Page 2 of The Sol Crown (Fractured Lights #1)
T he mist was cool as it curled around the girl’s ankles, trailing after her bare feet as she wandered through the garden. She had just escaped a particularly dull lesson on the history of her kingdom and had come outside in search of air that wasn’t thick with the scent of ink and old parchment.
The air was always cool here. Not bitter, not freezing, just…
untouched by warmth. The sun never quite broke through the clouds above; it remained hidden, shy or perhaps exiled.
But the moon—ah, the moon—he ruled this place.
His silver light painted the entire kingdom in grey.
Even by day, the world felt stained, awash in shades of ash and silver.
Damp grass brushed her calves, and the scent of wet earth rose with each step she took.
It was her thirteenth birthday today, and other than a celebratory breakfast of pancakes topped with syrup and candles with her brother that morning, no one had mentioned it.
But she felt different. There was a pressure in her chest, an ache that had started the night before and only deepened with the morning. It was as though something was curled inside her, pressing against her ribs, demanding to be let out.
Her brother had laughed when she tried to explain it, calling it “girlish hormones.” So she’d thrown an apple at his head .
He’d left in a huff, and they hadn’t spoken for the remainder of the day.
The girl wandered, drawn irresistibly toward the old willow tree at the far edge of the garden. Its sweeping branches hung low, swaying as she crept beneath its canopy. It felt like stepping into another world, a secret island—a place where maybe, just maybe, everything could be different.
Suddenly compelled by something she couldn’t name, she dropped to her knees in the cool grass. Wet blades soaked through her skirt and clung to her skin. The pressure in her chest was growing sharper now, no longer just an ache. It burned deep and bright, like claws scraping at her insides.
She struggled to keep in her cries of pain, whimpers breaking free between her clenched teeth.
Without meaning to, her hands moved. They pressed into the earth before her, fingers digging and burrowing into damp soil. She frowned, startled by the betrayal of her own body. Her hands weren’t hers anymore. They moved with purpose, guided by something ancient and unknowable.
Then it happened.
The pain inside her surged, flooding down her arms and bursting through her fingertips. The relief was instant, blinding and pure, as if she was coming up for air after nearly drowning. She sagged back onto her heels, yanking her hands out of the ground and gasping, her chest finally light again.
She looked down at her hands, turning them slowly. Nothing had changed, save for the mud crusted beneath her nails. She’d have to scrub that out before anyone noticed.
And then, through the gaps in her fingers, she watched as the earth stirred.
She froze .
The soil trembled—shifting, lifting—and then a skeletal hand thrust upward, reaching for the sky.
She screamed and scrambled backwards, her breath torn from her throat as she stared, wide-eyed, at the thing clawing its way free from the ground.
A voice came from behind her then. Harsh. Low. Familiar.
“I wondered if you would be given a gift. Praise be to Odio.”
She didn’t turn. She couldn’t. Her gaze was locked on the writhing hand, now followed by the rise of an arm, grey and grimy from years beneath the soil.
She heard the crunch of boots behind her—his boots—and her spine stiffened.
He crouched beside her, close enough that she could smell the sharp leather of his coat and something colder underneath. He tilted his head, eyes fixed on the struggling limb with unsettling fascination.
“Incredible,” he murmured. Just one word, but laced with something dark—reverence, hunger.
The girl shivered.
“Oh, the things we will do, my girl.”
She sat frozen. The world had narrowed to cold mist, clawed earth, and the man beside her.
Two things were certain.
She would never escape him now.
And her thirteenth birthday would always be the worst day of her life.