Prologue
In the blood of the innocent, roses bloom darkest.”
— ANCIENT IRON KINGDOM PROVERB
One late winter’s afternoon in the Iron Kingdoms, snowflakes fell like dying stars to a market street forgotten by warmth.
Most merchants packed up for the day, eager to return home before night settled—all except for a single boy and girl who lingered, their innocent laughter cutting through the war-deadened silence.
Each carried bundles wrapped against the frost—bread, salted fish, dried berries. A feast in a town close to battle lines.
Eyes followed their path. Hungry eyes, resentful eyes. Not for their food but for the youthful hands carrying it.
Children had become as rare as green fields in this cold, war-torn world.
Females were few. Fertile females were rare, and friends were even scarcer.
The girl counted envious stares like stones in her pocket—three men at the baker’s stall, a cluster of elders by the well she once fell down, and the butcher’s wife whose belly had never swelled with child.
The girl tightened her scarf around her head and went quiet. Her companion either didn’t notice or chose to disregard the stares. Then again, he was male. He had nothing to worry about apart from his next meal.
She glanced up at the rising moon on the other side of the sunset. A few more months and her childless fate would be sealed. Soon, she’d have no worries either.
“Your thinking face always means trouble.” The boy nudged her shoulder.
“Then you should stop watching my face,” she countered, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“Impossible!” When she cast a curious look his way, he quickly added, “Maybe you should stop worrying about what people are thinking.”
“I’m not.” She lifted her chin.
He scoffed. “Then what are you thinking about?”
She hesitated. “About how lucky I am.”
The boy glanced at her with a familiar lopsided smile that usually preceded his worst ideas.
That look had led him down the wrong path more times than she could count—stealing apples from the merchant’s cart, sneaking onto rooftops to watch the stars, then target practice with daggers aimed at apples on crates until they fell to the street below… hitting bystanders on the heads.
But no trouble came today—just a blush. Perhaps the boy was feeling sick. Or maybe she wasn’t as familiar with his faces as he was with hers.
“Lucky?” He swiped a damp, blond curl from his forehead.
“Yeah.” A knot of anxiety tightened in her stomach. “The chances are almost nothing, right? Most girls my age would have shown signs by now if they were… you know.”
“Most girls your age don’t have blue hair,” he teased, flicking an escaped strand of her unusual blue locks. For generations, the God Kasaros had brought women from other worlds for the Bride Hunt, so she was unsure of her ancestors’ origins.
She shrugged, feigning indifference. “Blue or not, I’m probably still barren.”
The boy didn’t respond immediately. His gloved fingers tightened around his bundle. “Does that make you sad?” he asked finally.
The girl stopped and faced him.
“No,” she replied. “If anything, it’s freeing.
No one will cart me off to the Pen or parade me through the streets.
I won’t be painted and stuffed into silly dresses or taught to kneel and serve.
I can just… live. Like we talked about. We can join the military and get out of this frozen pit of a town.
” Her eyes widened with excitement. “Or even better, become raiders! We can see the world.”
The boy nodded slowly, his gaze dropping to the snow.
She nudged his shoulder. “And what about you?”
His answer was soft. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little sad. About not having children.”
She tilted her head and laughed. “Really? You, a father?”
He tugged on his woolen hat, but it failed to hide the flushed tip of his ears. “What’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing! I just can’t picture it.” She felt heavy at his disappointed expression and supposed he had a lonely childhood. His mother had died in childbirth, and his father lost his life in one of the many wars. The boy had come to her house every evening for a meal but stayed for the company.
The males in charge desperately wanted all potentially fertile women to be healthy and well-fed.
If the girl didn’t show her womb’s first blood soon, then it would be clear she did not have the Goddess’s blessing, and so their extra patronage from the capitol would disappear.
Enjoying his company for dinner would soon be a thing of the past.
She hated seeing the boy sad and offered, “I suppose you’ll soon be old enough to win a bride yourself.”
He shot her a disgruntled look. “I’m not strong enough to become the realm’s champion. Nor can I afford the entry fee to register as a regular hunter. It’s more than we’ll earn in a lifetime.”
It sounded like he’d already put some thought into it. “But if it’s what you desire, there’s always a way—”
“I’d never do that,” he interrupted, his tone sharp with disgust. “A family should be born out of love like yours was. Not… that.” He trailed off, his face reddening further. “Besides, brides are weaklings.”
“Hey!” She scowled. “Take that back.”
“I said brides are weak. Not you. Not girls who join the military.”
But she hadn’t joined yet. They might not even accept her. At least, not until she cleared the age of no return. The boy had reached the age of enlistment last year. He’d never make enough for the entry fee if he kept waiting for her.
An awkward silence stretched between them, broken only by the crunch of snow underfoot and the occasional shout from disgruntled merchants as they continued down the market street.
“You should enlist without me,” she mumbled. “I’m holding you back.”
For a brief second, she almost swallowed the words.
Hope was dangerous, and dreaming was worse.
She’d seen what happened to girls who thought they could be more.
They disappeared. Or they bled out in the snow.
But the boy’s optimism was contagious. She let herself believe, just for a moment, that she could change her fate.
The boy stopped, his eyes searching hers. She thought he would agree with her, and something painful twisted in her chest. But then he said, “Who will play Shadow Stalker with me?”
She grinned.
“Tag.” She shoved him hard enough to prove she wasn’t fragile.
The boy stumbled back, the bundle of groceries slipping from his hands into the snow. His face broke into surprise, then indignation.
“Not fair!” he shouted. “The Shadow’s not supposed to strike first!”
“Who says?” she taunted, darting beneath a stall’s folding canopy with a giggle.
“You don’t even know your own rules!” he yelled, launching after her.
Their laughter bounced through the street as he pursued her between wagons, her red scarf trailing behind like a banner. She knocked into a vendor and earned a stern rebuke. The delay was costly. A brush of fingers on her wrist made her squeal, and she dashed away with sharp, exhilarating gasps.
She was across the street, only two steps when the boy’s shadow caught up to hers.
It stretched longer than last winter. She’d misjudged the distance of No Man’s Land—the street—to the haven on the other side.
The boy launched forward, barreling into her.
The snowbank tripped them both, and they fell hard.
“Caught you!” he crowed, pinning her wrists above her head.
Bright blue eyes collided with hers, scattering thoughts. His body caged hers in ways that sparked an unfamiliar feeling in her chest—a warning, perhaps, or a promise. They gazed into each other’s eyes for a heart-stopping moment, clouded breaths mingling.
She counted five flecks of brown in the sea of his blue. They were like islands to explore. One day, she would name them, and they would sail away in search of adventure. Maybe he was thinking the same things because his gaze grew dark and intense.
She squirmed beneath him. “You cheated.”
“How?”
“You changed. You’re stronger. Bigger.”
His lopsided grin stretched wider. “You’re the one who changed the rules.”
“I like changing the rules.” She craned her neck and scowled. “I like making them.”
His lashes lowered as he stared at the girl’s lips. All he could think of was her sweet feminine scent, her soft body. It confused the Gods out of him. The fight left him. His muscles unlocked, and he whispered almost inaudibly, “I like it when you change the rules, too.”
She wasn’t sure what this feeling in her chest was but knew it came from how he looked at her, from how his voice had deepened this summer. He sounded so grown up.
The girl shoved him away. He let her wrists slip through his fingers. She scrambled backward, and she poked her tongue out at him. Their laughter faded as they scrambled about the snow and gathered their fallen packages. It was then they noticed the red.
Small patches of it bloomed in the white behind them, a bright and vivid trail. The girl frowned. She touched between her legs, and her fingers came away sticky with blood.
“What—” Her question cut off as something extraordinary happened.
Her blood sank into the snow, then surged upward—green splitting white. The stem writhed as it grew, each thorny tendril reaching for the sky until the bud emerged like a wound healing in reverse.
A rose.
The boy’s chest tightened. The girl froze, her face pale, her hands trembling.
“That’s…” he whispered.
Somewhere deep in the village, bells began to toll.
The girl flinched as the boy grabbed her arm, his fingers tightening protectively. Around them, the townsfolk had already stopped in their tracks, their gazes fixed on the rose.
“Her blood is fertile,” one murmured.
“She’s a bride,” another said.
“Not just a bride. The bride.”
“Queen,” someone else shouted.
“She’s the Queen Bride!”
The girl shook her head, her breaths coming fast and shallow. “No,” she cried. “No, I’m not.”
But the rose in the snow said otherwise.