THE SOVEREIGN'S DRAFT

Chapter 1: The Last-Ditch Bus Ride

The bus smelled like damp wool, diesel fumes, and the overwhelming scent of stale menthol candy radiating from the elderly woman sleeping in the seat beside her. Aelin pressed her forehead against the cool, vibrating glass of the window, watching the rain-slicked concrete of the city bleed into rolling fields of overgrown green.

On her lap sat a worn leather notebook, its pages aggressively blank save for a few furious, scribbled-out paragraphs and a very detailed doodle of a angry cat wearing a top hat. Beside the notebook, her phone buzzed softly against her thigh.

She didn't even need to unlock the screen to know who it was.

1 New Message from Sandra (Literary Agent)

"Aelin, babe! Just checking in on Chapter 3. The publishers loved your first two books, but the market is moving fast. Readers want passion! They want swoon-worthy heroes! They don't want a 10-page inner monologue about a coffee shop barista's tax return. Call me!"

Aelin groaned, burying her face in her hands.

It wasn't her fault. Two years ago, her debut urban romance had been a modest success. Her second book had done okay. But now? Her creative well was so dry it was cracking. The urban romance genre she had loved writing felt suddenly hollow.

How was she supposed to write about passionate, heart-stopping love when her own love life consisted of takeout containers, a lingering obsession with fictional men, and a crippling routine of staring at a blinking cursor for six hours a day?

Her editor had practically shoved her out the door.

"Take a break, Aelin. Go somewhere quiet. Find inspiration in nature or a small town. Get out of your head!"

So, here she was. On a dilapidated provincial bus bound for a tiny, unnamed mountain village six hours away from the city.

No Wi-Fi, no high-rise noise, just nature. Supposedly.

The bus rattled violently as it hit a massive pothole, jostling Aelin so hard her notebook tumbled off her lap and slid down the aisle.

"Oh, perfect," she muttered, unbuckling her seatbelt and scrambling to retrieve it.

As she picked up the notebook, the bus ground to a sudden, shrieking halt. The brakes squealed like a dying banshee, throwing Aelin forward against the back of the driver’s seat.

The ancient engine sputtered, coughed up a thick cloud of black smoke visible through the front windshield, and died with a tragic, wheezing sigh.

The bus driver, a grumpy man with a faded trucker hat, slammed his hands against the steering wheel.

"End of the line for a bit, folks. Engine's blown a belt. We’re stranded until the tow truck from the junction gets here. Could be two hours, could be five."

A collective groan echoed through the six passengers on board.

Aelin looked out the window. They were parked on the shoulder of a narrow, winding asphalt road. On one side was a steep drop-off; on the other, an impossibly dense, old-growth forest.

The trees were massive, their thick canopies intertwining so tightly that barely any afternoon sunlight filtered through to the damp earth below. It looked ancient, shadowy, and entirely disconnected from the modern world.

"Great," Aelin sighed, tucking her notebook into her canvas tote bag and tossing her jacket over her shoulders. "Just great."

Stepping off the bus into the crisp, humid air, she stretched her sore limbs.

The smell of pine, wet soil, and wild rain washed over her, instantly cutting through the lingering stench of diesel. It was mid-afternoon, but beneath the thick forest canopy, it looked like twilight.

She took a few steps away from the roadside, stretching her legs.

Maybe a quick walk will clear my head, she thought.

Just five minutes. Stay near the road. Don't be the i***t girl in a thriller movie who wanders into the woods.

She picked her way through the damp ferns lining the edge of the treeline. The forest was eerily quiet.

The sound of the bus driver cursing at the open engine hood faded into the background, replaced by the soft drip-drop of rain falling from leaf to leaf.

And then, she saw it.

It started as a flicker. A tiny, ethereal blue light floating right between two massive oak trees, about twenty yards off the main path.

Aelin blinked, wiping rain from her eyes.

"A firefly? No, too bright. A drone?"

The light bobbed gracefully in the air, pulsing with a warm, violet-blue luminescence. It didn't move like a bug or a machine. It drifted like a drop of ink in water, trailing tiny, glittering motes of light behind it.

As a writer, her brain immediately fired up a dozen wild explanations. As a sensible twenty-six-year-old adult living in the twenty-first century, she told herself to turn around and walk back to the bus.

Instead, her feet moved forward.

"Curiosity killed the cat, Aelin," she whispered to herself, carefully navigating over a slick tree root.

"And it’s definitely going to kill a struggling romance novelist."

The light danced further into the woods, hovering near a dense thicket of twisted brier bushes and ancient arching roots.

The deeper Aelin stepped into the forest, the strange the air felt. The temperature dropped, but it didn't feel cold; it felt... electric. The tiny hairs on her arms stood up, and a subtle humming sound vibrated in her teeth, like the bass from a subterranean concert.

She stepped through a narrow gap between two giant moss-covered stones.

The glowing light hovered right in front of her now, barely a foot from her nose. Up close, it didn't look like a physical object at all. It looked like a tiny tear in the fabric of the air itself, spilling starlight into the dark forest.

"What on earth..." Aelin reached out a hand, her fingers trembling.

The moment her fingertips brushed the edge of the blue light, the air around her shrieked.

The soft hum exploded into a deafening roar of rushing wind. The ground beneath her boots didn't just shake—it simply ceased to exist. The mossy forest floor dissolved into a swirling vortex of shimmering violet, gold, and deep twilight blue.

Aelin shrieked, pulling her hand back, but it was too late.

An invisible, gravitational pull dragged her forward. Her tote bag snapped violently against her shoulder as she was yanked headfirst into the tear.

The sights and sounds of the provincial road—the rain, the smell of diesel, the dull grey sky—were instantly wiped away.

She fell through a roaring kaleidoscope of color. She felt weightless, spun around like clothes in a washing machine, surrounded by the scent of ozone, crushing jasmine, and wild magic.

Images flashed past her eyes faster than her brain could register: floating islands, glowing rivers, towering silver spires, and skies painted in hues of magenta and gold.

"I'm dreaming! I hit my head on the bus! I'm in a coma!" she screamed, though her voice was swallowed whole by the roaring wind.

With a sudden, violent THUMP, the gravity returned.

Aelin hit the ground hard, tumbling through a bed of impossibly soft, luminescent pink grass.

She rolled three times, her tote bag flying off her shoulder, before coming to a stop against the base of a massive, glowing willow tree whose leaves looked like literal strings of polished diamonds.

Silence slammed down like a velvet curtain.

Groaning, Aelin pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Her knees were scraped, her hair was a bird's nest of leaves, and her heart was hammering against her ribs so hard it felt like it would break her sternum.

She opened her eyes and gasped.

She was no longer on a damp provincial roadside. The sky above her was a twilight purple, stretching over a horizon filled with jagged, crystal-topped mountains that bled into floating landmasses suspended in mid-air.

Huge, brilliant moons—two of them—hung side-by-side in the sky.

The flowers around her pulsed with a gentle, breathing rhythm, casting a soft, magical light over a landscape that looked like it had been painted by a deity with an unlimited budget for glitter.

She fumbled wildly for her tote bag, grabbing her phone with shaking hands.

No Service.

Battery: 84%

Date: Error.

"Okay," Aelin whispered, her voice cracking as she stared around the impossibly gorgeous, utterly terrifying alien landscape.

"Okay, Aelin. You wanted inspiration for a new book. You wanted fantasy."

She swallowed hard, clutching her leather notebook to her chest like a shield.

"I think you overdid it."