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Chapter 1
Areanel
Ever since she was a young girl, her hands have been stained with blood. A child taught to kill or be killed. History was rewritten, events twisted and convoluted into a web of truth, lies and murder.
Areanel had learnt to hate words. Words could be perverted, warped and manipulated in order to attain one’s ambition. She should know; her father had taught her exactly that, which is why she excelled at her job.
Tonight, Areanel was an assassin.
As she stood over the baby’s crib, dark red blood dripped onto the white tiles from the blade she clutched—but she remained motionless, mind drifting, as usual, to her past.
Where had it all gone wrong? Was it after her mother had been brutally murdered, or when she finally ceded to her father’s control? It didn’t matter, for there she stood, a young elf—not even in her fifth decade—her father’s loyal General. What might she have been if she weren’t cursed with the king as her father? Would she still be here?
The night had been long. Hours ago, blood had splattered across her face as she hacked away at the spindly neck, separating head from body. Areanel did not know what the poor soul had done to provoke her father’s wrath.
A suspected rebel, perhaps?
Not that she cared. It was just another job—one she’d wanted to get over and done with as swiftly as possible.
Of course, her father had instructed she use a dull blade. Of course he wanted her to place the poor fool’s head on a spike at the city’s gates—a threat and a warning to all: no matter how hard the rebels tried, The North would never overthrow his reign.
King Aerileas was an egomaniac, though Areanel knew better than to say that to his face. He wanted to send a message to his enemies, that no matter who they were, they’d end up dead if they crossed him—just like the poor bastard she had dismembered.
The king was ruthless when he wanted to be.
Areanel knew that all too well. If the king didn’t have need of her, she’d be dead by now. Of that, she was certain.
No one was safe. Not her. Not her brothers. Not even her mother—his own soul-bonded mate, chosen by the Fates. Something considered to be a divine blessing.
Areanel finished displaying the dismembered head upon the city gates as quickly as possible before making her way home. Under the cover of darkness, she made her way through the servant passages before stopping by her son’s room, where she remained.
It felt like she had been standing there for hours, watching the stuttered rise and fall of her son’s chest. Resmundur had a difficult birth and labour, but he was a gentle child. Much like her older brother, Prince Silas, Resmundur had been born weak.
Areanel was never meant to be a mother. She hadn’t been raised to be gentle or kind, but her children had changed something within her. Softened her, made her more… maternal, and that was unlike her. Still, she loved her son, and her heart swelled in her chest at the sight of him.
Looking at him, fear sank its sharp claws in Areanel’s back, and the rising panic caused a tremor to race along her spine. What if Resmundur were to face the same fate as Silas? She could not bear the thought of losing her son to such a cruel fate.
Perhaps it was fate’s cruel humour—or karma for all the sins she had committed in her father’s name, starting with that fateful day, where she had betrayed her mother.
She hadn’t known it then, but did now. Her father was a monster, and Areanel was afraid she was one, too.
A blanket of darkness suddenly engulfed the small room. The moonlight, which had softly shimmered from behind the flowing drapes, was leeched, and Areanel was left in a complete void. A cold, unnatural phantom breeze swirled through the room as almost corporeal shadows formed, seeming to strike and lash out from the corners with one goal—to protect.
Areanel spied a dark guest silently slithering its way across the carpeted floor and up her leg, curling around her calf. Shadows darkened the room, cocooning the crib in a veil, shielding Resmundur from sight.
Her fingers twitching around her blade, and Areanel let her eyes close for a millisecond, opening up that deep, fortified chasm within. She dampened her hold, only allowing a sliver of that potent power to escape. Electricity buzzed at her fingertips, and the very air trembled. Vibrations, subtle and humming, fizzled around her as she pulled her magic upwards, commanding it to surround her until blue light—the colour of sunlight reflected in the depths of the ocean—pulsed throughout the room. She pulled that familiar burning blue flame forward, letting a flicker of her magic breathe.
Her power did not react to the shadows but responded to them—like the darkness called to Areanel’s very soul.
‘Little demon?’ a low voice whispered in the dark, heavy and full of sleep. The deep timbre lulled her anxiety, and her tense shoulders eased. The reassuring squeeze from the shadow slithering up her calf encouraged her to loosen her death-like grip on her curved blade.
The shadows dulled all other noise besides the breaths escaping the small bundle, wrapped in a soft blanket. The only constant sound in the dark room. Shallow, pained wheezes filled the quiet night as Resmundur fought for air. Cobalt eyes lined with silver followed the slow rise and fall, measuring the baby's next breath.
The once-thick and heavy darkness receded as the shadows were pulled back by their master, slowly allowing the moonlight to filter in and illuminate the baby’s room, though they continued to conceal the child. A sound, almost like purring, escaped the shadows in response to her light.
Areanel felt her control on her power slipping with every passing second. An internal battle vibrated through every atom of her being.
She used the cool metal, still slick with sticky blood, to ground her. Concentrating on the carefully constructed mental vault within, she pushed her roaring power—desperate to get out—down, down, down. Areanel ignored the searing pain that lashed through her as that bright power fought against her will.
