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Once upon a time, the guards were playmates for the king’s bastard son, who was kept hidden away from the world. I was that child. They trained me and taught me how to fight, since one day I would join their ranks and protect my father as part of the king’s guard.

That day never came.

Tonight, I’m entering the castle as an enemy. I hope to God none of the guards have familiar faces.

The old library is located deep within the castle keep. No portals can be cast there, since an ancient magic imbues the stones of the keep and wards off any teleportation.

Luckily, I remember every secret passageway and hidden door in the castle. My sister and I played here as children, pretending to be travelers exploring a faraway realm, even though neither one of us had left the city yet.

The castle lurks on a hill above the city. Moonlight gleams on its white walls and towers. I creep around the bottom of the hill until I find a mossy boulder choked by ivy. Buried deep under the glossy leaves, there’s a secret door carved from wood. Locked, of course, and I don’t have a key.

Good thing I learned how to pick locks when I was seven.

The door creaks open to an underground passageway.

It allows royals to escape if enemies invade the castle.

I step inside, my horns scraping the stone before I duck down.

It’s cold and damp inside. The scent of earth and mushrooms clings to the air.

I shut the door behind me, covering my tracks, and venture deeper into the utter darkness.

Stairs, carved from the bedrock, lead higher until I enter the underbelly of the castle.

My breathing sounds too loud in my ears.

My childhood fear still clings to me. I pause to catch my breath, willing it to slow to a quieter rhythm.

This particular secret passageway opens to a closet in our mother’s old bedchamber.

Has anyone else taken the room since she vanished?

I steel my nerves and open the door to the bedchamber.

Empty. Abandoned, in fact, with forgotten ashes in the fireplace and cobwebs shrouding the furniture. A dagger stabs her pillow—perhaps in warning. It’s covered with enough dust that it must have been there for years.

Queen Dulcamara could have stabbed the pillow, though my mother was infamous for having a temper like a volcano. Slow to erupt but destructive when it exploded. I don’t know how she reacted to my father’s murder.

The library isn’t far from my mother’s old bedchamber. I keep my back to the wall and steal into the corridor. It’s late enough that the servants must be sleeping, unaware that a monster is stalking through the castle.

Shadows and silence are old friends of mine. I learned from an early age when to hide or when to keep my footsteps quiet to avoid making anyone angry.

The library isn’t locked. I lean my shoulder against the heavy door and push it open, slowly, to avoid the groan of hinges.

Inside the library, silver moonlight pours through the windows.

An army of books stands in neat ranks on shelves.

I take a deep breath of the familiar scent of paper, leather, and beeswax.

But it’s dangerous to succumb to the weakness of nostalgia. I force myself to focus on my quest.

Where would our mother hide the soulstone?

I run my claws along the spines of books, not hard enough to hurt them. The royals keep a small collection of books written in Umbric, their titles glimmering in the moonlight as gilded runes.

I slide out Legends of Elysium, one of my mother’s favorites, which is a collection of demonic fairy tales. Maybe one of the stories mentions soulstones and contains a clue she left behind for me or my sister to discover.

“Found you.” A woman’s voice cuts through the shadows of the library.

Fuck, I know that voice. I slam the book back onto the shelf and grab my sword. Before I can unsheathe the blade, she speaks again.

“Don’t.”

With a flick of her hand, blue magic flies from the darkness and locks around my wrist. It shackles me to the bookshelf, the enchantment as cold as iron.

The woman saunters into a moonbeam. Black hair, black eyes, and a smirk that says she’s caught me. One of the queen’s royal sorceresses, my least favorite.

“Zin.” I growl out her name. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I was hoping for your sister.”

“Lark?” I blink, clearly missing something important, while I tense the muscles in my arm against the magic. “Why?”

Zin sneers. “She hasn’t told you?”

I need to keep her talking. “Enlighten me.”

“Lark can’t resist crawling back for more.”

“More of you ?”

“Don’t look so shocked.”

I wrench my wrist away from the bookshelf. The magic binding me shatters. Without hesitation, I free my blade and lunge into an attack before the sorceress can cast another spell.

Zin dodges my blade, the steel no more than a glint in the moonlight. And then she fights back. Her fingers twist the air, working magic, but I grab her by the wrist and wrench her arm to break the spell before she can finish casting it.

She scratches my arm with her human fingernails, which are too weak to do any real damage. I bring my claws to her neck and pin her against the bookshelf by her throat. I tighten my claws, just hard enough to break her skin. Her blood wells under my fingers.

“Don’t.” I echo her earlier command.

Zin swallows hard, her throat working under my fingers. When she spits in my face, I lift her higher. She’s tiny compared to me. Her toes dangle above the floor. Choking, she struggles to pry my fingers from her neck. Her strength is nothing against mine.

I should kill the sorceress. Unless Lark has some…attachment to her.

Zin kicks against my knees, trying to push me away, but she remains trapped against the bookshelf. Her face starts turning purple.

Fuck.

I let Zin drop to the floor. Gasping, coughing, she crawls on her hands and knees. I loom over her with my sword menacing in her direction.

“Surrender,” I command.

She speaks in a rasp. “Go fuck yourself.”

Maybe her unwelcome interruption could prove useful. “My mother hid a soulstone in the library. Where is it?”

“What soulstone?” She bares her teeth in a sneer. “Oh, I see. Your sister wasn’t stupid enough to take the bait, but you were.”

Dread hits me in the gut like a fist. “You told her that?” She must have been trying to lure Lark back. “This was a trap.”

“Not for you. I don’t give a fuck about the Gray Prince.” She laughs scathingly. “But the queen might.”

Her hands flicker at the edge of my eyesight. I swing the pommel of my sword at her skull, ready to knock her out.

Too late.

She flings a spell at me, her fingers trailing black sparks, and the magic crashes into me. My skeleton locks up—she’s hit me with a paralysis curse. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, an animal instinct to survive screaming at me. I battle the spell, but my muscles refuse to obey me. I can’t breathe.

Zin staggers to her feet. She stands on her tiptoes and whispers in my ear. “Sleep.”

When she kisses my cheek, I fall into oblivion.