CHAPTER ONE: THE PEACE OFFERING (1)

EIRA

The last peace summit I attended turned me into an orphan, so you’ll forgive me for not bringing a gift.

Six years. That’s how long I’d been planning this. Six years of being the perfect, porcelain princess of the Light Court while I sharpened a blade in the dark. Six years of smiling at the High Priestess Selena, who patted my cheek and told me the Shadow King would burn for what he did to my family — and that I, Eira Vail, was the only one the gods had chosen to deliver the verdict.

Step in. Smile. Get close. Slide the blade between his ribs. Watch the monster’s crown roll across his own obsidian floor like a party decoration.

Nobody warned me the floor would be this shiny.

My heels clicked against my own reflection as the Shadow Court’s guards marched me down the aisle — if you could call a black mirror the size of a hockey rink an “aisle.” The ceiling dripped with what I really hoped was just water and not something more gothic. On either side, the Court of Night watched me pass with the enthusiasm of people attending a funeral that wasn’t sad enough. Shadowkin. Pale faces, dark eyes, and the collective vibe of a coven that had just been told brunch was cancelled.

At the far end, on a throne carved from a single slab of midnight stone, sat the man who was about to become my life’s proudest achievement.

Kaelen Thorne. The Night Reaper. The Butcher of the Vail Estate. Six years of nightmares, wearing a crown.

Up close, he was… a problem.

The portraits in the Light Court’s propaganda wing had done him the courtesy of looking like a monster. In person, he looked like the reason monster movies sold out on opening night. Pale, sharp, beautiful in the way a guillotine is beautiful — elegant, precise, and deeply committed to ending you. His hair was black as a sunless sea. His eyes were dark amethyst, like bruises on silk. And when those eyes found mine, my entire soul stood up and screamed.

Mate. MATE. MATE.

The word hit me like a freight train made of lightning.

I didn’t just feel him. I tasted him — midnight and frost, and underneath it something warm, like a fireplace buried in snow. My pulse stopped being mine. It locked onto his, slow and steady, like a metronome that had been waiting for its partner. Heat rolled up my spine. My knees went weak. Every nerve ending in my body turned toward him like flowers toward a sun I’d been told would kill me.

This was not in the plan.

The plan did not include my body trying to file a restraining order against my own soul.

“Emissary Eira Vail,” the herald announced, his voice bouncing off the shadow-stained walls. “Of the Radiant Court of Light. Bearer of the Peace Accord.”

I forced my face into the sweetest, most innocent smile six years of princess training could produce. The smile that had made the High Priestess herself call me “the light of our people.” The smile that had buried three Light Court spies who’d gotten too close to my secrets.

“Your Majesty.” I dipped into a curtsy so deep it was practically an archaeological dig. “The Light Court sends its warmest regards, and this humble Accord, in hopes that our peoples may finally know peace.”

Kaelen Thorne didn’t smile.

He rose from his throne slowly, a glacier deciding to visit the sea. He was taller than the propaganda suggested — which was impressive, because the propaganda had been trying very hard. The shadows around his feet didn’t cling to him; they bowed.

“Peace.” He said the word like it was a species of poison he’d recently discovered. “How interesting. The Light Court, which has spent a thousand years teaching its children that my kind are beasts to be slaughtered, now wishes to shake hands?”

His voice was like velvet wrapped around a razor. It slid down my spine and settled somewhere I refused to acknowledge.

“Our High Priestess believes the old hatreds serve no one,” I said, reciting my lines. “We have both bled enough. The Accord offers trade, truce—”

“—and an assassin in my throne room,” Kaelen finished, pleasantly.

The guards’ hands went to their weapons. My heart stopped being polite about the whole thing.

“Your Majesty,” said a voice like a rusty hinge, “allow me. One stroke. I’ll have her head mounted on the gate before sundown. It’s what she deserves.”

That was Ian. Kaelen’s adjutant — a mountain of shadow-iron armor with the emotional range of a brick wall, and a personal vendetta against anything that breathed the same air as his king. He’d been glaring at me since the doors opened, like I’d personally insulted his mother and stolen his lunch.

“Sit down, Ian,” Kaelen said, without looking at him.

“But Your Majesty—”

“I said sit.” Kaelen’s voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. The shadows at his feet rippled, and Ian sat down so fast his armor clanged like a dinner bell.

I filed that away: the king’s temper was real, and his second-in-command was an idiot with a sword. Useful.

“I’m sorry?” I blinked, the picture of confusion. A performance. “Your Majesty, I came bearing—”

“You came bearing a blade in your sleeve, a blade in your boot, a blade in your corset—” his amethyst eyes raked over me, and I felt the temperature of my skin rise like a traitor “—and a heartbeat that didn’t start racing until I stood up. Fascinating. The Light Court sends me their most beautiful princess, and she’s nervous. Why would a simple emissary be nervous, little bird?”