The air stank of ash and blood.
The village of Eirwen lay smoldering beneath a crimson sky, its wooden cottages now nothing but broken teeth biting into the earth. Smoke curled upward in desperate prayers that would never be answered. The screams had faded — silence was worse.
Seren Vale crouched behind the ruined well, her cloak soaked in soot and her palms burned raw. Her breathing came in shallow gasps. She tasted iron in her mouth.
She had seen death before — the slow kind, in the winter starvation years, when children disappeared into the snow. But this... this was slaughter. Cold. Swift. Purposeful.
They had come on black horses. Their armor bore the crest of the Draven Crown — the silver thorn entwined with a broken sword. Royal soldiers. Vampire-led.
They weren't hunting rebels.
They were hunting her.
A hiss in the air , an arrow. It buried itself into the wooden post behind her. Seren flinched. Too close.
Her hand burned again. The skin glowed faintly beneath her torn glove. No... not now.
"Find the girl!" someone barked, voice deep and cruel. "She lit half the damn field on fire. Witchblood!"
Witchblood.
The word hit harder than the flames had. She didn't know what she was ,only that when she had screamed, when she saw her best friend Lyra beheaded in the dirt, something inside her snapped. And the world around her... caught fire.
Not normal fire.
Dragonfire.
It came from her hands, her heart, her very breath.
But dragons were myths. Dead. Extinct for centuries.
And she was nobody.
Seren stood shakily. Her silver hair clung to her face, slick with sweat. The amulet around her neck twisted obsidian shard pulsed warm against her chest. It had belonged to her mother. A mother she couldn't even remember.
She heard footsteps. Close. She spun
and found herself face to face with him.
A prince in midnight-black armor. Not just a soldier.
Kael Draven.
His pale face was expressionless, but his eyes — gods, his eyes were unnatural. Silver like moonlight on a frozen lake. Ancient eyes in a young man's face.
A vampire.
Seren raised her fists. "Kill me then," she spat, voice shaking. "I won't run."
Kael tilted his head. "If I wanted you dead," he murmured, voice smooth like falling snow, "you would be."
She expected cruelty. Arrogance. Not... curiosity.
"Who are you?" he asked softly.
"I don't know," she whispered.
The wind howled. The soldiers were near. Kael stepped closer, lowering his blade.
"There's power in you," he said, almost to himself. "Old blood. Wild blood."
Seren met his gaze. "Is that why you burn my village?"
"I didn't give that order."
"You wear their crest."
He didn't deny it.
But something shifted in him. He looked at her not like a monster... but like a mystery.
A beat of silence passed between them.
Then Kael did something no vampire prince had ever done for a hunted girl with fire in her veins.
He held out his hand.
"If you want to live," he said, "come with me."
Seren hesitated. Her entire body screamed to run, to fight, to burn him alive.
But instead...
She took his hand.
And the world changed.