The first time I touch Kaelen, the world burns.
Not metaphorically. Actually. Flame licks up the marble pillars, blue-white and searing, the kind of fire that doesn’t consume but reveals—like truth ripped from skin. I feel it before I see it: a snap in the air, a pull in my chest so violent I stumble. My fingers, brushing against his sleeve as we pass in the High Court’s central hall, ignite the moment they make contact.
One second, I’m walking—back straight, shoulders relaxed, the perfect picture of neutral witch envoy Elara Voss, here to observe the Species Peace Talks. The next, my entire body is on fire from the inside out. My breath snags. My knees lock. And across from me, Kaelen, Prince of Ash and Heir to the Fae High Throne, goes utterly still.
His eyes snap to mine.
Gold. Not honey, not amber. Gold. Like molten coin pressed behind glass. Ancient. Unforgiving. The eyes of a man who has sentenced hundreds to death with a single nod. The eyes of the man who signed my mother’s execution order.
And in them—just for a fractured second—I see it. Not rage. Not calculation. Recognition.
Then the fire hits.
It erupts between us in a spiral of white-blue flame, racing across the polished floor like liquid lightning. The torches lining the hall flare in response, their flames turning the same unnatural hue. Gasps ripple through the courtiers. Guards shout, hands flying to their swords. A vampire noblewoman stumbles back, her crimson gown singed at the hem.
But I don’t move.
I can’t.
Because across my collarbone, just beneath the high neckline of my black ceremonial robe, a sigil is burning into my skin. Silver light pulses beneath my flesh, searing, shaping itself into jagged Fae script. I don’t need to see it to know what it says.
Kaelen.
His name. Marked into me by magic so old it predates the Great Sundering. A soul bond. A true mate claim.
Impossible.
It hasn’t happened in five hundred years. The last recorded bond was between a Fae queen and a werewolf alpha—killed in the first wave of the Purge. Since then, the magic has been dormant. Extinct. A myth told to children to explain why love between species is forbidden.
And yet.
Here it is.
Here he is.
Kaelen doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t shout. He simply lifts his hand—palm up, fingers splayed—and the fire between us dies in an instant, snuffed like a candle. Only the echo remains: the smell of ozone, the heat still humming in my blood, the mark on my skin pulsing like a second heartbeat.
“What,” he says, voice low and smooth as crushed velvet, “was that?”
I force my spine straighter. My voice, when it comes, is steady. Cold. “I don’t know, Your Highness. Perhaps your court needs better insulation.”
A murmur runs through the gathering crowd. A few Fae titter—nervous, cruel. I recognize the look in their eyes: disdain. The witch is insolent. The witch is out of place.
Good.
Let them underestimate me.
Kaelen doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t react. He steps forward, one slow, deliberate pace, and lifts his hand toward my face.
I don’t pull away.
I can’t. Not because I’m afraid. But because every instinct in my body is screaming at me to lean in. To close the distance. To press my lips to his throat and breathe him in—smoke and iron and something darker, something like buried coal waiting to ignite.
His fingers stop just short of my jaw. Instead, they hover near my collar, where the sigil burns beneath the fabric.
“You feel it,” he says. Not a question.
“Feel what?” I ask, voice clipped.
“The bond.”
“I feel nothing.”
He tilts his head. A predator assessing prey. “Liar.”
And then, before I can respond, the High Chancellor’s voice cuts through the silence.
“By the ancient laws of the Fae,” Voryn declares, stepping forward from the shadows, his Frost Court robes shimmering like ice, “a soul bond is not to be denied. It is divine. It is binding.”
My stomach drops.
Voryn. The man who orchestrated the Purge. The one who used my mother as a scapegoat. And now he’s smiling.
“Prince Kaelen,” he continues, “and the witch envoy… Elara, was it?”
“Voss,” I correct, teeth gritted.
“Elara Voss,” he repeats, as if tasting the name. “You are bound by fate. By magic. By the will of the old gods.” He spreads his hands. “This is no accident. This is a miracle. A sign that peace between our species is not only possible—but ordained.”
The court erupts.
Not in outrage. In celebration.
Applause. Cheers. A werewolf Beta in the back howls—short, sharp, approving. Even the witches in the delegation look stunned, then pleased. A hybrid union? A true mate bond between Fae and witch? After centuries of war, of bloodshed, of fear?
It’s the perfect political fairy tale.
And I’m the pawn in the center of it.
Kaelen turns to me, his expression unreadable. “You heard the Chancellor,” he says, voice quiet, meant only for me. “We are bound. There is no unmaking this.”
“Then I’ll burn it out,” I whisper back.
His gold eyes narrow. “You’d destroy yourself trying.”
“I’ve survived fire before.”
He studies me—really studies me—for the first time. Not as a political tool. Not as a symbol. As a woman. And for a heartbeat, I see it: the flicker of something deeper. Curiosity. Hunger. Need.
Then it’s gone.
“You will marry me,” he says, turning to address the court. “Within the week. The bond must be sanctified. An heir must be produced to seal the peace.”
The words land like a death sentence.
An heir.
The idea of bearing his child—of carrying the bloodline of the man who destroyed mine—makes me want to vomit. But I don’t. I stand there, back straight, face blank, as the court applauds.
As they celebrate my damnation.
And beneath my robe, the sigil pulses—hot, insistent, alive.
I don’t belong here.
I belong in the shadows, in the back alleys of Prague, in the hidden coven sanctuaries where witches like me—half-bloods, outcasts, survivors—lick our wounds and plot our revenge.
I belong with Maeve, my mentor, who taught me how to cast fire from my fingertips and lies from my tongue.
I belong to the memory of my mother, burning at the stake, screaming my name as the Fae guards held me down.
But here? In this gilded hall of liars and murderers? I am Elara Voss. Neutral envoy. Observer. No threat.
At least, that’s what they think.
I came here to burn the Fae High Court from within.
To expose the lies. To dismantle the hierarchy. To make them pay for what they did to my mother—and to every hybrid they’ve slaughtered in the name of purity.
I came here to destroy Kaelen.
And now?
Now the universe has bound me to him with magic older than war.
The sigil burns on my skin. His name. And I know—I’m not here to survive.
I’m here to kill him.