lived most of my life behind. Something about this moment had eased the curse’s hold on me. Where the slaughter had fed it like meat thrown to a lion, the lavender soothed. It didn’t silence the curse, but it lulled it.
My gauntleted grip tightened around the flowers in a desperate need to feel that they were real, that the strange calm they’d brought me was true.
I stared out over the battlefield with the scent of crushed flowers in my lungs and gore clinging to my armor. For the first time in a long time, I wondered if I might yet find another way to exist.
My kingdom was breaking without me. The missives sent by my steward painted a picture of emptying coffers and vulnerable borders. My twin brother still bore the burden I’d fled all on his own.
The thought of returning home made my stomach clench with the cold, sickening knowledge of what it might force me to do. What if I lost control of the curse—again?
The lavender clutched to my chest, I stood with the hollow dread of a man dragging his shadows into the light.
I was no savior, was still a weapon fueled by blood, who might still kill them all.
But something had dulled my edges, even if only for a moment.
Dying here as a monster was something I couldn’t accept—not yet. I left the battlefield and the comfort of being exactly what the curse demanded behind.
I had to make one last attempt to be the prince my kingdom needed. Even if that meant condemning myself again.
One step. Then another. Toward redemption or damnation.
Chapter 1
Isca
It always began with the feelings—too many, too loud. Need, grief, and desire all crouched in the dark, waiting for the city to wake so they could slam into me with the force of a dozen unseen fists.
Even in sleep, Caervorn’s people dreamed noisily enough to reach me. But before the sun rose, their emotions were muffled behind stone and timber walls. The stillness, their absence, was my only shield against the world’s emotions. It was a fragile, temporary thing, but it was mine.
Smoke twisted from a few chimneys, only to vanish in the brisk spring breeze as if eager to depart.
At least it had a choice.
I passed beneath the gates of Avanfell’s ruins at the center of Caervorn, past the crumbling mural of the last emperor, its faded colors barely visible against the weathered stone in the dim pre-dawn light. His painted sword had been damaged by the last frost. Pieces of it had flaked away, leaving behind a dull, chipped surface that the Mage Assembly hadn’t bothered to repair. The once-majestic structure was collapsing into ruin, its grandeur slowly lost to the rise of newer, more convenient heroes.
My shoulders burned under the weight of my pack, each step clinking vials together, every breath reminding me how little padding my ribs had left. The mostly useless band that held up my chest dug into my bones, and my threadbare dress offered little protection against the digging edges of the crate I carried on my back.
With a sigh of relief, I carefully deposited it onto my market stall, the tension leaving my shoulders with each slow breath. My body was sluggish, my mind clouded, and my mood on edge. The gnawing hunger of the past few weeks had hollowed me out.
Well, that’s just one reason to put on a charming smile and sell, sell, sell, Isca.
By all the magic, even my most private thoughts were starting to sound a little crazy. I was at the point where I’d likely do something illegal if someone got too close with a honeycake in hand.
