Chapter 1
The Frozen Throne (Aurora)
The world was burning, but Empress Aurora had never felt more alive.
She sat upon a throne of ice in the heart of a palace that shouldn’t exist. Frozen walls rose like jagged teeth against a sky choked with ash.
Her hair was silver white, styled in elaborate braids; her skin was fair; her lips were full, painted a soft rose; and her captivating eyes were light blue that sometimes turned gray.
Beyond her frozen palace, the land was screaming. Forests ignited by dragonfire like matchsticks. The rivers boiled.
The air shimmered with heat, thick with the stench of burning flesh and cleansing rot from the battlefields. The whole world was purified by flame.
Aurora watched it all with eyes as cold and blue as winter itself.
She had won.
Fortuna was gone. The Rot was gone. The world was a cauterized wound, red and raw, but finally clean.
The people below, those who stayed in Muntenia and had survived the hunger flooded into the soot-stained streets, their faces illuminated by the distant pyre of their enemies.
They were singing songs about her.
“Empress Aurora!” they cried, “The Savior! The Flame-Bringer!”
She was the first royal in the annals of time who sacrificed herself for the people, and not the other way around.
The bards were already composing the verses. "The Epic of the Ice Queen."
The thought should have brought her joy, or relief, or at least some sort of satisfaction. Instead, she felt only a vast, hollow nothingness.
She had done the impossible. She had survived when survival itself seemed like a cruel joke. She had defended a kingdom on the brink of annihilation and forged it into an empire.
Queen Aurora was now an Empress. A Conqueror. A Godslayer. But, she was also a slave.
The irony wasn’t lost on her. In fact, she found it darkly hilarious.
She had offered herself—her body and her soul—to a monster in exchange for protection, and the monster had delivered. Or, to be exact, he over delivered.
He had kept every single promise he’d made.
Aurora’s lips curved into a smile that held no warmth. Her fingers, pale and elegant, tipped with icy blue nails, curled around the armrests of her throne.
Somewhere in the distance, a tower collapsed. The sound reached her as a low, mournful groan, like the death rattle of some great beast finally succumbing to its wounds.
The undead army that had haunted her nightmares for so long was gone. Burned. Purified.
Every rotting corpse that had risen at Malak’s command, every plague-ridden soldier that had marched under King Philip’s banner, all of them were ash now. Scattered on winds that reeked of sulfur.
Malak, the God of Rot himself, was dead. Finally dead. Not just defeated, not just banished, obliterated.
His screams still echoed in her memory, a symphony of agony that she replayed in quiet moments when she needed to remind herself that even gods can be killed.
Her second husband, the only one who mattered, had made certain of that.
As if summoned by her thoughts, she felt him before she saw him. The temperature in the throne room plummeted another ten degrees.
He materialized from a swirling column of hundreds of screaming ravens, his signature style of coming and going. His form was like a nightmare given flesh.
Frost spread across the floor in geometric patterns, beautiful and deadly. The flames beyond the palace walls flickered and dimmed, as if even fire itself cowered in his presence.
Void.
Her king. Her general. Her lover. Her damnation and salvation wrapped in a Dark Knight’s armor. Even now, after everything. He still took her breath away.
“It’s done,” Void said. His voice was like the first crack of ice on a frozen lake. Beautiful and terrifying.
He stopped before her throne, towering over her, and for a moment neither of them spoke.
Aurora tilted her head, studying him. There was blood on his armor, already freezing into rust-colored ice. He had been killing. Of course he had.
“All of them?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
“Yes.” A pause. “The rot is gone. Burned out. The dragon saw to that.”
The dragon. Yes. She’d almost forgotten about the dragon. The creature that had been dead for a thousand years…. Except, it hadn’t been dead. Not really. Just... scattered. Waiting. Growing stronger inside the most unlikely of vessels until the moment was right to be reborn in fire and fury.
“And the girl?” Aurora asked. “Juliet?”
“Free.” Something flickered across Void’s face.
“She and the baker returned from Hell and will have their happy ending.”
Aurora’s smile widened.
“A love that survived hell on earth and then hell on hell. Isn’t it romantic?”
“Yes.”
Void stepped closer, and suddenly he was right there, looming over her throne, his presence swallowing all the space in the room.
One hand reached out slowly, and grabbed her by the throat. His fingers were so cold they burned, but she didn’t flinch. Not anymore.
“And you?” he asked, his voice dropping to something almost gentle. “Did you get your happy ending?”
Aurora stared up at this beautiful monster who had destroyed her and remade her. She thought about her first husband. She thought about the tournament, about offering herself as a prize to the strongest warrior.
She thought about the moment Void had won, when he’d looked at her with those fathomless black eyes and she’d known that she had found exactly what she’d been searching for.
Her master.
“You saved my people,” she said finally. “You gave me an empire,” she paused, letting the weight of those words settle between them.
“Are you satisfied?” Void stoically replied.
“Our bargain was that you protect my kingdom. Now Malak is dead and my kingdom has not only survived but won. So... are you going to leave me now?”
For a long moment, Void said nothing. His hand remained on her throat, his eyes searching hers, and Aurora felt her heart hammering.
This was the question that had haunted her for so long. Would he stay? Or would he vanish back into his frozen realm, leaving her alone to rule an empire of ash?
Finally, Void’s lips curved into something that might have been a smile on a creature less terrifying.
“Leave you?” He leaned down, his breath cold against her lips. His grip tightened, just enough to remind her who holds the power.
Who always had the power….
