The guards at the gate finally stirred, raising the alarm. Their shouts were instantly swallowed by the storm, but the glint of swords caught the lightning. They formed a line, bracing for what they must have thought was a handful of trespassers.
The next sequence happened in stuttering fragments: a flash of movement, the clash of metal, the guards thrown aside like dolls. A figure swept through the line, and men dropped in its wake. There was no blood, at least not at first—just collapse, silence, and the invaders slipping through the breach as easily as water through a broken dam.
Alina’s knees buckled. She grabbed the stone rail with both hands, the cold leeching through her gloves. The amulet burned now, as if feeding on her panic.
Behind her, glass shattered. She spun to see her mother and Lord Rowan forcing the doors open against the gale. “Alina!” the queen screamed, her composure gone. Rain lashed across the carpet, and candle flames guttered and died.
Alina stumbled backward, all but falling into her mother’s arms. The Queen gripped her shoulders, desperate and wild.
“What did you see?” Isabella demanded.
Alina tried to answer, but her teeth chattered so hard she could barely speak. “They’re—inside,” she managed.
Lord Rowan slammed the doors, then drew the curtains with a violence that ripped the velvet. “We need to move,” he said. “Your Majesty, we should—”
A sound interrupted him, low and inhuman, echoing from the halls beyond.
The dining room had no more protection than any other part of the palace. Whatever was coming, it was already too late.
Queen Isabella turned Alina toward her, both hands on her face. “Whatever happens, do not let go of the amulet. Do you understand?”
Alina nodded, mute.
“Good.” The Queen kissed her forehead—another rare gesture. She must have been beside herself. “We will get through this. Together.”
Outside, the storm showed no sign of ending, and the darkness pressed ever closer.
The far doors exploded inward with a sound like thunder, and the world shattered. Three figures entered and then several things happened at the same time. As the figures strode in, their gaits almost measured, the king leapt to the far wall to grab a ceremonial sword hanging there. He whirled around, swinging the weapon with practiced grace and enormous power. Decades of training took over. He moved as if the steel were an extension of his body. Lord Rowan drew a dagger and adopted a protective stance. The guards formed a wall before the queen and Alina, weapons drawn,the captain shouting orders. The intruders moved into the room, wholly unimpressed. They were masked but Alina could now see that it was a man—a rather burly sort with massive hands—and, surprisingly, two women: one with a flaming red mane, carrying a bow and quiver, and one with a sheet of silver hair, moving so gracefully she seemed to almost float above the ground.
They came to a halt, and for a moment, nobody said anything. Then Lord Rowan’s voice filled the room: “Stop this at once! You must know that you cannot succeed! What do you want?”
No answer came.
“Guards, take them!”
At the first move of the guards, the intruders reacted, and the room erupted in chaos. The soldiers charged and were picked up by an invisible wind that smashed them into the walls. More guards flooded in from the corridor. Weapons clashed, flashes of light flared up, men grunted, furniture crashed, fighters thumped to the floor—it was absolute mayhem. Guards fell left, right, and center. Alina’s thoughts flew scattered through her head, trying to take it all in, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, trying to understand what her parents had said before about rebels…what rebels? Why? And what did her parents know about them? Why didn’t she know anything? Alina was very much afraid of these people, with their violence, their ragged clothes, their strange abilities, and their masks. Her nervous system was on full alert, heart drumming in her ears, sweat breaking out all over her body. She had no ability at all to decide what to do and how to act. She was totally frozen. Later, she would remember having grotesque thoughts like how the sound of a fist smashing a face sounded completely different than how she would have expected; how unnatural her father’s eyes looked with his pupils widened tothe maximum by the adrenaline that flooded through him and how her eyes must look the same; how the chandeliers’ refracted light added some kind of surrealistic glimmer to the whole scene.
But amid all crazy and random thoughts, one thing became very clear: they did not have a chance.
3
Hello, Princess
Another man entered the room.
He strolled in, almost leisurely. His presence seemed to fill the entire room as he crossed the space. Alina found herself transfixed. The way he moved was so… graceful, really. Somehow it was immediately clear that he was in command, maybe because of his posture, maybe because of the way the other intruders looked at him. He was tall, dark-haired, and handsome, as Alina noted with some bewilderment. How could she pay attention to something so irrelevant in such a situation? As she watched him approach over the shoulders of the guards before her, she noted a thin, silvery scar along his jaw—and his eyes.
They were gold. Not the gold of rings or coins, but something living—amber caught in sunlight, sharp and almost impossible to look at. They scanned the room in a single sweep, taking in the carnage, the positions of every player, the trembling arc of the chandeliers, the exact placement of her and her mother behindRowan’s shield. And when his gaze landed on Alina, the air in her lungs stopped.
There was a moment, barely longer than a heartbeat, hardly shorter than a breath, when she could feel the line drawn between them, as real as the edge of a blade. The world shrank to a single point: the amber of his eyes, and the message written there. Recognition, and something more. Not affection. Not malice. Possession, maybe, or fate.
She could not look away.
The man’s face flicked, not really a smile, but something close to it, as if acknowledging a secret only they shared. He strode forward, untouched by the melee, and in his wake the very air seemed to bend. The two remaining guards who stood before Alina and her mother stepped forward, hesitant, uncertain whom to protect—the women or the king. One tried to raise a pike and found it knocked aside with a flick of his wrist, the wood splintering as if struck by a hammer. Another guard lunged, blade flashing, and the intruder moved so fast that for a second Alina wondered if she had imagined it. The man fell, unmarked but unconscious.
Queen Isabella shrieked: “Alina! Run!”
But Alina could not move. She was anchored, every muscle locked in place. The closer he came, the more her mind rebelled against her body’s paralysis. Who was he? How was he here? Why was she—?
