Chapter 1 A PRINCESS MARKED FOR DEATH

CHAPTER ONE Seraphina The first corpse fell before the crown touched my head. He dropped from the palace balcony and struck the marble steps below with a sound that cut through the coronation music. For one suspended heartbeat, the court stared. Then someone screamed. I looked up. A man in a silver mask stood where the dead guard had been, one hand gripping the balcony rail. The other held a narrow dagger that shone like moonlight. "Your Highness!" Captain Rovan shouted. The orchestra stopped. Nobles scattered, silk and jewels flashing as the royal guards surged toward the dais. My brother, Elias, caught my arm and pulled me behind him. "Stay down," he ordered. "I am wearing a crown, not a blindfold." "Seraphina." The warning in his voice silenced me more effectively than any command. Elias never used that tone unless he was frightened. And my brother was never frightened. The masked man leapt from the balcony. He landed among the guards, moving too quickly to be human. His dagger flashed. One guard fell, then another. Steel rang against steel, and blood spattered the white roses arranged along the aisle. My coronation gown suddenly felt like a shroud. "Get her out!" Elias shouted. Two guards seized me, but I twisted free. The king-my father-was shouting from the royal box. I could barely hear him over the pounding of my heart. The assassin turned toward me. He looked directly through the chaos, as though the hundreds of people between us did not exist. "There you are," he said. His voice was almost tender. Then he ran. I snatched a ceremonial blade from the nearest table. It was too light to be useful, too short to stop him, but I raised it anyway. I had spent my life being told that a princess must be graceful, composed, obedient. No one had taught me what to do when death came wearing a silver mask. The assassin struck my hand aside. Pain burst through my fingers. His dagger drove beneath my ribs. For an instant, I felt nothing. Then the world turned cold. I staggered backward, staring at the hilt protruding from my body. The assassin leaned close enough for me to smell rain on his clothes. "Forgive me," he whispered. "You were never meant to wake." He pulled the dagger free. I fell. The marble rushed up to meet me. Somewhere, Elias screamed my name. My father shouted for the guards. The court dissolved into a blur of terrified faces. I pressed my hand against the wound. There was too much blood. I was going to die on my coronation day, beneath a ceiling painted with smiling gods. Then the candles went out. Every single flame in the hall vanished at once. Darkness swallowed the palace. The screams changed. Something scraped beneath the floor, followed by a deep, wet cracking sound-as if the stones themselves were opening their mouths. I tried to breathe. My lungs refused. A voice rose inside my head. Not yet. The words were not mine. They were old, furious, and strangely familiar. The blood beneath my hand began to glow. Black veins spread from the wound across my wrist, curling into a symbol I had seen only in nightmares: a crown pierced by a thorn. The doors at the far end of the hall blew inward. A wind smelling of ash and winter swept through the room. The guards fell to their knees. The masked assassin stumbled back, suddenly trembling. Something stepped through the doorway. He was tall, dressed in black, with dark hair falling across a face too beautiful to belong to anything merciful. His eyes burned gold, ringed by a darkness that seemed deeper than the room around him. Behind him, enormous shadows unfolded like wings. The assassin dropped his dagger. "No," he breathed. "The King of the Damned." The stranger did not look at him. His gaze found me. For the first time since the blade entered my body, the pain stopped. I forgot the blood, the screaming, even the terrible certainty that I was dying. He crossed the hall as the shadows twisted around him. The remaining guards fled from his path. He stopped beside me and lowered himself to one knee. The most feared creature in every kingdom bowed his head before a dying princess. His fingers hovered over my cheek, trembling as though touching me might shatter him. "Elyssara," he whispered. I had never heard that name. Yet tears slipped from my eyes. The stranger's expression broke-not into grief, exactly, but into the kind of pain that had outlived the person who caused it. "No," I managed. "I'm Seraphina." His jaw tightened. "I know what they call you." He brushed a bloodstained strand of hair from my face. "I have searched nineteen centuries for you, my little ruin." Behind him, the assassin began to laugh. The demon king finally turned. The temperature plunged. Frost crawled across the marble, swallowing the blood at his feet. "Who sent you?" he asked. The assassin's laughter stopped. He looked at me, and terror twisted his features. "She doesn't know what she is," he whispered. "Ask her what she carries inside her soul." The king rose. Shadows swallowed the assassin before he could say another word. Then the demon king turned back to me and pressed his palm over my wound. Black fire flowed between his fingers. My body arched as the dagger's poison burned away, and somewhere deep inside me, something answered him with a heartbeat that was not my own. He stared at me. For the first time, the King of the Damned looked afraid. "What have they done to you?" he murmured. I caught his wrist. I should have been terrified of him. I was terrified of him. But when our skin touched, a memory flashed behind my eyes: a ruined temple, a bloodied hand, and the same golden eyes looking at me with unbearable hatred. A voice that sounded like mine whispered through the dark. Kill him before he remembers. I gasped. The demon king bent close, his forehead almost touching mine. "Tell me, Seraphina," he said softly. "Do you dream of a temple burning?" I could not answer. Because I did. And in every dream, I was the one holding the match.