Chapter 1 Elena Heart – POV
The Heart fallen territory had been in ruins for years. Long before I was even born.
The great manor of my ancestors stood on the hill like a skeleton, windows gaping, ivy strangling the stone, the Heart crest chipped beyond recognition. No one came to visit. No one remembered. And that was exactly how we wanted it.
Now, my parents, the former Count and Countess Leo and Lana Heart, lived in a small cottage at the edge of the forgotten lands. Far from the mansion's ruin. Far from prying eyes. Far from the long arm of King Xavier Drakes.
I grew up in a garden of flowers. Loving parents. Perfect childhood. A farmer's daughter, happy and loyal to the throne of King Xavier Drakes of the Drakmor Kingdom.
That was what we showed the rest of the world.
Outside our cottage, I was ordinary. Twenty years old. Sweet smile. Kind eyes. The sort of girl villagers patted on the head and said, "She needs a strong husband to protect her." The damsel in distress. The flower waiting to be plucked.
I played the part beautifully. But looks, as my mother taught me, can fool an army. Because the reality was sharper than any blade my father ever placed in my hand.
I was trained. Educated. From childhood, hatred against the Drakes had been embedded into my heart like a second heartbeat. Not planted, forged. Hammered into me while I still played with dolls made of straw.
My father, Former Count Leo Heart, trained me in sword and shield. He taught me tactical warfare against the kingdom's patrol routes. He showed me how to snap a man's wrist if he grabbed me, how to kill in silence, how to ride a horse like a warrior instead of a lady.
"The Drakes took everything," he would say, sweat dripping from his brow after a sparring match. "They will not take you."
My mother, Lana Heart, trained me differently. She taught me how to walk like a queen. How to laugh without meaning it. How to pour tea slowly to hide a tremor in my hands. How to wear silk like armor and speak in riddles that sounded like honey.
"Men like Xavier Drakes," she whispered while braiding my hair by candlelight, "do not fear swords. They fear a woman who smiles while holding a knife behind her back."
So I became both. The blade and the smile.
Since my birth, it had been a mission. Ruin the Drakes.
Ruin the king.
A thirty-year-old tyrant. A man with the surname my family had hated for generations, before I was born, before my father was born, before the cottage was even a thought.
The Drakes and the Hearts had once been allies. Then lovers. Then enemies. Then something worse than enemies.
We became ghosts. Ghosts with a grudge and a plan.
I never met the king. I had only seen his face on wanted posters the rebellion printed in secret, or heard his name spoken like a curse in the dark of our cottage. Xavier Drakes. The Shadow Tyrant. The Monster of Drakmor.
They said he ruled with iron and fire. That he commanded monsters from a throne of bones. That his heart had frozen solid long ago, after his own family locked him in darkness.
I didn't care. A frozen heart still bleeds when you stab it.
Tonight, the cottage smelled of woodsmoke and treason.
My father sat at the table, maps of the royal palace spread before him. My mother stood by the fire, sewing something small and silver into the hem of a gown, a blade, I realized. Thin as a needle, sharp as a whisper.
I sat between them, my hands wrapped around a cup of cold tea.
"It's time," my father said. Not a question. A verdict.
My mother didn't look up from her sewing. "The spring masquerade. The king will choose a consort this year. The court is desperate for his attention, he's been alone too long. Lonely men are blind men."
"And I'm to be his eyesore?" I asked dryly.
My father's gaze met mine. Hard. Loving. Terrified. All at once. "You're to be his ruin, Elena. You will approach him. Seduce him. Make him want you so desperately that he cannot see the knife until it's buried in his throat."
I set down the tea.
For twenty years, I had trained for this. Every bruise from every sparring match. Every forced smile at village gatherings. Every night spent memorizing the castle's secret passages, the king's schedule, his weaknesses.
But now that the moment had arrived, my chest felt strangely hollow. Not fear. Not doubt. Something else. What kind of man requires this much hatred?
I pushed the thought away before it could root. "I won't fail you," I said.
My mother rose and draped the silver-hemmed gown over my shoulders. It was deep crimson, the color of hearts and blood.
"No," she said softly, adjusting the collar. "You won't. Because you are a Heart, Elena. And Hearts do not break. They burn."
Outside, the wind carried the distant howl of monsters from the borderlands.
Somewhere in his black-stoned castle, King Xavier Drakes sat on his thorned throne, alone in the dark.
He didn't know it yet. But I was coming for him. With a smile. With a blade. With a lie so beautiful, even a tyrant would want to believe it.
The next morning, we left the cottage and a day later, the transition from the wild, rotting borders to the heart of the Drakmor Kingdom was like waking from a fever dream into a cold, brilliant reality.
As the carriage rattled through the massive iron-wrought gates of the capital, I leaned against the velvet cushions, my breath catching in my throat.
I had expected a city that reflected the ‘Monster King’, dark, soot-stained, and decaying. The tales from the rebellion painted Drakmor as a graveyard with walls.
Instead, the capital was a marvel of terrifying order.
The streets were paved in white stone, scrubbed so clean they shimmered under the morning sun.
Flower boxes overflowing with deep purple nightshade and white lilies lined every balcony.
Fountains carved like sleeping wolves stood in every square, their waters so clear they looked like liquid glass.
But the beauty was a mask.
The knights were everywhere. Their black armor polished to a mirror finish, their eyes unmoving behind T-shaped visors. They stood at every corner, every bridge, every shadowed alley. Not marching. Not patrolling. Just watching.
And the people, they moved with a strange, frantic grace. Well-dressed and well-fed, yes. Silk coats and polished boots. But they walked as if the pavement were made of thin ice.
Their eyes were darting, restless, filled with the quiet agitation of those who know that one wrong word could be their last.
A woman laughed somewhere in a courtyard above. The sound was bright and perfect, and entirely empty. This is fear, I realized. Dressed in gold.
We pulled up to The Gilded Rose, an inn that cost more for a night's stay than a farmer made in a year. It rose four stories high, its facade carved with roses so lifelike I expected them to bloom. Crystal chandeliers hung in every window. The doorman wore a velvet coat worth more than our cottage.
My father, playing the role of the weathered coachman to perfection, avoided eye contact as he hauled my trunks inside. His hands, calloused from sword grips and rope burns, looked foreign holding leather luggage straps.
"The merchant will find you at four," he muttered under his breath as he set down the final chest. His face was hidden beneath the brim of his cap, but I saw the muscle in his jaw tighten. "Trust the eyes, not the voice. Be careful, Elena. The air here is thin."
Thin. His code word for dangerous. Deadly. One mistake and we all burn.
With a final, lingering look, one that betrayed the father beneath the disguise, he disappeared back into the bustle of the street.
The door clicked shut. I was alone.
The room was larger than our entire cottage. Silk curtains. A bed draped in fur. A fireplace already crackling with scented wood.
A mirror framed in gilded leaves reflected a girl who looked like a stranger, my hair pinned up, my travel dress exchanged for a simple gown of forest green, my mother's pearl earrings dangling from my ears.
I sat on the edge of the silk-covered bed, the silence weighing on me like a hand on my chest.
Then, a sharp, rhythmic knock. Three quick beats. Two slow. A pause. Then one more.