FIRST CHAPTER:
The blood of the innocent never truly coated my hands.
Their memories did, and sometimes they stained everything red. Sometimes, I felt the warm, unforgiving tackiness of their soul slipping from between my fingers.
Two crescent-shaped blades waited to come down in the lasting light, in a setting sun that belonged solely to Cinderstone.
I waited at the apron of the stage with a set jaw, the tines of my silver and ruby tiara digging into my scalp as Thephanie, my lady-in-waiting, pinned it through the opening of the veil on the crown of my head and into my hair.
“Suns be, Your Highness.” Thephanie’s voice and fingers dragged across my shoulders like a dull blade as they worked to tighten the corset.
“Suns be,” I replied tight.
When she was finished, brown eyes flashed with affliction from the corners before she pardoned herself.
In the midst of the square, a platform was set with a wooden guillotine and two barrels of water to wash away the mess.
Beneath it, a boy no more than sixteen—a knight from Arctheris. His tawny hair scraped the stones, wrists falling limp with his chin. His skin was lashed and beet-red from barbed ropes and the sun’s acrimony, bare feet slipping and jutting against the pink stones like a hare caught in the jaws of rope and teeth of unforgiving snares.
It must be this way, I often reminded myself.
However, I couldn’t say that this time. Couldn’t justify all the deaths sanctioned by the Council or the King. In the end, no matter how many times I stood here, I was nothing more than an esteemed gem of Obelisk. One that was supposed to glitter in hands and draw blood with its manicured edges.
My fingers knotted with one another at the small of my back from the thought of what I had to do. Cutting the rope almost seemed more merciful than invading his memories.
BLURB:
After a single burst of magic costs a life, Princess Penrose Winters is stripped of her crown and exiled from her kingdom. Three years into the rifting of the realms, she is forced into a covenant with a dying fae prince—her power the only thing capable of healing him, his name the only shield standing between her homeland and annihilation. Trapped in a union forged by duty rather than love, Penrose must keep Prince Milo Sutton alive while resisting a dangerous pull toward a certain commander, even as monsters rise and the walls crack further. With her own cracking heart divided and realms bordering ruination, Penrose must risk everything—or lose it all.
ART
(BY: MEGAN STARK)
