They came for her at dawn.
The palace was still half-draped in moonlight, the silver glow catching on the frost-glazed windows as Elira knelt before the shrine of the forgotten goddess. Her fingers were stained with ash and rose petals, her prayers unfinished. She didn't flinch when the doors groaned open behind her.
"Your Highness," said the Captain, his voice gruff with unease. "It's time."
Elira turned, rising slowly, brushing ash from the hem of her ceremonial gown. It was white—not the soft ivory of celebration, but the bone-white of surrender. Of sacrifice.
"I wasn't aware I still had a title," she said, her voice calm, laced with quiet venom.
The Captain said nothing. He didn't need to. The silence in the palace said it all. There would be no send-off, no farewells. Her mother was already gone—cold in the ground—and her father had not spoken her name in over three years. Not since the priests declared her moonless.
No mark. No mate. No destiny.
Just a daughter too dangerous to keep, too useful to kill.
The Shadow Court had demanded a royal offering in exchange for peace—and her father, in all his mercy, had given them Elira.
A cursed daughter, for a cursed realm.
The journey north took six days.
The King's Guard escorted her only to the edge of the Veil—a vast, mist-choked forest that bled darkness and legend. Beyond it lay the realm no Lysarian dared name aloud. The Shadow Court. The place where moonlight was a weapon, not a blessing.
The moment they crossed the border, the world shifted.
Colors bled more vivid, the trees whispering in languages she didn't know. Elira felt it in her bones—a pull, low and strange, as if the land itself had been waiting for her.
Her escort left her there, at the borderstone.
"Do not remove the veil," the Captain warned, eyeing the sheer silken fabric draped over her face. "Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not—"
"I've survived nineteen years of being unwanted," she interrupted, lifting her chin. "I'll manage."
And with that, she stepped into the mist.
The Shadow Court did not open its gates for her.
They opened for the magic that bled from her skin.
The guards—if they could be called that—wore black armor laced with silver veins, their eyes glowing faintly in the gloom. Not human. Not fae. Something older. One of them extended a clawed hand.
"Your veil," he said.
"No," Elira said, coldly. "You may take my name. My freedom. My future. But you will not take my face."
A tense silence followed. Then a slow, amused laugh echoed from the shadows.
"Bold," a voice drawled. "For a creature born without a fate."
He stepped from the fog like a nightmare wrapped in velvet.
Tall, with eyes like storm glass and hair black as spilled ink, he wore a crown of thorns over unruly curls and carried himself like a man who had never bowed to anyone—least of all the gods.
Elira met his gaze and felt the air hum around her, like a string pulled taut.
"You're him," she said.
"Kaelen," he replied, voice as smooth and lethal as a blade unsheathed. "Prince of the Shadow Court. Monster of myth. Your intended."
"My captor," she corrected.
He smiled. It was not kind.
"That, too."
The throne room was a cathedral of shadows—tall columns of obsidian rising into darkness, thorned vines blooming with ghostlight winding up the walls. Elira's footsteps echoed as Kaelen led her forward.
"You expected a dungeon?" he asked, lazily. "A chain and collar?"
"I expected honesty," she snapped. "If I am to be your offering, your bride, then say it. Do not pretend I have a choice."
Kaelen turned to her, eyes gleaming.
"I don't need a bride," he said. "I need a weapon."
Elira stilled.
He stepped closer, the scent of cedar smoke and frost curling off him like a storm.
"Something's stirring beneath the Veil," he murmured. "Older than me. Stronger than you. It wants war. It wants chaos. And it wants the throne I've barely managed to hold."
"And I'm supposed to help you stop it?" she scoffed.
"You're supposed to survive it," he said, gaze flickering to her throat. "But there's something in you, Elira. I can feel it. The Veil sings for you. The Court whispers when you pass. You may be moonless, but you are not powerless."
The thrum beneath her skin—the one she'd tried to smother her whole life—surged. Her hands tingled, her vision sharp for a breath.
"You want a weapon," she whispered. "But I am a curse."
Kaelen grinned, and it was not sane.
"Good," he said. "Because curses can't be controlled."
And somewhere high above them, in the shadows of the spire, something unseen laughed.