SERA'S POV
The gun barrel pointed straight at my heart.
Any last words, Princess? Duke Casimir asked, his smile cold as winter frost.
I stood on the execution platform, hands bound behind my back with iron shackles that bit into my wrists. The metal was still warm from the last prisoner they'd executed some poor rebel who'd screamed for mercy until the very end. I wouldn't scream. I wouldn't give them that satisfaction.
Below me, the ravine waited dark water churning over jagged rocks that looked like broken teeth in the moonlight. The sound of the rapids was deafening, a constant roar that seemed to echo the chaos in my heart. My mother's blood still stained the palace steps where they'd killed her three hours ago. Three hours since I'd held her broken body in my arms. Three hours since she'd whispered her final words: Run, my darling. Run and live.
But I hadn't run. I'd been too slow, too shocked, too broken by grief.
I could still hear her final scream echoing in my skull, could still feel her blood warm on my hands, could still see the light fading from her violet eye identical to mine.
The execution square was packed with nobles dressed in their finest, like this was a theater performance rather than a murder. They'd come to watch the traitorous princess die. To see justice served. They had no idea they were watching the kingdom's last hope fall with me.
Commander Kael Draven stood in the firing line, rifle raised with the same precision he'd used when teaching me to shoot during lazy summer afternoons. His hands were steady. They'd always been steady. Even now, even as he prepared to end my life.
Our eyes met across the distance.
Those storm-gray eyes I'd loved since I was fifteen. Eyes that had looked at me with such tenderness last night as we lay tangled together in my bed, promising each other forever. Eyes that had seen every part of me body and soul. Eyes that had promised me we'd find a way to be together, that love would conquer duty.
Had that kiss been goodbye? Had he known even then that he'd have to kill me?
The crowd fell silent, waiting. Someone coughed. A baby cried in the distance. The wind picked up, carrying the scent of roses from the palace gardens my mother's favorite flower.
I looked at Kael one last time. Memorized every line of his face. The scar on his jaw from the knife fight that had nearly killed him when he was eighteen. The slight crook in his nose from being broken twice. The way his dark hair fell across his forehead when he didn't bother to push it back.
I mouthed three words: I love you.
For one heartbeat, his composure cracked. I saw anguish flash across his face. Saw his jaw clench. Saw his finger tremble on the trigger.
Then his training took over. His face went blank. Professional. Dead.
His finger didn't hesitate. Didn't falter.
The rifle cracked like thunder.
The bullet slammed into my shoulder. White-hot agony exploded through my chest, radiating down my arm and up into my neck. I gasped, tasting blood. The world tilted sideways. I fell backward, the world spinning in a kaleidoscope of pain and stars and Kael's face twisted in agony now, all professionalism shattered.
The last thing I saw before I hit the water was Kael's face, mouth open in a scream I couldn't hear over the roaring in my ears, before I hit the water and everything went black.
The cold was worse than the bullet.
It slammed into me like a second death, driving the air from my lungs. The current grabbed me with greedy hands, dragging me under. Down. Down. Down into darkness that tasted like death and river mud and the metallic tang of my own blood clouding the water around me.
My lungs screamed for air. My shoulder was on fire. The shackles on my wrists were lead weights pulling me deeper.
I'm going to die here, I thought with strange clarity. Not from the bullet, but from drowning in this cursed river.
My mother's voice echoed in my mind: Run, my darling. Run and live.
I kicked. Once. Twice. My boots were heavy, my dress heavier, but I kicked anyway. Fought the current. Fought the darkness. Fought death itself because I'd be damned if I let them win.
My head broke the surface for one precious second. I gulped air, saw the night sky wheeling above me, saw the execution platform receding in the distance. Then the current pulled me under again.
The last thing I remember before unconsciousness took me was a hand grabbing my collar, pulling me toward the shore, and a woman's voice saying, I've got you, Your Highness. I've got you.
Then nothing.
Just darkness and pain and the certain knowledge that Princess Seraphina Valorian had died in that river.
FIVE YEARS LATER
I stepped out of the luxury car, my black gown shimmering under the palace lights like liquid midnight. The silk whispered against my skin as I moved custom-made, expensive, designed to make me look like exactly what I was pretending to be: a woman of power and sophistication.
The guards checked my invitation with bored efficiency, their eyes sliding over me without recognition. One of them had been at my execution. I remembered his face young, scared, unable to watch when the shot was fired. Now he was older, harder, and he looked right through me like I was a stranger.
Perfect.
Elena Frost, Political Consultant, one read aloud, his voice clipped and professional.
Welcome to the palace, Miss Frost.
The words were routine. Meaningless to him. But to me, they were everything. After five years of exile, of training, of transforming myself into someone unrecognizable, I was finally home.
I smiled politely the practiced smile of Elena Frost, not the genuine warmth of Princess Sera and walked through the golden doors I'd once called home. Each step echoed with ghosts. My ghosts. The girl I used to be haunted these halls more surely than any specter.
Every stone in these floors had witnessed my childhood. I knew them all intimately. The third stone from the entrance had a chip from when I'd dropped my mother's favorite vase at age six. That staircase had heard my laughter when Lyanna and I would race each other to our rooms, our governesses shouting after us to slow down, to behave like proper princesses.
This hallway had hidden my teenage tears after my first heartbreak not Kael, but before him, some duke's son who'd called me beautiful and then married someone else for her dowry.
That corner, shadowed and private, had seen my first kiss with Kael. I'd been seventeen, he'd been twenty-one, and we'd both known it was forbidden. But we'd kissed anyway, desperate and clumsy and perfect.
Now they would witness my revenge.
The ballroom blazed with candlelight and jewels. Crystal chandeliers the same ones that had hung here since my great-grandmother's reign cast dancing shadows across marble floors polished to a mirror shine. Nobles danced and laughed, celebrating five years of my sister's reign. Five years of peace, they called it. Five years of prosperity.
Five years since they'd stolen everything from me.
Five years I'd spent becoming someone who could take it all back.
I moved through the crowd like a shadow, cataloging faces. Lord Bertram had voted for my execution. Lady Catherine had smiled as they led me to the platform. Duke Morrison had been conveniently absent, claiming illness, the coward.
And there, at the center of it all, sat Princess Lyanna on my throne.
My twin sister.
She looked beautiful in white silk that probably cost more than most of our subjects earned in a year. Her platinum blonde hairthe same color mine used to be before I'd dyed it blackwas arranged in an elaborate updo woven with diamonds. Our mother's diamonds. The ones I was supposed to inherit.
She was smiling at the crowd, gracious and regal, like she hadn't watched our mother die. Like betrayal hadn't stained her hands red. Like she deserved to sit where she sat.
Duke Casimir stood beside her, one hand on her shoulder. Controlling her. Using her. The puppet master who'd orchestrated it all. He was older now, grayer, but his eyes were the same cold and calculating and completely devoid of conscience.
He was talking to her, whispering something in her ear. She laughed, but it was a hollow sound. Practiced. I knew that laugh. We'd shared the same laugh as children, identical in pitch and rhythm. Her laugh now sounded like breaking glass.
Lord Viktor worked the crowd nearby, charming nobles with his perfect smile. He wore an expensive suit in deep blue always had loved blue, said it brought out his eyes. The same smile he'd used on me while secretly feeding my plans to my enemies. My fiancé. My betrayer.
I'd trusted him with everything. Told him about my mother's secret resistance network. Told him about the safe houses. The loyal supporters. And he'd sold every piece of information to Casimir for a promise of power and wealth.
I cataloged every face. Every target. Every person who would pay.
Phase One: Infiltrate and gather evidence.
The thought steadied me, gave me purpose. I wasn't here to kill them tonight. Not yet. First, I needed proof. Documentation. Evidence that would make the kingdom believe me when I revealed the truth.
A man caught my attention across the ballroom.
Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a military dress uniform covered in medals that caught the light with every movement. His dark hair showed threads of gray that hadn't been there five years ago, as if grief had aged him prematurely. His face looked carved from stone handsome still, devastatingly so, but hollow. Empty. Dead.
Commander Kael Draven.
The man who'd killed me.
The man I'd loved more than breathing.
My carefully constructed armor cracked. Just seeing him made my shoulder ache where his bullet had torn through flesh. Made my heart remember what loving him had felt like flying and drowning simultaneously, like the best and worst decision I'd ever made.
He scanned the crowd with dead eyes, watching for threats out of habit. His hand rested near his weapon. Always on duty. Always ready. That was Kael loyalty and duty personified, even when it destroyed him.
Then his gaze found me.
For one terrible second, I thought he recognized me. His entire body went still, like he'd seen a ghost. His hand actually moved toward me, an involuntary gesture, before he caught himself.
Because he had seen a ghost.
But then the moment passed. Confusion flickered across his face, then suspicion, then nothing. The walls came back up. His expression went blank again.
My blonde hair was now black. Brown contacts hid my violet eyes. I'd lost weight, gained muscle, changed everything except the bones underneath. And bones could be disguised with makeup, with careful contouring, with the expertise Mira had taught me.
Still, I needed to know if any part of him remembered. If any part of him could sense who I really was beneath the disguise.
I moved through the crowd deliberately, positioning myself in his path. Close enough to be noticed. Close enough to test him.
Commander Draven, I said, keeping my voice low and controlled pitched slightly deeper than my natural tone. The kingdom's most decorated soldier.
He blinked, thrown off by my directness. Up close, I could see everything. The shadows carved under his eyes like bruises that never healed. The lines of pain around his mouth, etched deep from years of frowning. The gray in his hair not just at his temples, but scattered throughout like ash.
He looked like a man who hadn't slept peacefully in years.
Good.
He looked like a man haunted by ghosts.
Perfect.
Tell me, I continued, holding his gaze, does all that loyalty ever feel heavy?
It was a calculated risk. A question that hinted at knowing him, at understanding the weight he carried. A question that Sera might have asked.
His jaw clenched almost imperceptibly. Duty is never a burden, Miss...?
His voice was rough, like he didn't use it much anymore except to give orders. Like conversation had become foreign to him. I remembered when his voice had been warm, when it had whispered my name in the darkness, when it had promised me everything.
Frost. Elena Frost.
I let the name settle between us. Let him study my face, searching for something he couldn't quite identify. I saw his eyes narrow slightly, saw his breathing change, saw recognition dance at the edges of his consciousness before he pushed it away.
Impossible, his rational mind was saying. Sera is dead. You killed her yourself.
But his heart, his instincts, his soul they knew.
I walked away before he could ask more questions. Before the tears threatening behind my eyes could fall. Before I did something monumentally stupid like forgive him.
Each step away from him felt like tearing myself in half.
But I'd made a mistake.
A critical, emotional mistake.
I'd worn the same perfume. Violets. My mother's favorite. The scent I'd worn every day of my life until the day I died. The scent I should have abandoned with everything else from my old life.
But I couldn't. It was the last piece of my mother I had left, the last connection to who I'd been.
I heard Kael's sharp intake of breath behind me as the perfume reached him.
Felt his eyes burning into my spine as I disappeared into the crowd.
Let him wonder. Let him remember. Let him hurt.
Let him feel a fraction of what I'd felt when his bullet tore through me.
Hours later, I stood in my hotel room, staring at my reflection in the mirror. The suite was expensive, modern, nothing like the palace rooms I'd grown up in. Everything here was sharp edges and cold surfaces, designed for function rather than comfort.
Black hair. Brown eyes. A stranger's face with a dead girl's soul.
I reached up and removed the contacts carefully, one at a time. The process always made my eyes water. But it was worth it to see myself again, even if only for a moment.
Violet eyes stared back my mother's eyes. The only thing I couldn't disguise. The only part of Princess Sera that remained unchanged.
I looked like her now more than ever. The same age she'd been when she died. The same sadness in my eyes that I'd seen in hers those last few months when she'd known the coup was coming but hadn't known how to stop it.
On the dresser sat a photograph I'd saved from the fire. My family, taken one month before the coup.
Mother stood in the center, beautiful and regal in her formal gown, one hand on my shoulder and one on Lyanna's. She was smiling, but if you looked closely, you could see the worry in her eyes. She'd known something was coming. Had tried to warn me.
Lyanna stood on Mother's left, smiling at the camera with the genuine joy of someone who didn't yet know she was capable of betrayal. We were wearing matching dresses lavender silk with silver embroidery. We'd insisted on matching, even though we were eighteen and supposedly too old for such things.
And I stood on Mother's right, grinning like an idiot because Kael had been standing behind the photographer making faces at me.
We looked so happy. So naïve. So doomed.
I traced my finger over Mother's face, feeling the glossy surface of the photograph. I'm home, Mama. And they're all going to pay.
My voice sounded strange in the empty room. Too loud. Too full of grief.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand, the vibration obscenely loud in the silence.
A message from Mira, my only ally: Package delivered. Tomorrow begins.
Tomorrow I'd walk back into that palace as a consultant. Get close to my enemies. Gather evidence. Destroy them all, one by one, until they understood what they'd taken from me.
I was about to respond when another message came through. Unknown number.
My blood turned to ice.
A photograph filled the screen. Me, tonight, in the ballroom. Someone had zoomed in on my face, captured the exact moment I'd passed Kael. The angle was perfect. Professional. They'd caught the split second when my mask had slipped, when longing and pain had flashed across my face.
Anyone who knew what to look for would see it. Would see Sera beneath Elena.
Below the photo, five words:
I know who you are.
My hands started shaking. I nearly dropped the phone.
A third message appeared before I could process the second:
Welcome home, Princess Seraphina.
The phone slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor.
Someone knew I was alive. Someone had been watching. Someone who could destroy everything with a single word.
Was it Casimir? Playing with me like a cat with a mouse?
Or someone else? Someone with their own agenda?
I stood there in the darkness, violet eyes staring back from the mirror, and felt the careful foundation of my revenge plan begin to crack.
Five years of preparation. Five years of becoming someone else. Five years of planning every detail.
And someone had already seen through it all.
They'd just declared war.
The only question was: were they enemy or ally?
And more importantly: would I survive long enough to find out?