Prologue
If only death were as she once imagined—a dark, silent sleep, empty of dreams or memory. No voices, no light, no sorrow. Just stillness. But life, not death, proved unbearable. The aching silence of every day, the slow unraveling of time, made her long for the grave. And when the shadows finally came, they felt far more alive than anything she’d ever known.
Eveline had been sent to her family’s holiday palace when she turned nineteen. At the time, she thought it was kind. The war between her kingdom and the one beyond the lake was escalating, and the remote and untouched palace was meant to be her sanctuary.
But nothing about it felt safe.
The halls were too long, too quiet. Cold drafts whispered through cracks in the old stone. She rarely saw her maid, and never anyone else. The only sign of life beyond her prison was the distant, looming castle across the lake—its dark towers casting long shadows over the water, blocking even the moonlight.
