CHAPTER 1 — THE RETURN
604 Words
The Queen Walks Again
They said the Devienne name had been buried in blood.
Whispered that she’d been burned alive in the same fire that swallowed her father’s empire.
That the last heir of the Cirella bloodline—a girl no taller than a chair and no louder than a prayer—had vanished like smoke.
The streets moved on.
The council moved in.
And the city that once bowed to the Devienne crest? It forgot.
Until tonight.
A black Maserati purred into the old district, slicing through the rain with indifference. The same street where her father’s body had been found twenty years ago—still bleeding, still warm, bullet holes blooming across his chest like red roses.
The engine cut.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it held its breath.
Then the door opened.
And out stepped a woman who should not exist.
⸻
Her heels clicked onto the soaked pavement with elegant rhythm—measured, precise, unhurried.
The rain didn’t touch her. The shadows parted for her.
She wore black, tailored like armor—fitted to perfection, not a single thread out of place. Her coat hung open just enough to reveal a satin corset beneath. No flesh exposed. No weakness invited.
A silver cross glinted against her collarbone. Clean. Untarnished.
The only thing she still carried from the girl they tried to kill.
Her hair—long, black as gunmetal silk—was windswept by the city breeze. It danced as if remembering the fire it once fled.
And her eyes… her eyes were something unholy. Hazel with gold light buried inside them—like dying stars on the edge of rebirth.
She didn’t glance at the men guarding the corner. Didn’t flinch when one reached inside his coat.
She kept walking.
One step.
Then another.
⸻
In the building across the street, lights were dimmed but eyes were wide.
Men in suits watched from behind thick glass.
Some leaned forward.
Others stepped back.
They didn’t need confirmation.
They knew.
Cirella Devienne had returned.
The name passed between them like a prayer.
Old men cursed under their breath.
Younger ones stared with hunger.
She was supposed to be dead.
No body. No trace. Just silence.
But now silence had form.
And it walked in heels.
⸻
Above her, perched high in the shadows of a crumbling cathedral tower, a sniper lowered his scope.
His finger paused on the trigger.
Then slowly… slipped away.
He remembered her.
He’d been a soldier when the order came to kill the Deviennes.
He watched her house burn, saw the tiny silhouette of a girl standing in the flames—silent, untouched.
She’d looked up at him that night, just once.
Now here she was, two decades later, looking straight ahead.
And she still didn’t blink.
⸻
She reached the gates of the old Moretti estate—once a Devienne stronghold, now in the hands of the very men who’d spilled her family’s blood.
She stopped.
Lifted her chin.
And smiled.
It wasn’t sweet.
It wasn’t soft.
It was the kind of smile you see before the blade slips between your ribs.
Then she raised her hand and knocked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
As the door opened, no one breathed.
Because they didn’t see a woman.
They saw prophecy.
They saw vengeance in heels.
They saw the ghost of an empire reborn.
They saw La Morte Dolcissima.
The Sweetest Death.
And they finally understood what the rumors meant.
You don’t run from her. You don’t fight her. You welcome her in—pray she smiles—then die with her name on your lips.
- Writer
