The Crown of Ash and Kisses

The day I was chosen to die, I was arguing about turnips. "You cannot charge me three silvers for those! They are wrinkled! They look like my grandmother's knees!" The merchant in the Lower Market of Eldoria looked like he wanted to throw a wrinkled turnip at my head. Before he could, the horns blew. Low, mournful, terrifying. The Choosing Horns. Every human in the market dropped to their knees. I did too, mostly because the woman next to me yanked me down. From the sky, shadows fell. Not birds. Fae. The Shadow Fae. And leading them was him. Prince Khaelen. Even kneeling in turnip mud, I could see he was the most beautiful nightmare I had ever seen. Tall as a war god, hair black as the void, skin like moonlit marble, and eyes — gods, his eyes were pure silver fire. Wings of smoke and shadow folded behind him. The Crown of Night rested on his head. He wasn't looking at us. He was bored. He looked bored while coming to collect his latest victim. The High Priestess chanted, "The hundredth soul! For the balance! For the peace!" A beam of cursed light swept over the crowd. Over children, over mothers, over old men. And it stopped on me. On me, with a turnip in my hand. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," I muttered. The light burned hotter. The Prince finally looked down. His silver eyes met mine. For a second, the entire market disappeared. I should have been terrified. He was Death. Instead, I said the stupidest thing of my entire life. "Does this come with a dental plan? Because your last ninety-nine brides didn't exactly have time to leave a review." Silence. Dead, absolute silence. The merchant who tried to overcharge me looked like he was going to faint from secondhand embarrassment. And then — something impossible happened. Prince Khaelen's lips twitched. He vanished from the sky and appeared right in front of me, so close I could smell rain and ash and cold night air. He grabbed my chin, his fingers freezing cold. "You are either the bravest human alive, little healer, or the stupidest." I was shaking, but my mouth — cursed with being funny when terrified — kept going. "Why not both? I multitask." He stared. And for the first time in three hundred years, the Shadow Prince, cursed to feel nothing, felt something crack in his chest. "Take her," he said, but his voice was low, dark, and dangerously amused. "This one... I will kill myself."