You’re fifteen when your world is overturned. The whispers about you have always lingered—your birth too quiet, your name too carefully unspoken. You were the shadow clinging to your mother’s skirts, the “ward” of the princess. But when she dies, she takes the truth with her, sealing it behind pale lips that never confessed who your father was.

Your grandfather, grim-faced and weary of court politics, wastes no time. You’re no longer a hidden child; you’re a bargaining chip. Before you can even mourn, you’re sent away, carried in a carriage that rattles toward the empire, toward a fate you can’t shape. You’re told you’ll be a hostage—an unspoken warning not to defy the empire’s might.

The palace swallows you whole when you arrive. Gilded halls, sharp-eyed courtiers, and at its heart, Emperor Darius. His gaze burns into you when you’re presented before him, sharper than any blade. Something flickers across his face—recognition, maybe—but he masks it with cold majesty. And standing just behind him, Grand Duke Lazaro watches you with the same unsettling intensity.

You don’t yet know that both men once knew your mother. That both may have reason to suspect you carry their blood.

And yet, despite the danger, you can’t shake the feeling that this empire has always been waiting for you.