Chapter 1

Years ago, Alaric Blackwood knelt in the rain outside the Grand Hall for three days and nights. He begged me to marry him, swearing he would never betray my heart.

But in a heartbeat, he believed the lies of a venomous woman. He used silver needles to pierce my shoulders and personally gouged out my eyes.

I had taken arrows for him, won him the finest stallions, and won over the court to help him take the throne. In return, he desecrated my family's graves and slaughtered my entire bloodline.

He threw me into a death cell to be eaten by rats. It wasn't until I became a wandering ghost that I saw him again.

He was clutching a broken jade pendant under a magnolia tree, crying like a madman. "Lyra, I was wrong..." he wailed.

But the blood and tears flowing from my empty sockets had long since turned his so-called love into filth.

01

Snowflakes pelted the windowpane, making a soft, rustling sound. I felt the frost forming on the ledge.

My fingertips were numb from the cold, but I didn't want to move them. This was the third day of my blindness.

In this endless darkness, touching something solid was the only thing that kept me sane. The door to the side hall creaked open.

A cold draft rushed in, carrying the scent of his familiar cologne mixed with a cloyingly sweet perfume. My fingers trembled, and the ice crystals shattered under my touch.

"Lyra, look at my new consort," Alaric's voice rang out, dripping with honeyed poison. "Don't her eyes look just like yours did back then?"

I didn't answer. I kept rubbing my fingers against the wood, trying to find that lost sensation of the ice.

The scar where an arrow had grazed my eye while protecting him was still there. But now, there was nothing but two hollow, bloody pits where my eyes used to be.

"Has your Majesty forgotten?" I asked, my voice sounding like it had been scraped with sandpaper. "I'm blind. I can't see a thing."

I heard a soft rustle behind him. The new consort was likely hiding behind Alaric, her jewelry clinking in a way that made my head throb.

"Don't be afraid," Alaric whispered to her. "She might be the Queen, but she's powerless now. She can't hurt you."

The Queen? I let out a dry laugh. The taste of blood rose in my throat, trickling down the corner of my mouth.

Last month, when he personally drove those needles through my shoulders, did he remember I was his Queen?

"Does your Majesty remember three years ago?" I asked. I fumbled around until I found the dagger on the table.

He had given it to me once, claiming it would keep me safe. "You knelt outside the Great Hall for three days, begging me to give up my eyes."

Alaric's breathing hitched. I continued, my voice as light as the falling snow.

"You said Lydia Beaumont would die without new eyes. You begged me to save her. You promised you'd never fail me."

The dagger felt hot in my hand. The cold metal pressed against the calluses on my palms.

Those calluses came from years of archery. I had won him a legendary stallion at the royal hunt, and he had laughed while stroking my hair.

He told me my hands were meant for a crown, not for such hard work.

"Enough!" Alaric shouted. He kicked over the coal heater, and I felt the heat as sparks landed on my skirt.

"Lyra, how dare you mention Lydia! If you hadn't used dark sorcery to curse her, she never would have gone blind!"

Dark sorcery? I laughed even harder, blood and tears leaking from my empty sockets.

Lydia's blindness was her own fault. She had tried to push me into the lake to win his pity, but the poison she brought splashed back into her own eyes.

Yet Alaric believed her lies. He threw me into the North Tower and forced me to give up my eyes for her.

"Your Majesty," I said, standing up slowly. I spun the dagger between my fingers.

"If I dug these eyes out of her head, do you think they'd still fit me?"

The new consort shrieked and threw herself into Alaric's arms. He backed away, his voice sounding like ice.

"Lyra, you monster! Do you plan to haunt me until the day you die?"

I stepped toward him, one foot after the other. In the darkness, I could hear his heart racing.

It was the same rhythm I heard when he kissed me under the magnolia tree years ago. He told me he'd make me his Queen and give me a life of peace.

A life of peace? I looked down at my tattered prison clothes, stained with dirt and dried blood.

"Your Majesty," I said, stopping in front of him and pressing the dagger to my chest. "I beg you. Please, let my family go."