Crown of Ashes
Book 2 in the Darkness Falls series
They loved to tell the story of how gentle he was with me.
How carefully he guided me through rooms full of watching eyes.
How he always held my hand, always spoke my name like a promise.
No one noticed that he never let go.
I learned quickly what pleased him. Which smiles were believable. Which silences meant obedience instead of resistance. I learned that gratitude was safer than honesty-and that pain, when framed as love, could be endured indefinitely.
He called it devotion.
I called it survival.
At night, when the palace was quiet and the performance finally ended, I would sit on the edge of the bed and touch the glass slipper kept beside the crown jewels. They said it was proof that magic was real. That destiny could be measured. That goodness left marks.
It fit only one foot.
He liked that.
"It reminds people who you are," he told me once, watching my reflection instead of my face.
"Fragile. Rare. Chosen."
Fragile things don't survive fire.
But cages burn.
And I am done being gentle.
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