Crown of Twilight and Promise (Kingdom of Light #1)

Chapter 1

PALACE OF LIGHT

Ada

They brought Yara out third.

I knew her the moment the temple doors opened—knew her by the way she walked, that particular shuffle-skip she had never outgrown, the one I used to tease her about when we were children playing in the palace gardens together.

Before I understood what separated us. Before I learned that the daughter of Gün Ata could not befriend a kitchen servant's child without consequence.

She was fourteen now. Small for her age, with her mother's delicate bones and her father's damning heritage—a shadow trader, executed for crossing the border without papers when Yara was six.

That single transgression had marked his bloodline forever.

His daughter had been watched, tested, measured for taint every year since she could walk.

Half-blood. Plisk. Filth.

I had not seen her in two years—they had moved her to the lower kitchens after I was caught bringing her honeycakes from the palace stores. My handmaidens had warned me then. You cannot befriend the tainted ones, my lady. It reflects poorly on your divine lineage.

Now she stood in the center of the Golden Hall in nothing but a thin white shift, her dark hair shorn close to her scalp, her wrists bound behind her back with chains that glowed like captured sunlight—forged from Gün Ata's divine essence, designed to hold the shadow-tainted still while the light did its sacred work.

"We gather today," High Priest Osman intoned, warm and practiced, every syllable worn smooth from years of use, "to offer the sacred gift of purification to those blessed enough to serve in the radiance of our Divine Lord's court."

The court applauded. Silk whispered against silk. Jewels caught the light from a thousand golden sconces, fracturing it into rainbows that danced across marble walls carved with scenes of Gün Ata's ancient victories.

Someone laughed at a whispered jest near the pillars where the young lords gathered, their wine cups already half-empty though the ceremony had scarcely begun.

And there, at the edge of the crowd, I spotted him — Hakan stood with Sarp, half a head taller than most of the young lords around him, his blond hair loose against the dark collar of his tunic.

He wasn't watching the ceremony. He was watching the crowd the way he watched everything — like none of it could touch him, and all of it bored him.

Then his gaze found mine, and the boredom vanished.

My stomach clenched. As if sensing my attention—he always could—his gaze locked onto mine.

For a heartbeat, we were back in that moment, before everything shattered between us.

Then his expression shuttered, cold and remote as a stranger's, and he looked away as though I were nothing.

Yara's eyes found mine across the hall.

I saw recognition flash through them. Then hope—desperate, drowning hope—followed immediately by terror as she understood that I could not help her. That I stood here in my gown of white and gold, my face arranged in the same serene mask as every other noble in attendance.

That I was one of them.

Forgive me, I tried to say with my eyes. Forgive me.

She looked away.

"The purification ceremony cleanses impurity from the soul," Osman continued, circling the line of prisoners—twelve of them today, ranging from a boy who could not have been more than seven to a wizened old woman whose pointed ears marked three generations of plisk heritage.

"It burns away the darkness that infects lesser bloodlines.

We do this not as punishment, but as mercy.

As the divine gift of Gün Ata himself, who loves all his children—even those born of corrupted blood. "

More applause. The High Light Lords inclined their heads in approval, their faces soft with benevolent satisfaction. They believed it. They looked at these children in chains and saw charity. Saw kindness.

They did not see the way Yara's hands trembled behind her back. They did not see the wet stain spreading down the seven-year-old boy's legs as he understood what was about to happen.

"Let us begin," Osman declared, "with the youngest among us. As our Divine Lord teaches: better to cleanse the corruption early, before it takes root."

Two priests seized the seven-year-old by his thin arms. He began to weep—not screaming yet, merely weeping, the confused helpless sobs of a child who could not comprehend why the adults wished to hurt him.

They positioned him at the center of a golden circle inlaid in the marble floor, directly beneath the great crystal lens that hung from the domed ceiling like a waiting eye.

The priests retreated. The ceremonial drums began their rhythm—slow, inexorable, a heartbeat counting down to agony.

Osman raised his arms toward the light.

The radiance descended.

It was beautiful, I supposed, if you did not look at the boy.

If you did not witness the way his small body seized as the golden light struck him, did not hear the way his weeping transformed into a shriek that seemed torn from somewhere deeper than his throat.

The light did not merely touch him—it penetrated him, diving beneath his skin, into his blood, his marrow, seeking out every trace of shadow heritage and burning it to ash.

His hair turned white in patches. His skin blistered and smoothed. He clawed at his own arms, desperate to escape something that was happening inside him, and when that failed he collapsed and convulsed while golden fire coursed through his veins.

"Mercy," Osman intoned over the screaming. "Salvation. Divine love."

The boy ceased screaming after perhaps two minutes. Not because the light had finished its work, but because his voice had shattered. He lay upon the golden circle with his mouth stretched wide in silent agony, his eyes rolled back to show nothing but white.

When it was finally over, he did not move. Two servants hurried forward to check that breath still passed his lips, and when they nodded confirmation, the court applauded.

"Purified," Osman announced. "Blessed. Welcomed fully into the light."

They dragged his limp form to the side of the hall, where his mother waited with tears streaming down her face.

"Thank you," she whispered as they deposited her son at her feet.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you." Her eyes remained fixed on the priests, the nobles, anyone who might be watching to assess her sincerity.

If she displayed anything other than thankfulness, she would be next.

They brought the second child forward. Then the third. Each purification lasted between two and five minutes.

I counted them as they fell. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Yara was sixth.

She did not weep when they led her to the circle.

Did not beg or plead. She simply walked with her chin raised and her jaw set in that stubborn manner I remembered from childhood, when she had insisted on climbing the tallest tree in the palace gardens even though everyone warned her she would fall.

She had fallen, of course. Broken her arm in two places. But she had reached the top first.

The chains forced her to her knees upon the cold marble. The drums resumed their terrible cadence.

"Wait."

The word escaped my lips before I knew I meant to speak it. The drums faltered. Heads turned throughout the hall.

"Princess Ada." Osman's voice remained smooth. "Does something trouble you?"

Every gaze in the hall fixed upon me. My cousin Ezra stood near the front with her lips pressed into a thin satisfied line, as though she had been waiting for me to do something foolish. Near the pillars, I felt Hakan's eyes on me too—watching, always watching.

"This girl," I heard myself say. "I know her. She was kind. Gentle. Surely there are others more in need—"

"The girl's shadow-taint was measured at seventeen percent," Osman interrupted. "Well above the threshold for mandatory cleansing. Your compassion speaks well of you, princess. But you must trust that we understand what is best for these poor tainted souls."

"She is but a child—"

"She is plisk." The word came from my aunt, Lady Seher. "Half-breed filth with shadow-trader blood. Perhaps, niece, you would benefit from remembering where your loyalties ought to lie. You are Gün Ata's daughter. You are light incarnate. Conduct yourself accordingly."

I felt Yara's gaze upon me. Felt her hope curdling into acceptance as she understood that I was powerless—that whatever we had once been to each other meant nothing in this hall of golden light and golden lies.

"Forgive me," I said. "I spoke out of turn."

"You are forgiven. Your heart is tender." Osman turned back to Yara. "Let us continue."

The light descended.

Yara screamed.

But this time, Osman gestured to a priest who stepped forward bearing a whip unlike any I had seen—its lashes wrought of concentrated light, solidified into golden strands that hummed with divine energy. Where they moved through the air, they left trails of radiance like wounds in the world.

"The shadow-taint in this one runs deep," Osman announced. "Seventeen percent requires more thorough methods."

The first lash struck Yara across her back.

Her scream changed—became something raw and inhuman, a sound I had not known mortal throats could produce.

Where the light-whip kissed her flesh, it did not merely burn.

It carved into her. It opened her skin in smoking furrows that glowed gold at the edges, wounds that somehow burned and bled at once.

The second lash crossed the first. She arched up from her knees, bound hands clawing at empty air. The third caught her across the shoulders. The fourth, the fifth, the sixth—each accompanied by that terrible shriek, each leaving another luminous wound that wept light instead of blood.

My father had signed the order for this. For all of this. He'd smiled at dinner last night while somewhere, girls like her waited in cells for their "sacred gift."