Chapter 1

Marian

Escape. The word is a bitter joke. I fled the cloying perfumes and gilded cage of the elven court only to be sold to slavers, and I fled the slavers’ filth only to die in this nameless, gods-forsaken blizzard. A lateral move, at best.

My feet, wrapped in rags, are clumsy, numb things. I stumble through the snow, my only guide the faint, dark line of trees against the screaming white. Shelter. That’s all that matters now. One more hour, one more minute, one more step.

Then the world simply ends.

There is no warning. One moment my foot finds solid, snow-covered ground; the next it finds nothing. I pitch forward into a sudden, shocking void, a gasp of frozen air my only scream. The fall is a disorienting, weightless eternity of darkness and tumbling snow.

The impact is a brutal, jarring punctuation mark at the end of my failed life. Pain explodes behind my eyes, and the world dissolves into a silent, absolute black.

I wake to the smell of damp earth and something else. Something ancient, cold, and utterly alien. The roaring of the wind is gone, replaced instead by a profound, echoing silence broken by the slow, rhythmic drip of water. My head is throbbing, a deep, percussive ache that matches the drip from somewhere above.

I push myself up, my body a symphony of bruises. I am in a cavern. The darkness is not the natural dark of a moonless night, but the deep, oppressive black of the under-earth. Faint, orange light flickers in the distance, casting long, dancing shadows that make the stalactites look like the teeth of some great, sleeping beast.

Before I can make sense of this new hell, they are on me. They move with a silent, liquid grace that is not human, their forms emerging from the shadows like ghosts. Ghostly white skin, dark-socketed eyes that seem to absorb the light, and a palpable aura of cold, indifferent power.

Vrakken. The whispered horror stories of the elven court, the monsters that live beneath the mountains, are real.

They do not speak. Their hands are cold, their grip like iron as they haul me to my feet. My clothes, the tattered but fine silk of an elven diplomat’s daughter, mark me as a strange prize. They drag me through a labyrinth of carved stone tunnels, the air growing warmer, rich with the scent of pine incense, roasting meat, and the faint, coppery tang of old blood.

We emerge into a hall of impossible scale. It is a nightmare of gothic grandeur, a place of black ice and polished marble, lit by a thousand flickering candles. Vrakken in dark, elegant robes turn to stare as I am pulled forward, their crimson eyes gleaming with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. I am a smear of dirt in their pristine, monochrome world.

I am dragged before a raised dais and shoved to my knees. On a throne of carved obsidian sits the Warlord Drazien, a figure of raw, intimidating power. At his side, a shocking slash of vibrant, human life, sits Queen Solenne.

A pale, gaunt Vrakken with the eyes of a patient snake steps forward. This must be Lord Vorlag, a cousin to the disgraced Veynar, his ambition a poorly veiled shroud. I have seen his type a hundred times in court.

“A trespasser, my Lord,” Vorlag announces, his voice a smooth, oily whisper. “An elven spy, perhaps, sent to disrupt our sacred Solstice. An execution would be the safest course.”

A murmur of agreement ripples through the assembled nobles. I see a brief flicker of fear in Queen Solenne’s eyes, but she straightens, her gaze meeting her husband’s.

“She is human,” Solenne says, her voice quiet but firm. “And she is terrified. Let us show her the mercy of our new age, not the brutality of the old.”

Drazien’s gaze falls on me, his crimson eyes weighing me, judging me. He is about to speak, to pass a sentence that will undoubtedly be my last, when a new voice, dripping with a charm as smooth and dangerous as polished steel, cuts through the tension.

“An elven spy?” the voice muses, followed by a soft, theatrical laugh. “My dear Vorlag, you have no imagination. Can’t you see by the cut of her gown, the carriage of her head? This is no spy.”

A new figure steps from the crowd. He is tall and lean, his long black hair bound with silver rings, his crimson robes impeccably tailored. He moves with the fluid grace of a dancer, his eyes, half-lidded with amusement, fixed on me. This is Dorian. I know his name from the fearful whispers of the slavers, the ambitious rival to the exiled Queen Serexa.

He circles me like a connoisseur inspecting a piece of art, his gaze analytical, appreciative.

“This,” he declares to the hall, “is a diplomat. Or, at the very least, a woman trained by them. A rare and valuable commodity in these… uncertain times.”

He stops before the dais, offering Drazien a flawless, deferential bow.

“My Warlord,” Dorian says, his voice a purr of pure political theater. “Our trade negotiations with the surface are at a delicate impasse. We lack an advisor who truly understands the nuances of the elven and human courts. Providence, it seems, has just delivered one to our door.”

He turns and offers me his hand, his smile a dazzling, predatory thing.

“I will take her,” he announces, as if claiming a prize. “She will be my new advisor. A guest under my protection.”

The hall erupts in a cacophony of shocked and furious whispers. I hear a woman’s sharp, cruel laugh from a nearby cluster of nobles.

“Did you hear that, my dear?” she hisses. “He’s found himself a new pet, now that Serexa is gone.”

The word ‘pet’ sends a jolt of cold fury through me. I look at Dorian’s outstretched hand, at his charming, manipulative smile, and I see my situation with perfect, soul-crushing clarity. I have not been saved. I have been claimed.

I have just been traded from one cage to another, and the bars of this one are forged not of iron, but of a charm as false and as deadly as a poisoned kiss. I am a pawn, and a new, far more dangerous game has just begun.