Chapter 1
She kills. She craves. She remembers every scream.
The taste of blood filled her mouth, hot and metallic and unbearably sweet. Somewhere beneath the hunger, beneath the roaring tide of the curse that had swallowed her whole, a voice that was still hers tried to scream.
It couldn't reach her lips.
Her lips were pressed against his throat.
Stop. Stop. Please, stop.
The curse didn't listen. It never listened. It only hungered—and it had been starving for so long.
His pulse beat against her tongue, frantic and fading. She felt it slowing. Each flutter weaker than the last. His body was warm beneath hers, pinned and motionless, and some distant part of her knew she should pull away, should stop, should do something other than drink and drink and drink while heat coiled low in her stomach and her body trembled with something that wasn't just bloodlust.
That was the cruelest part. The part she could never admit.
The pleasure.
It twisted through her like silk wrapped around a blade, beautiful and sharp and utterly wrong. She felt it building even as his heartbeat stuttered. Felt her own body respond to the taste of him, to the weight of him beneath her, to the terrible intimacy of her teeth in his throat.
This close, it almost looked like a kiss.
Her fingers curled against his chest. She didn't know if she was trying to push him away or pull him closer. The curse didn't draw lines between violence and desire. It had never learned how.
Please.
She didn't know who she was begging. The curse. The gods. The man dying beneath her mouth.
Please don't let me kill him.
A scream tore through the chaos—her name, maybe, or just another voice swallowed by the nightmare unfolding around them. She couldn't tell anymore. The world had narrowed to the taste of iron and salt, to the heat spreading through her veins, to the sound of a heartbeat growing quieter and quieter and—
Darkness.
Not the gentle dark of sleep. The violent dark of something tearing her away from herself. Her body went limp. Her jaw slackened. The last thing she felt before the void swallowed her was his blood on her lips and the sickening certainty that some part of her—some monstrous, hungry, real part of her—wished there had been more.
Then nothing.
---
Three Days Earlier
---
Lysandra Valmont sat on the edge of her bed and watched the servants fasten the chains.
There were four of them—iron links as thick as her wrist, bolted to the stone floor of the chamber she'd spent half her life pretending didn't exist. Two for her ankles. Two more waiting for her wrists.
She'd requested the reinforced set tonight.
Not because the episode was supposed to be worse than usual. She just didn't trust the old ones anymore. One of the links had warped last month. Barely a hairline fracture, invisible unless you knew where to look. She knew where to look.
"Your Highness?"
One of the servants—Mira, the quiet one with the kind eyes—was holding the first shackle open, waiting for her to extend her arm. Lysandra realized she'd been staring at the wall.
"Sorry." She stretched out her wrist. "Daydreaming."
"About the academy?"
Lysandra's lips twitched. "About whether the pastries in the dining hall will be better than the ones here."
Mira didn't laugh, but her eyes softened. She'd been attending these rituals for three years. She knew what they really were. The chains. The sealed door. The guards outside who'd been instructed to ignore any sounds they heard. She'd never once looked at Lysandra with pity, which was either extraordinary professionalism or extraordinary kindness. Lysandra had never decided which.
"They say the academy's kitchen imports chocolate from Lumera," Mira said quietly, clicking the first shackle shut. "Angel-made. Apparently it's so rich you can only eat one piece at a time."
"I'll take that challenge."
The second wrist. Then the ankles. Lysandra's heart was beating faster now—it always did, no matter how many times she did this, no matter how routine it became. Her body knew what was coming even when her mind tried to pretend it was just another night.
"Done, Your Highness."
Mira stepped back. The other servants were already moving toward the door, their footsteps quick and practiced. They never lingered. Lysandra didn't blame them.
"Mira?"
The servant paused at the threshold.
"If something goes wrong tonight—"
"Nothing's going to go wrong."
"If it does." Lysandra met her eyes. "You know the protocol. You don't open the door. No matter what you hear. Promise me."
Mira's jaw tightened. For a moment, she looked like she wanted to argue. Then she nodded once, sharp and unhappy, and pulled the door closed behind her.
The bolt slid home with a sound like a guillotine falling.
Lysandra exhaled.
She was alone now. Alone with the chains and the stone walls and the windowless dark. The room had been designed for this purpose—no furniture she could throw, no glass she could shatter, nothing fragile except her. The only light came from a single Arcan crystal embedded in the ceiling, pulsing with faint crimson light that matched her affinity.
Blood and Illusion. The two things everyone feared about her, wrapped up in one neat little magical signature.
She flexed her fingers against the shackles. Tested the chains. The reinforced links held.
For now.
They didn't always.
She closed her eyes and waited for the curse to wake up.
---
Her brother arrived just before sunset.
She heard his footsteps in the corridor—Cassiel had never learned to walk quietly, despite decades of royal training—and then the familiar rhythm of his knuckles against the door. Three quick raps. A pause. Two more.
Their code. So she'd know it was him.
"It's open," she called. "Well. Not open. The bolt is on your side. You know what I mean."
Cassiel Valmont pushed the door open and leaned against the frame, arms crossed over his chest. He was tall and golden-haired and looked every inch the Crown Prince of Sanmont, except for the shadows under his eyes. Those had been there for years. Lysandra suspected she'd put them there.
"You're early," she said.
"You're chained to the floor already." His voice was light, but his gaze lingered on the shackles a beat too long. "I wanted to see you before..."
"Before I become unspeakably terrifying?"
"Before you become dramatic, is what I was going to say."
"I'm always dramatic. It's part of my charm."
Cassiel didn't laugh. He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room, dropping into a crouch beside her. Close enough that she could see the worry he was trying to hide. Her brother had never been good at hiding things from her. She'd always been the better liar between them.
"The academy," he said. "Tomorrow."
"That is how time works, yes."
"Lysandra."
"What? I'm agreeing with you."
He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit she'd watched him develop over the past five years. "I should be going with you."
"You have a kingdom to run. Or prepare to run. Or whatever it is Father keeps trying to teach you about tax policy."
"I'm serious."
"So am I. Cass, you can't follow me everywhere. You can't chain me up yourself every two weeks and sit outside the door and pretend that's a life. For either of us."
"I know." His voice cracked, just slightly. "I know. I just—"
He stopped. Swallowed. Lysandra watched him struggle with words he'd never been taught how to say. The Valmonts were excellent at diplomacy and terrible at vulnerability. They'd been raised to rule, not to feel.
"I want you to come back," he finally said. "Not cured. Not fixed. Just... alive. And if this prophecy is wrong—if the academy can't help you—I need you to promise me you'll come home anyway."
Lysandra stared at him.
Her chest felt tight. That was happening more often lately—this strange pressure behind her ribs whenever someone reminded her that she was loved. She still didn't know what to do with it.
"I'll come back," she said quietly. "Even if nothing changes. Even if I'm still..." She rattled the chains, just slightly. "This."
"Don't call yourself 'this.'"
"Fine. Even if I'm still magnificently cursed and occasionally terrifying. I'll come home."
Cassiel held her gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded, and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders.
"Good," he said. "Because I've already bribed the kitchen staff to save you the good pastries when you visit."
"That's corruption. You're a corrupt prince."
"I learned from the best."
"I'm not corrupt. I'm charming. There's a difference."
Cassiel snorted. It was almost a laugh. Lysandra decided to count it.
He stayed until the sun dipped below the horizon, until the Arcan crystal began to pulse more urgently and the familiar heat started building at the base of her spine. Warning signs. The curse stirring.
"You need to go," she said.
"I know."
"Now, Cass."
He rose. Hesitated at the door the way Mira had, the way everyone always did, like leaving her in this room was something they had to forgive themselves for.
"I love you," he said. Not looking at her.
"I know."
He left. The bolt slid home. And Lysandra was alone with the hunger.
---
The episode came like it always did: a wave that started in her core and rolled outward until there was nothing left of her but wanting.
She felt the chains strain.
She felt her body arch.
She felt her mouth open around sounds that weren't words, sounds she would never remember clearly afterward but would haunt her anyway, in fragments—a scream here, a moan there, the wet sound of her own blood where the shackles cut into her wrists.
And through all of it, the hunger.
Not just for blood. For more. For heat and skin and surrender. For someone else's heartbeat pressed against hers. For release.
The curse didn't separate those hungers. It fused them, twisted them together until she couldn't tell where violence ended and desire began.
She never could.
When it was over, she was still chained. Still alive. Still alone.
The shackles had held.
She lay on the cold stone floor, breathing in ragged gasps, her wrists raw and bleeding where she'd pulled against the iron. Her dress was torn at the shoulder. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat.
She didn't remember much. She never did, not fully. Just fragments. Sensations. The taste of her own blood where she'd bitten her lip. The phantom feeling of hands that weren't there. The aching, hollow certainty that some part of her had wanted things she could never admit aloud.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. Eventually, she dragged herself upright and began the ritual she'd perfected over years of practice.
Untangle the chains.
Wipe the blood from your wrists.
Don't look in the mirror. Never look in the mirror. Not after. The face looking back might not be yours.
She reached for the small leather journal she kept hidden behind a loose stone in the wall. The list of names was inside. She didn't open it tonight.
No new entries.
The chains had held.
She pressed her forehead to the cold stone and let herself breathe.
---
The messenger arrived at dawn.
Lysandra was already awake—she never slept well after episodes—and dressed in traveling clothes, her hair pulled back with a crimson ribbon, her wrists wrapped in silk to hide the fresh scars. She looked, she thought, almost presentable. Almost like someone who hadn't spent the night chained to the floor.
"Your Highness." The messenger bowed. "Your carriage is prepared. King Alistair and Queen Evelisse await you in the courtyard."
Her parents. Right.
She'd said her goodbyes to her mother last night, a quiet affair that had involved more tears than either of them had planned for. Her father would be stiffer—a hand on her shoulder, a few words about duty and destiny and making the kingdom proud. He loved her. He just didn't know how to say it without sounding like he was addressing Parliament.
She didn't blame him. The Valmonts had spent generations learning how to rule. No one had taught them how to love a daughter they couldn't protect.
Lysandra took one last look at her chambers—the bed she'd slept in since childhood, the window that overlooked the gardens where she'd played before the curse took everything, the loose stone behind which she'd hidden the names of everyone she'd killed.
Then she turned and walked toward the door.
Toward the carriage.
Toward Eldridge Academy.
Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I might become something else.
And for the first time in years, she let herself believe it.
