Prologue
In the blistering kingdom ofSulhari, the throne room shimmered with heat and gold the day a boy became ruler. At thirteen, Ishan’s wrists still bore the faint softness of childhood, yet ancient laws and trembling nobles called him Sultan.
A thousand miles north, beneath frozen stone towers, another boy knelt before his father. Aeron did not cry—he had learned long ago that tears meant punishment. But when the king declared that the southern empire requested him as a spouse for their new Sultan, Aeron bowed.
“This,” the king said, “is the only service you will give this kingdom. Do not embarrass us.”
And so the two boys, living opposite lives, were bound in a marriage neither had chosen.
A veil covered Aeron’s face through the ceremony. He bowed before the Sultan on the gilded throne without seeing the boy he was marrying. And Ishan, hidden behind advisers and rites, barely glimpsed the spouse chosen for him.
They became strangers sharing a palace.
But fate is rarely patient.
The day the Sultan tried to scale the Empress-Wing walls, a misstep sent him falling—straight into the arms of a startled, veiled consort who caught him before the ground could.
A ring on Ishan’s hand gleamed. Recognition struck only one of them.
That moment—quiet, accidental—would unravel kingdoms.
