One drop of magic. One stolen kiss. And then—somehow—she ended up chained to a monster.
A sob cut through the night.
Not loud. Not dramatic. Just thin and desperate, like someone trying not to be heard through iron.
Sylvera stopped walking.
Her bare feet pressed into the cold earth. Behind her, the firelight from camp flickered weakly, shrinking into nothing. For a second she genuinely thought she'd imagined it. Her mind playing tricks after too many sleepless nights.
Then a voice slid out of the dark behind her.
Low. Sharp. Dangerous.
"You shouldn't be here."
Three Weeks Ago
The first time Sylvera saw King Lorian, she didn't need anyone to warn her.
Trouble had already arrived.
He rode into the village on a white horse, shining like a story people told their children when they wanted them to believe in heroes. Sunlight poured over his armour, almost blinding. The village square exploded with sound—cheers, laughter, petals thrown into the air like blessings. Children chased soldiers, slipping on dust and giggling like nothing bad had ever touched the world.
Everyone was smiling.
Everyone… except her.
Sylvera stood behind her stall with her hands busy, stacking potion vials that suddenly felt stupid. Pointless. What did healing herbs matter when men like that existed?
Just a hedge witch in a brown dress. Ordinary. Replaceable. Easy to miss.
Don't look. Don't get noticed.
She looked anyway.
And everything shifted.
His gaze found her across the crowd, steady and cold. It didn't skim past. It didn't hesitate. It locked onto her like it had been searching.
Her stomach tightened.
There was recognition in his eyes—faint, impossible—but it hit her spine like ice.
Who is he?
People called him king. Hero. Protector.
But there was something wrong in the way he stared at her, like he wasn't seeing a stranger at all.
Like he already knew her.
Her first mistake as a mage.
Her second was even worse.
She didn't look away.
The next time he appeared, he didn't bring a crown with him.
No guards. No banner. No grand entrance.
Just a dark cloak pulled over his shoulders, the hood shadowing his face. Still—he didn't look like a man trying to hide. He looked like a man who could walk into a fire and the flames would make space for him.
"I've been having headaches," he said.
His voice was calm, almost bored, but it rolled through her chest anyway. "They tell me your hands can do miracles."
Sylvera blinked at him, too long. Then she reached for a vial like her body could keep moving even if her head couldn't.
"You need sleep," she muttered. "Not miracles."
Something flickered in his expression. Amusement, maybe.
"You sound very sure."
"I'm a healer," she said, placing the vial in front of him. "Being sure is half the job."
He paid in silver, dropping coins into her palm.
His fingers brushed hers.
It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't even slow. It should've been nothing.
But her pulse jumped anyway, annoying and traitorous.
Sylvera stood there after he left, staring at her own hand like it had been burned.
Why does he look at me like that?
Like he's expecting something.
Like he's waiting for me to remember.
He didn't vanish after that.
He came back.
Not once. Not twice. Again. And again, like her stall had become part of his routine.
Sometimes he brought rare roots from the royal gardens, still smelling of wet soil. Sometimes he stayed until the late sky turned orange and the shadows stretched long across the road.
Once, he picked up a mortar and tried to help grind herbs.
It was awful. Clumsy. Completely wrong.
Sylvera laughed before she could stop herself.
And the moment the sound left her mouth, she regretted it—until she looked up.
Because he was smiling.
Not the empty polite kind. Not the half-smirk he wore like armour.
A real smile.
It made him look younger. Almost human.
And a thought slipped into her mind, uninvited and dangerous:
What if he never left?
It didn't take long for the shift to happen.
One day he was simply watching.
The next… he was looking. Like she was something he wanted, not just someone he found interesting.
"Your eyes," Lorian murmured, quiet enough that only she could hear, "are like storm clouds. I could drown in them."
Sylvera's breath caught.
Her heart did something stupid—stuttered and tripped over itself like it didn't know how to behave.
Nobody had ever spoken to her like that.
Not with awe. Not with hunger wrapped in softness.
And beneath it… something heavier. Something that felt a little like grief.
As if he already knew they were standing on the edge of something doomed.
Don't believe him.
Don't.
She believed him anyway.
She hadn't planned to fall in love.
She told herself she was smarter than that.
But love didn't care what she wanted.
That night, she stood by the hearth holding a vial between her fingers.
The potion inside gleamed soft rose. Pretty. Innocent-looking.
A love potion.
Not strong enough to control a mind, not truly.
Just enough to nudge a feeling. To make a memory cling tighter.
Enough to make him think of her when he returned to his palace, when the world pulled him away.
It's harmless.
It's harmless.
She repeated it over and over until the words sounded believable.
And then she did it.
Three drops.
That was all.
They fell into his goblet the next time he came to her cottage, shimmering like dew. Her hands shook when she offered it to him.
He drank without hesitation.
And he didn't stop looking at her while he did.
That was the moment her stomach turned.
It felt like being watched by something that had already chosen her.
That day he didn't mention headaches.
He didn't pretend he was just a man passing through.
He sat close—too close. Their knees brushed when she handed him tea, and he didn't shift away like normal people would.
His fingers caught hers.
And stayed there.
The silence between them changed shape. It wasn't awkward anymore. It wasn't empty.
It was… loaded.
Full of things she didn't have the courage to name.
"Stay with me," he said at last.
The words were simple. His voice wasn't. Low, rough, like it cost him something to say it.
Sylvera should have refused.
She should've remembered the village children. The sick. The ones who depended on her.
She should've remembered the life she'd built from nothing.
But her heart didn't care.
It leapt anyway.
And dragged the rest of her with it.
The next morning, she left.
No note. No apology. No goodbye whispered to empty rooms.
Just a basket left on her apprentice's doorstep—herbs tied neatly, like a blessing.
Rosemary for protection.
Lavender for peace.
And a lock of her own hair wrapped with a spell so fragile it barely held together.
Be brave.
They rode out at dawn.
Sylvera sat behind him as the horse tore through the mist-wrapped forest, her hands gripping his cloak like it was the only solid thing in the world.
Pine bit sharp in the air. Cold pressed into her bones.
She'd never gone beyond those woods. Never wanted to.
Yet the farther they travelled, the wider the world became—fields turning gold under the sun, rivers like silver ribbons, roads stretching ahead like they didn't end.
I should turn back.
I should turn back right now.
But each time the thought rose, his hand found hers on the reins, steady and warm.
And she stayed.
From that day forward, she stopped being invisible.
Village after village, Sylvera's magic spilled out in the open. She healed broken limbs. Pulled poison from veins. Drove curses out of homes like smoke. And everywhere they went, the whispers followed.
Who is she?
People started leaving offerings outside their tent: sage, carved charms, prayers scribbled on cloth.
She wasn't the nameless hedge witch anymore.
She was becoming something else.
Someone people talked about like a myth.
And Lorian… Lorian made sure she felt it.
He touched her constantly, like he needed to keep proof she was real.
In crowds, he kissed her knuckles like it was reverence. At feasts, he leaned in close, brushing hair from her face with careful fingers, as if he was memorising her.
One night, under a sky split open with stars, they lay on a lonely hill.
His voice was soft, almost possessive.
"You see? No king has ever loved as I love you."
Sylvera wanted to believe him so badly it hurt.
She wanted that moment to last forever. Just stars, grass, warmth.
No consequences.
No truth.
But nothing stays pure.
Not magic.
Not love.
Not kings.
It started small. The way nightmares always do.
Whispers in villages.
Mothers searching for children who didn't come home.
Fathers roaming fields with lanterns and cracking voices.
"They've run off to play," Lorian said smoothly, almost kindly. "Or bandits. I'll send patrols."
And people believed him.
Why wouldn't they?
He was the hero.
The king.
The one who promised safety.
But Sylvera's stomach kept tightening.
Because she noticed what nobody else did.
Every village they left behind had one less child.
Always.
And it was always after the fires burned low.
Always after Lorian lifted his goblet.
Always after his laugh blended into the night like it belonged there.
Then there was the chest.
Iron-bound. Bolted shut. Dragged behind them by two guards who barely spoke.
At first she ignored it, because her mind didn't want to touch that kind of fear.
Then one night, when camp slept and the world fell quiet—
She heard it.
A sound that ripped the dark open.
A child crying.
Muffled. Thin. Desperate.
Her blood went cold.
She walked toward it, slow, barely breathing—
And the guards rose from the shadows like statues.
One didn't even speak.
He just shook his head once.
Slow.
Final.
Sylvera swallowed her questions.
Because suddenly she understood:
Some answers could get you killed.
And then came the hunger.
At feasts, Lorian stopped eating. Barely touched anything. Bread, meat, fruit—left untouched on silver plates.
But at night, when the world went quiet…
He ate alone.
Sylvera watched from the edge of their tent, heart beating in her throat.
She saw red shine on his teeth.
Saw the strange coldness in his eyes.
That hollow, blooming hunger, like something inside him had opened its mouth.
It's stress, she tried to tell herself.
It's the crown.
It's the burden of ruling.
But her magic didn't buy her lies.
It hummed under her skin like a warning.
Something is wrong.
Not "wrong" like sickness.
Wrong like evil.
Wrong like a curse pretending to be a man.
The one who whispered love beneath the stars wasn't human.
Not fully.
Not anymore.
And Sylvera the foolish hedge mage who thought she could use a potion to bend fate
had crawled straight into the arms of a monster and called it love.
She cast the spell.
She fed the lie.
And now the truth was pulling apart around her, thread by thread, no mercy in it.
Everything was breaking.
Everything was unravelling.