I stepped into the throne room, my bare feet silent on the cold, polished stone. The doors slammed behind me, and I didn't flinch. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing fear. Not anymore.
The room stretched wider than any hall I'd seen, all gold-veined marble and cruel elegance, but it was empty. The throne itself looked like something torn from the bones of gods—tall, sharp, and uninviting. For a second, I thought they had brought me here to be mocked by absence.
Then he appeared.
He didn't walk in. He just... was. One heartbeat he wasn't there, the next he stood ten paces ahead, his presence making the air around me thicken. My body knew before my mind did—this man was not ordinary. He was the storm kings warn their heirs about. And he wasn't even trying.
He was shirtless. Why, I didn't know, but it made it worse. He didn't look savage. He looked like power sculpted from shadow and muscle, like pain made flesh. I hated that my eyes lingered too long, but I needed to know what kind of monster stood before me.
Was this the king they feared?
No. This was the one they worshiped.
His voice came like thunder under silk. "I'm not interested."
That was all. Three words. Dismissal.
He hadn't even asked my name yet.
The guards flanking me—more like leashed wolves than men—shifted their weight, uncomfortable. One of them cleared his throat. "Your Majesty, this is—"
"I said I'm not interested." The tone didn't rise, but the floor itself seemed to remember it had the power to crack.
I opened my mouth, then shut it. What could I say? That I was dragged here after escaping the pit they called a desert? That I hadn't eaten in two days? That I was hiding more than just my name?
No. I couldn't let my real name fall into this room. Not while he stood there like a blade dressed in skin.
One of the guards turned to me. "Speak. What's your name?"
I hesitated.
My name was a war cry. A death sentence. My name could be tracked—by him.
Damien.
The thought of that bastard hearing I'd surfaced, that I might still be alive, set fire in my lungs. No. He couldn't find me. He'd take more than my life this time—he'd take the child too.
So I lied.
"Shatani," I said.
The word burned. It wasn't a name. It was a curse, a dare, a mask I didn't know how to wear yet.
The king—Ashton, they had called him—barely blinked. "Take her to the servant quarters."
Not even a servant. Just another body to clean the blood from his boots.
I was nothing.
As they led me out, I stole one last glance at him. He didn't look at me again. Didn't ask who I was, why I was here, what I had endured. He hadn't even registered me as human.
But I felt it.
The second I turned my back, something in the air cracked—something primal. A ripple in the silence. My hand went to my stomach.
A throb. Not pain, not exactly.
A warning.
The child inside me had sensed him.
And it reacted.
The hallways were long and silent. Torches burned blue on the walls—cold fire. The castle felt like a tomb pretending to be a kingdom.
The guards beside me were stone-faced, but I watched them from the corners of my eyes. The one on the right, taller, with scars laced across his neck, watched me like I was prey limping through his forest. His eyes were made of iron and rot. I didn't need his name to know what he was.
Cruel.
The other, younger, with eyes like a dying flame, kept his distance. He looked once at my stomach, then away quickly, as if even his pity came with a price.
I was being catalogued. Measured. Judged.
They didn't know what I carried. Who I was. But they could feel something.
We reached a heavy door carved with markings I didn't recognize. One of them opened it and gestured. "In."
I walked in. The door slammed behind me, no goodbye, no warning.
The room was small. A cot. A bowl of water. A cracked mirror on the wall.
I sat on the bed and pressed my hand to my belly again. "I'm sorry," I whispered to the tiny heartbeat inside me. "We're not safe yet."
The castle creaked and groaned around me, whispering things it thought I couldn't hear.
But I listened.
I had to.
Because tomorrow, they'd expect me to serve.
And if I wanted to live long enough to deliver this child, I'd have to keep lying.
Be quiet. Be useful.
Be Shatani.
Even if the real me was already plotting how to escape from this place.