Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Evie adjusts my dress. A tug at the shoulder, a sweep at the waist. She adjusts the final fold of chiffon draped across me, her hands practiced, impersonal.
The gown is pale gold, a soft shimmer that catches the firelight like bursts of starlight.
The slit up my leg reveals just enough to keep the old men salivating.
The fabric is too delicate for evening, too easily torn—a garment made for display, not battle—and the ornate belt that clinches my waist is more of a shackle than an accessory.
My arms remain stiff, and I don’t offer her so much as a glance.
I’m trying not to snap.
It’s taken hours.
At least I know her name now.
My hair is braided, threaded with pearls. My skin perfumed. Lashes darkened. Gems pressed against my collarbones as if I’m some glass trinket made to glitter.
I watch the girl in the mirror with calculation.
She’s pretty, I suppose. Too pale, too soft, too still. Her heart-shaped face makes her seem younger than she is, and her hazel eyes—my eyes—are wary even when they’re lined with gold. This girl looks valuable. That’s the point.
Because I don’t get to choose what I wear. Or get to say no.
Not since I turned twelve.
Certainly not since my father found out about the failed escape that was officially an attack on Starsfall’s ruling family.
According to Mallen, Moonsrise nearly stole me.
Slipped into my rooms, tried to whisk me from my bed.
According to the palace guards, the attack was swift, brazen, and proof that our enemies will stop at nothing.
And now, those guards stand at every door.
The palace wings are locked. Courtyards I used to walk through are now roped off as if the hemp could keep out armies.
And Mallen. Always Mallen. He doesn’t walk anymore, he stalks, like a creature who once lived in chains and is now set free to reap his revenge.
He hasn’t left my side since the lie was planted.
And tonight, with the Reaping’s opening reception just moments away, he’s leaning against the door like he belongs there—arms folded, gaze heavy.
He stares at me like I’m not just his charge, but his religion, his ruin, his one sacred obsession.
Like he’s daring anyone to come close enough to bleed.
Evie finishes with a flourish and smooths the fabric at my hip.
I resist the urge to move her hand away.
“Leave,” Mallen says.
His voice is calm but firm, and Evie’s hands freeze mid-motion. She glances at me and then at him.
There’s no mistaking the tension in her posture. She dips into a shallow curtsy and withdraws without a word, but I catch the lift of her brow as she passes. A subtle flash of disapproval.
She shuts the door softly behind her.
I smirk, just barely, meeting Mallen’s gaze through the mirror. “Still watching?”
“You look beautiful,” he says.
I don’t answer. My lips form a thin, unimpressed line.
He crosses the room in a few long strides, armor catching the candlelight, and slides his hands around my waist. The polished silver of his uniform gleams like moonlight, trimmed in forest green. It makes the emerald in his eyes burn darker, sharper.
“Like a perfect princess.”
“Ready to be bled dry.”
The taste of copper crawls up the back of my throat. For a moment, I imagine myself in the arena—barefoot, bloodied, free to die on my own terms. The sand drinks me and lets me go. No vows. No throne. No hands shaping me into a myth I did not choose.
“They’re going to die,” I add, and my voice is dull, detached. Not mournful. Just true.
No one survives the Reaping. Not one man in its ten years.
I remember some making it past the first trial, but no one’s ever made it to the third—the labyrinth.
The maze beneath Threnos is a crypt. An ancient tomb woven with magic older than its walls, steeped in death.
It isn’t my father’s design, but he added to it, made it impossible to survive.
A fail-safe. No noble from Larksbind, no trader’s son or wide-eyed soldier, will live long enough to claim me.
Mallen does not speak, but his jaw tightens.
I know him well enough to read it. He will not let me be claimed by a man I do not want.
He promised me that. Now that he has spoken his own wanting, he will not leave the choice to chance alone.
If I say no, he will hold the doors. If I say yes, he will see every other claim fall away.
I stare at my reflection, fingers brushing the beads stitched into the silk.
My magic simmers, uninvited, under my skin.
It comes without invitation, cold under my ribs, like a room that waits on the night.
It answers fear and anger and grief, but also wakes for no reason at all, a pressure behind my teeth that melts copper onto my tongue.
My magic is not a gift I can wield. It’s not a gift at all.
A blasphemy the gods sealed at my birth.
They knotted it inside my bones, inside their bindings.
I cannot cast or call it; only feel it pace the walls of me as it tests for a seam.
It presses harder in the Reaping, as if the drums of Threnos thin the seal.
It has taught me to live small and still, to swallow want before it wakes.
I was born cursed. Chosen. A vessel of death, a child of the dark.
My father would gild me in silk and gems, parade me through these halls like a prize horse, while the truth of me screams beneath the surface.
“I don’t share, Azhara,” Mallen says, voice low. “You shouldn’t pity them.”
I turn to him slowly and lie. “I don’t.”
Resentment coils tight—at all of it. The theater. The blood-soaked games. This torment masquerading as courtship.
The Reaping could have ended if I’d said yes.
One word from me, and the drums would have stilled.
Magic would be returned to Starsfall, and men from Larksbind wouldn’t be forced into trials that my father ensures they cannot win.
But I did not choose Mallen. I let silence answer for me.
Time turned into a noose, and now men will die because I didn’t speak.
Because possibility has a price.
Ten lives will be offered like coins—some foolish, some hopeful—and none are meant to survive. Larksbind stopped sending their best when it was clear that my father would not let them live. Perhaps this year, they’ll find some men with hope left in that. That would be the harsher cruelty.
Mallen’s armor looks ceremonial, but it isn’t. Every piece is functional. Deadly. And he wears it like a second skin, like he’s waiting for war.
“I know it’s ugly,” he says after a breath. “This thing in me that snarls at the thought of you with anyone else. But I’ve never pretended to be better than I am.”
He raises his eyes to the heavens. There’s no relief. For either of us.
“No other suitors,” he says. “If one of them touches you—”
“I know,” I interrupt, exhaling. “You’ll kill them.”
He’s not being dramatic. Some of them forget themselves. They think being chosen means access, and they grab me. Hands at my elbow. Fingers at my waist.
“Mallen, they get excited—”
“They know the rules,” he says, coldly. “My job is to keep you safe.”
He steps back, heading for the door.
“Mallen.”
My voice is sharper than I meant it to be, but it stops him. Instantly.
He glances over his shoulder.
“Allow them one mistake,” I say, walking toward him. “Just one. You don’t have to gut them for breathing near me.”
His entire body stills.
He shakes his head, and the angles of his face sharpen.
I move past him slowly, dragging my hand across his breastplate as I go. My fingers catch the edge of the polished metal and linger there.
“I’ve watched this farce unfold for years,” he says, voice tight. “You’ve suffered enough. They will not touch you without consequence.” His gaze flickers, just briefly. “If they are suitably...repentant, I may grant mercy. But that decision is mine, Princess.”
I don’t push further. Instead, I nod, and he opens the door.
The corridor beyond is lined with banners, candelabras, and guards who stiffen at our presence.
This is the tenth time I’ve done this. The tenth Reaping. The tenth procession. The tenth evening that I’ve worn a gown like armor and walked these steps like a condemned woman to her own funeral.
I was ten the first time. Mallen had been almost fourteen—tall and gangly but already dangerous.
I still carried the innocence of a child and hadn’t understood then.
It was only in the years that came after that I understood why Mallen had sat with me throughout every banquet.
Why he’d stood between me and every man who came from Larksbind.
Why he’d refused to leave me alone with them, standing guard while my father did not intervene.
Now I know.
As I know my hatred isn’t only of the Reaping. Or even of its men. Nor is it because I know my father will whisper that I’m lucky to be loved, while their bodies are dragged past my feet.
It’s the performance I hate most, pretending I don’t know how this ends. A week of leading men to their deaths with grace and feigned laughter, while my magic presses like a scream behind my ribs.
“Princess?” His voice cuts through my thoughts.
I glance back as we descend the stairs. Mallen steps closer.
“You are stunning tonight.”
The words are soft, reverent.
My palm settles against my stomach as I stop and inhale and ground myself in the rhythm of breath and blood.
The wind murmurs through the courtyard ahead. I think of running. I think of what it felt like, days ago, to almost be free.
Mallen places his hand against my back. It’s too familiar. Too dangerous. Too right. It’s not protocol. It’s not allowed. But he does it anyway.
“I’m here, Azhara,” he says, voice low. His breath brushes the edge of my ear as he leans closer. “This is the last time. I swear it.”