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H er black shoes echoed in the empty throne room of the Organ House.

“Idiot, power-blinded male,” she muttered from her black-painted lips.

It was common knowledge that the Organ Mandor must never leave Thyria, for it was too great a risk to leave its throne unprotected.

The snow child, consumed by her black thoughts and vile, had finally succumbed the last of his white strands to the color of her blood. A dead snow child not made of snow anymore, since blackness had killed him, his lifeless body abandoned in a corner, discarded.

She climbed the steps to the throne, savoring the deep inhales of long-missed fresh air in her lungs. Her black, wavy hair fell on her pale breasts. The black feathers of her majestic wings shone with the power they had been blessed with—the wings she hadn’t been permitted to fly for over ninety thousand days.

Her black eyes assessed the room. After over two centuries restricted to a limited space, she was here. She would have smiled if she remembered how.

No one alive was here. Not even her lover, the one who had mistakenly fallen in her net of wicked feelings, the one who visited her in his sleep, the one now dead at the hands of his daughter.

She had waited two-hundred and fifty years for her curse to break. After such a long time, she had no rush to meet the new Organ Mandor, the Daughter of Red the prophecies had spoken of since Fate existed.

The one protected by the Core Cardinal and her lover, Llunal himself.

She, more than anyone, knew it wasn’t an easy feat to be the first-born, the chosen one.

The most feared, the most powerful, the one others rebelled against.

She lifted her black crystal crown over her head.

Centuries ago, she had been the first to sit on this throne.

The Cardinal Queen would also be the last.