Chapter 1 THE MASQUERADE OF FIRE

The chandeliers burned with dragonfire.

Their light shimmered across the marble floor like molten gold, painting every noble mask in shades of ruin. Eris D’Varyn moved among them as smoke might drift through a battlefield silent, unseen, dangerous.

The music, bright and cruel, drowned the whisper of her steps. Beneath the silk gown and jeweled mask, a dagger pressed cold against her thigh. Every heartbeat reminded her why she was here.

Tonight, the Empire would choke on its own opulence.

Tonight, she would kill a prince.

Her disguise was flawless: crimson velvet, a half mask of scales, perfume sweet enough to mask the scent of steel. To the lords and courtiers, she was another courtesan purchased for the evening. To herself, she was vengeance wrapped in silk.

A server passed with crystal goblets. She took one, not to drink but to blend. The wine smelled of ash. Of dragons burned long ago.

Across the ballroom, laughter swelled low, commanding, unmistakably his. Prince Kael Rhyven. The Dragon-Slayer Heir. The man whose armies had turned her clan to cinders.

He stood beneath the great bone chandelier, speaking easily to generals and sycophants, his mask a simple band of black metal. Simplicity was a kind of arrogance. Power never needed ornament.

Eris’s fingers tightened around the goblet until it cracked. The sound was swallowed by the music.

“Careful,” murmured a voice beside her. A court mage, judging by the rings heavy with sigils. “The glass bites back.”

“So do I,” she said, and smiled through her mask.

The mage recoiled, and Eris drifted past him, letting the crowd swallow her.

Every detail of the hall had been mapped in her mind for weeks: the hidden door behind the tapestry, the guards who rotated every sixty breaths, the balcony that overlooked the garden her escape route. She had planned this as a ritual, every step precise.

But rituals had a way of attracting gods.

The orchestra struck a new rhythm. Dancers parted, revealing the prince descending the dais. He moved like someone who knew eyes followed him grace without vanity, danger without apology.

Her pulse betrayed her.

When he passed near, the air warmed. The scent of smoke clung to him, faint but unmistakable. Dragonfire.

Impossible. Only her kind carried that scent.

He looked her way one glance, a flicker of curiosity and she almost forgot to breathe. The gray of his eyes was the color of storm-smoke before lightning.

Then he was gone into the crowd, and the spell broke.

Eris slipped toward the marble terrace. Outside, moonlight spilled across the gardens and the statues of conquered beasts. She drew a slow breath, centering herself.

In. Hold. Out.

The way her mother had taught her before the fires came.

The dagger waited at her thigh; its hilt pulsed faintly with the rune she’d carved herself an Emberblood sigil, forbidden, alive.

“Eris D’Varyn,” she whispered to the night. “Let him see what your ashes have become.”

She stepped back into the ballroom.

The prince was alone near the great mirror, speaking quietly to no one. The reflection caught her first: crimson gown, dragon scale mask, predator’s stillness.

He turned before she reached him, as if he’d felt the temperature change.

“Interesting mask,” he said. His voice was calm, low, dangerous. “Scale from the southern fires?”

“From a dragon who died screaming,” she replied.

“Most do.”

He smiled slow, unreadable. “And you are?”

“A gift.”

She moved before the word finished leaving her tongue. The dagger flashed beneath the lanterns, a whisper of silver in gold light.

Then impact.

Fire erupted between them.

Not metaphor. Not memory. Real fire, alive and furious, blooming from the space where her blade should have met flesh. It roared up her arm, devouring silk, tasting skin, yet did not burn her.

Kael caught her wrist, eyes wide not with fear, but recognition. The runes on his gloves blazed in answer.

For one impossible heartbeat, their flames met and twisted, two currents of the same ancient heat colliding.

The dagger clattered to the floor, molten at the edge.

“Emberblood,” he whispered.

She tried to wrench free, but the fire moved faster, spiraling up her arm, threading across his chest. The ballroom froze music dying, voices caught mid-breath as light engulfed them both.

In that silence, she heard it: a voice inside the flame, neither male nor female, ancient as ash.

At last, it said. The halves remember.

Eris gasped. Symbols burned into her skin curved lines forming the sigil of the lost dragon queen. Across from her, Kael bore the same mark seared above his heart.

Guards shouted. Someone screamed “Witch!”

Kael’s grip tightened, dragging her toward him. “If you value your life, move.”

“I came here to end yours,” she hissed.

“Then we’re both too late.”

The doors burst open. Arrows of ward-light streaked through the air. Kael raised his free hand; the magic shattered against invisible flame. Eris felt it surge through her, through them, one pulse one fire.

The balcony. Escape. Her mind fought for control.

He pushed her ahead of him, into the cool night, as chaos erupted behind.

“Let me go!” she snarled.

“I would, if you’d stop burning.”

She looked down. The mark along her wrist glowed like molten gold, the same light burning in his eyes. When he stepped back, the glow dimmed. When he neared, it flared.

A bond. Not spell. Not curse. Something older.

Below the balcony, the palace gardens swayed in the night wind. Far beyond, the city burned with its endless lights, unaware the empire’s heir and its ghost assassin stood bound by forbidden fire.

Eris steadied her breath. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Disappointing, I know.” He studied her like a puzzle. “You’re Emberblood. You shouldn’t exist.”

“Neither should you.”

For a long moment, the only sound was the hiss of their mingled fire fading into emberlight.

Then, somewhere deep inside her, the voice returned soft, satisfied.

The flame remembers its queen.

Eris pressed her scorched wrist against her chest, trying to still the trembling. Below them, guards poured into the courtyard, drawn by the light.

Kael glanced at her, then the drop. “You can fly, can’t you?”

She almost laughed. “Not yet.”

“Then hold on.”

He leapt.

The world turned upside down wind, fire, chaos before wings of molten light burst from their joined hands, carrying them into the night.

The last thing she s

aw before the palace vanished behind flame and smoke was the reflection of her own eyes in his: burning gold, no longer entirely human.