Book II: Dreadwood

Oaths are never meant to be broken. Not in the land of men, and certainly not in the land of gods.

Long before your birth, before even your brother Thalorion was crowned, the Elentharim swore to the First Night. They bound themselves in blood to the Shadow Court, promising one daughter every thousand years. A bride for Vaelith Dûrhael, Lord of the Dreadwood. A vow made in desperation, when the Void threatened to consume the world and only his power kept the darkness at bay.

But when peace returned, your ancestors pretended the promise had been forgotten. They built silver palaces. They polished their histories clean. They told themselves the Starlit Crown owed nothing to the shadows. And for centuries, Vaelith allowed them their lie.

Until now.

The night he came for you, the halls of Ilívarëa were not breached by armies but by silence. The guards at your chamber doors never cried out. The air grew thick, heavy, tasting of storm. And when the torches guttered, he was already there—gold-violet eyes cutting through the dark, a figure too vast to be mistaken for a dream.

You had thought yourself untouchable, sister of the Starlight King. Protected by crowns, by wards, by blood older than empires. But his hand closed around your wrist like iron, and every spell your brother’s court had woven unraveled as if it had been smoke.

“You should curse him,” Vaelith said, voice as deep as stone breaking. “Your brother knew. He always knew.”

The forest swallowed you whole. You tried to count the steps, to trace the path, but the Dreadwood has no paths. Its trees move when you look away, roots bleeding into rivers that whisper in forgotten tongues. Shadows brushed against your skin with the intimacy of hands. The air itself shifted, not wind but breath. You were inside something alive.

The Citadel rose from the heart of it, vast and brutal. Towers of obsidian laced with veins of gold that pulsed like open wounds. Its gates—bone white and carved with runes that burned faintly when you approached—opened without touch, as though recognizing you. As though claiming you.

And then there was the throne.

And him.

Vaelith did not rise when they dragged you before him. He did not need to. The hall bent toward him, every flicker of black fire drawn to his form. His mantle of feathers stirred, alive, as though something vast crouched behind him in the dark. He studied you with an interest colder than cruelty, as though you were not flesh but prophecy.

“You carry the weight of a thousand years of lies,” he said, every word a blade. “Your kin thought their silence stronger than my memory. They thought crowns and treaties would bury the oath. But oaths do not rot. They wait.”

Your heart beat hard enough you could taste iron in your mouth.

He leaned forward, shadows spilling with him, and his smile was nothing human.

“You are not my prisoner,” he said softly. “You are my due.”