The afternoon sun filtered through stained glass, casting blood-colored light across Evelyne's desk. She didn't flinch from it. Once, she might have taken the warmth as a comfort. Now, it was just another illusion.
Her quill scratched steadily across the page.
Every traitor, every snake in velvet gloves, every whisperer behind court curtains they were etched into her memory like scars.
But to ruin them, she couldn't rely on rage alone.
I need allies.
She closed the journal and reached beneath her desk for a small black lacquered box, untouched for years. Inside lay a crest—jet black with a silver serpent biting its own tail. The mark of House Kaelthorn.
A forbidden name. A disgraced house. And the only one who had once stood beside her when the world turned its back.
Damien.
His name tasted of smoke and steel. He had been the villain in every court tale. A bastard duke, a cold-blooded tactician, a man who carved fear into the hearts of nobles.
And the only man who had told her the truth when no one else dared.
"You'll die if you don't start lying back."
"You think they love you? They love your weakness."
"You want to survive, Lady Evelyne? Learn to bite."
She hadn't listened then.
She would now.
Later that evening, Evelyne left her chambers cloaked in midnight blue. Her maid tried to follow; she dismissed her with a single, calm look. She slipped through the side gates of the manor and into the hidden path behind the Ashthorn stables.
She knew where to go. She knew who to find.
If the court played games with shadows, she would summon the darkness itself.
Far from the estate, in the ruins of an old chapel buried in forest and fog, she found the first piece of her plan.
The moment she stepped through the broken archway, steel hissed near her throat.
"Only fools walk into graves with silk shoes," came a low voice.
She didn't flinch.
"Hello, Damien."
The blade paused.
Then lowered.
From the shadows stepped a tall man, cloaked in black, face half-covered by a worn hood. His dark eyes flickered with something unreadable as they raked over her calculating, cautious.
"Didn't expect to see you alive," he said.
"I wasn't," she replied. "But I've returned with a list and no mercy."
Damien looked at her for a long moment. Then a smirk curled his lips
"Well then, Lady Ashthorn... shall we set the world on fire?"