Chapter One:
Let the Game Begin
The city hadn't changed. Not really.
Oh, they had polished the stones, painted the walls, and hung up new banners with fresher lies. But under the gleam, Solara Prime still reeked of the same poison: power, pride, and perfume thick enough to choke truth.
Amalthea Silver stood at the foot of the eastern gate, lips curled just slightly under her sheer lilac veil. A breeze caught the fabric and fluttered it like wings around her face—elegant, mysterious, just like the new name they knew her by:
Lady Nyra Vale.
She adjusted the gloves on her hands and tilted her head slightly to the right—her best angle, as always. Behind her, a servant stumbled, nearly dropping the trunk of clothes that had taken a week of scheming and coin to acquire.
She didn't flinch. A noble lady never turned for clumsy help. She just walked forward—like she belonged.
Like she hadn't been burned out of the empire like a stain seven years ago.
"Papers?" barked the palace guard at the checkpoint.
"Of course," she said, her voice soft as velvet. She handed him the scroll and a coin slipped so discreetly into the fold, it might've been magic. "Forgive the dust. The road from Miraveil was unkind."
The guard glanced at her face. He saw what she wanted him to see: high cheekbones, perfect poise, sad eyes full of loss. The kind of noble girl who'd probably spent her entire life writing in poetry journals and crying over love letters in her pajamas probably with ice cream.
Not the girl who'd once set a training arena on fire just to prove a point.
"Lady Nyra Vale," he read. "Daughter of House Vale… and ward of the late Lord Myrith? Hm."
She didn't blink. "I'm afraid my uncle passed during the border fever."
So did every other person who ever truly knew her. Convenient.
The guard's eyes hovered over her chest just long enough to be annoying, then returned the scroll. "Welcome to Solara Prime, my lady."
She dipped into the softest curtsy—just enough to charm, not enough to submit. "Thank you, ser."
Inside the Capital
Solara was too clean. Too bright. It made her skin itch.
The streets hadn't forgotten her footsteps; the bricks beneath her boots pulsed faintly, like they remembered what she was—not the noble she pretended to be now, but the Devourer they had tried to erase.
She took the long way to the House of Ascension. She needed to walk. Breathe. Remember how to move like a noble again.
Or rather… like Amalthea Silver, the girl she used to be.
"Lady Nyra?"
She turned. A young noble boy was standing near a pastry cart, holding a sugar-dusted treat and staring like she'd just floated out of a painting. Maybe fourteen. Barely grown into his velvet cuffs.
"You dropped this," he said, holding out a ribbon—hers, snagged from her hair by the wind.
She walked toward him, accepting it with a gracious nod. "You have the eyes of a knight."
The boy flushed tomato-red and stumbled backward into a barrel.
She smiled, turned, and kept walking.
Let them look.
Let them whisper.
She would make them all remember.
House of Ascension – Courtyard
The estate was as sickeningly opulent as she remembered. White towers gleamed like glass teeth. Servants rushed like nervous birds, and noble girls clustered in the garden like jeweled wasps.
"New blood?" one whispered.
"Merchant nobility," another sneered, sipping citrus wine. "From the provinces. They always smell of horse."
Amalthea passed them with a sweet smile that promised murder.
Her room was on the third floor, overlooking the garden. Her trunk arrived moments later, barely bruised. She let the servant stammer through his bows, then shut the door in his face.
Alone.
Finally.
She pulled off the veil, let her face breathe.
Gone was the golden hair of Amalthea Silver. In its place: a sleek dark cascade, colored with Veilroot sap. Her violet eyes dimmed with glamour magic—barely clinging to normalcy.
Her power—that terrible, beautiful forbidden thing—simmered under her skin like liquid night.
She stood at the mirror.
Seven years ago, that girl in the glass had burned.
Now?
She was ash.
And ash was never empty.
Ash could catch fire.
Across the City – Shadow Balcony
Damon Vire was a patient man.
He'd slit throats in royal bedrooms, cracked safes in underworld dens, and danced with duchesses while poison bled from his sleeve.
But tonight?
He watched her.
From the shadows of the Arcane Tower, hidden beneath the folds of Aether-bent illusion, he tracked her every step since the gates.
The moment she stepped through the House of Ascension gates, something in him had... snapped.
A pull. A pulse.
The threads between them weren't visible—not yet—but they were there. Ancient. Binding.
She didn't know. Not yet.
And he wouldn't tell her.
"She's a Devourer," he murmured to himself.
Even as the shadows swirled around him, even as the Syndicate whispered in his ears to eliminate the threat... Damon Vire did nothing.
He just smiled.
His mate had returned.
And gods help whoever stood in her way.
Later That Night – Amalthea's Room
A letter arrived.
Unmarked. No seal.
It appeared on her table like a ghost.
She opened it, already on edge.
"You walk like a ghost, but shadows recognize their own.
Careful, Lady Vale. Solara eats secrets for supper."
— A friend who sees more than you know.
She stared at it for a long time.
Then laughed. Just once.
"Cute."
She burned the letter with a snap of her fingers—just a flicker of heat beneath her palm. Nothing flashy. Nothing that would give her away.
Then she opened her trunk, pulled out a leather-wrapped roll, and carefully unrolled her list.
Names. Four of them.
Enemies. Blood.
Calista Vael
Archmage Teren Solace
Crown Prince Kaelion Draveth
Her father
And now… a fifth.
But he's a good guy I guess.
She dipped her quill, smiled like sin.
"Shadow Watcher"