Pain.
It wrapped around Celeste Raventhorn like a lover's hug, unforgiving and cold. A metallic and bloody bitterness filled her mouth as she stretched out on the cold marble floor of the Lunar Palace. Her abdomen had been cut in a deep gash, dark red staining the silk of her ritual robe.
Above her, the two green emerald eyes glowed with victory.
"Liliana…" Celeste's voice was hardly above a whisper.
Her stepsister knelt next to her, blond curls falling over her shoulder like a bad halo. "You never knew when to stop, dear sister." Her fine fingers stroked the hilt of the knife stuck in Celeste's abdomen.
Betrayal had a face, and it was smiling down at her.
A cackling laugh echoed across the great hall. "Pathetic, poor Celeste. Always the villain of our story."
She realized from the suffering.
His lifeless body still lay on the throne. The councilmen—the men who had sworn allegiance to the house of Raventhorn—watched in ill-behaviored silence, their heads bent to the man beside Liliana.
Prince Damian Everhart.
Her fiancé.
The same man who had whispered promises of eternity into her ear had just sentenced her to death.
"You schemed this between yourselves," Celeste spat hoarsely, feeling her own mortality at the far end of her tongue.
Damian knelt beside her, his cold fingers tracing her cheek as if he hadn't just orchestrated her demise. "Don't take it personally, my love. You were just in the way."
The world was a blur. The searing pain gave way to numbness. She wanted to fight. Damn them. Tear their throats out with her bare hands.
But destiny was not in it.
Her vision faded, and at the edge of her perception, silver light spread. It pulsed—alive, old, hungry.
A whisper surrounded her spirit.
"Do you want to replay your fate?"
Yes.
The light enveloped her totally.