chapter 1: The Carriage
The road to the mountain had been the same color for six hours. Grey stone, grey sky, grey trees stripped bare by a wind that never seemed to stop. I'd counted the trees for the first hour, just to have something to do with my mind besides what was waiting for me at the end of this road.
I stopped counting after I lost track around four hundred.
"You should eat something." My maid, Wren, was the only person my father had allowed to come with me, and she'd spent most of the journey watching me like I might shatter. "You haven't touched the bread since this morning."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're not anything. You've barely said a word in two days."
She wasn't wrong. There wasn't much to say. What was there, exactly? I hope the Dragon King doesn't burn me alive on sight, but if he does, please tell my father I hope his peace treaty was worth it.
I kept that thought to myself.
The carriage hit a rut in the road and I gripped the seat, glancing out the window. The trees had started thinning, and beyond them, the mountain rose up like something out of a nightmare I hadn't had yet. Black rock, sheer cliffs, smoke curling from somewhere near the summit that had nothing to do with clouds.
"That's it," Wren said quietly. "That's his mountain."
I didn't answer. There wasn't anything to say to that either.
My father's voice came back to me, the way it had every hour since I left. This is bigger than you, Seraphina. This is about the kingdom. He'd said it like it was supposed to comfort me. Like being told I was a sacrifice for the greater good made the sacrifice easier to swallow.
I thought about the stories. Everyone had one. The baker's son who swore his cousin saw the Dragon King burn a hunting party for trespassing. The soldiers back from the border who talked about Ronan like he wasn't a man at all, just teeth and fire wearing a crown. I'd grown up on those stories. They were supposed to be the reason I was afraid.
Instead, sitting in that carriage with the mountain getting closer, all I felt was angry.
Angry at my father for choosing this. Angry at a war that had been going since before I existed. Angry that nobody had asked me, not once, if I wanted to be the one who ended it.
"We're stopping," Wren said.
The carriage slowed, then halted entirely. Through the window, I saw the gates, massive things, black iron twisted into shapes that might have been wings, or might have been claws. Guards stood on either side, not human, I realized as we got closer. Not entirely, anyway. Something underneath their skin that caught the light wrong.
The door opened. Cold air rushed in, sharp with the smell of ash and pine.
"Lady Seraphina." The guard who spoke had a voice like gravel shifting. "The King is expecting you."
I looked at Wren. She gave me the smallest nod, the kind that meant I can't go where you're going, but I'm here as long as they let me be.
I stepped out of the carriage and onto the mountain that was, as of today, supposed to be my home.
Nobody had told me the air up here would be this cold. Nobody had told me a lot of things, I was starting to realize.
I straightened my spine, lifted my chin, and walked toward the gates like I wasn't terrified.
It was, I would learn, the first of many things I'd have to fake in that castle.
The guard at the gate looked down at me, waiting. "Your name, for the records."
I met his eyes and didn't let my voice shake.
"My name is Seraphina."
The guard nodded and turned to lead me through the gates. I followed, my legs steadier than they had any right to be, my eyes fixed straight ahead so I wouldn't have to look at how high the walls rose around me.
That was when I felt it. A weight settling on my shoulders, like being watched.
I looked up.
There, on a balcony far above the courtyard, stood a man. Even from this distance I could see he was tall, dark haired, dressed in black that seemed to drink in what little light the grey sky offered. He wasn't moving. He wasn't doing anything at all except watching me cross the courtyard like I was something he hadn't decided what to make of yet.
I didn't need anyone to tell me who he was.
For a moment neither of us looked away. Then, low enough that I almost thought I'd imagined it, carried down on the wind like it wasn't meant for me at all, I heard him speak.
"So this is what my father traded a war for."
He turned and disappeared back into the shadows of the balcony before I could decide whether that was an insult or something else entirely.
I kept walking. But my heart didn't slow down for the rest of the way to the doors.
