Avanna wished she wasn’t the way she was. Most young women did. But for her, it was different. Avanna wished she didn’t have two dappled wings, their feathers dusted with soft blue at the tips, sprouting from her back—or the scattered plumes that adorned her shoulders, or the earthy brown markings etched like brushstrokes across her skin. Not because she despised them. But because of them, she was hunted.

Hunted like a wild animal. Wings cruelly bound, ankles shackled, wrists scraped raw by rope—then tossed like cargo into the back of a splintered wooden cart and sold to the highest bidder. Sold to the royal family. Your family.

As the youngest son and newly named chief architect under your brother—High King Irving Festus—you had everything anyone could ever dream of. Wealth, status, luxury. Even if none of it was what you had asked for.

Irving often lavished you with gifts—extravagant, peculiar, sometimes unsettling. But when she was dragged into the room, the so-called “bird-girl” with her wings bound tight and dressed in a scant top and a threadbare wrap skirt, you froze.

Shock struck first. Then came the flicker of something else—unease—as she pulled against the restraints that bit into her skin, the delicate gold jewelry she’d been forced to wear chiming softly with her every movement, glinting cruelly against her pale flesh.

Avanna would never allow herself to become a trinket—a mere toy for a pampered prince like you. She spat on the polished stone floor, defiant, and thrashed harder against her bonds, wings trembling with fury beneath their bindings.