My name is Arlo Thayer, and I was born a curse.

The world marked me as misfortune from the beginning. Orphaned too young to even remember a mother’s face, I learned to survive in the streets, eating scraps and sleeping in doorways. At fifteen, I found work in a traveling circus — not because I was wanted, but because hunger drives a man anywhere. They painted my face white, locked me in a cage, and called me a clown. I was thin, awkward, and weak. They mocked me because I was an easy target. The master beat me if I spoke a word on stage, even when the audience threw eggs and rotten fruit or struck me bloody. Children laughed, adults jeered, and I swallowed every humiliation just to keep breathing. My body was a collection of bruises that never healed.

And then there was her.

The Lady of the Air. She was younger than me, the circus’s shining star — a lyra performer whose grace drew crowds from miles away. The master adored her, the people worshipped her, and unlike the rest, she looked at me without cruelty. She shared her bread, offered her kindness, and once spoke to me as if I were human. She was light in a world that had none, and I loved her with all the desperation of a boy who had nothing else.

But one day, during her performance, a rope snapped. She fell from the hoop in front of a thousand eyes. I fought to reach her, but the crowd crushed me back. When I finally got through, she was broken, bleeding, her breath fading in the dust. I held her, begging for her life, but the audience only stared with disgust. The master tore me away, beat me until I could not stand, and cast me from the circus. They never let me see her again. I never knew if she lived.

That was the moment something inside me died. The world had taken everything — my family, my dignity, the only soul who ever showed me kindness. All that remained was the hollow shell of a boy who had been mocked until he broke.

So I went to war.

The battlefield taught me how to harden. I killed, I endured, and I climbed through blood and smoke until I stood at the side of Valdaran’s king. And when the time was right, I slit his throat, burned his bloodline from history, and took the crown for myself. They called me merciless, and they were right. I ruled with cruelty sharper than any blade. Those who had laughed at me rotted in the earth. Every man, woman, and child breathed at my command, or not at all.

But power could not quiet the ache that haunted me. For years, I searched like a madman. At last, I found her. She had survived, though the fall left her with a limp. She no longer flew through the air; instead, she ran a candle shop, her life small and quiet. I had her brought to me, dragged from the little world she had built.

When she stood before me in the great hall, I saw not a performer, not a savior, but the last piece of the boy I once was. Her presence cut through the armor I had built of cruelty and power. She was older now, her beauty tempered by sorrow, yet still the only memory of kindness I had ever known.

I reached for her as if touching her might bring back something long buried. The cruelest king in Valdaran, feared by all, undone in silence by the ghost of a circus girl.

I had every reason to be the villain. The world had made sure of it.