Bound by prophecy. Torn by love.
Since the day she was born beneath a sacred star, Axelia's future has never been her own. Promised to Crown Prince Fenneon since childhood, she has spent seventeen years preparing to become Cythia's future Empress.
There's just one problem.
She's fallen in love with Gilaneth, the captain sworn to protect the royal family—and the one man she can never have.
As a mysterious curse sweeps across the kingdom, sending people into an endless, fatal sleep, Axelia uncovers a conspiracy that reaches deeper than the palace walls. With time running out, she must choose between the destiny she's always been expected to fulfill and the love she's willing to risk everything for.
Because saving the kingdom may cost her heart... and losing either could destroy them all.
14+ due to adult situations
Excerpt:
A chill breeze swept down from the mountains and across the land, making me pull my cloak around me, shielding me from the icy notes in the wind. A hint of cedarwood drifted in the air, and I smiled at its warm, sweet scent, knowing exactly who’d arrived to join me at my lookout place.
“When are you going to turn in for the night, Lady Axelia?” spoke a voice that could melt glaciers.
I turned to see Captain Gilaneth Arken gazing at me, his blue eyes with deep golden flecks, sparkling. A lopsided grin filled his handsome face, bleached by the silken moonlight, making his sun-bronzed skin silver. That gorgeous smile never failed to send the blood rushing to my face. My heart skipped a beat as I took in his noble features, his tall, strong frame, and his sandy hair that shifted in the breeze.
“Now,” I said, sensing his unease.
Although only a couple of years older than me, he was Captain of the Imperial Guard, a hereditary position passed down from his father when he died last year. As such, he had to check the Imperial Family were all safely in their chambers at night. Yet again, I was the last to retreat to my rooms—not that he ever had a hard job of finding me. Whenever I disappeared, I could usually be found atop this tower, always staring out over the empty landscape beyond the Citadel to freedom.
I winced. “And please don’t call me ‘lady’ when we’re alone. It makes me uncomfortable. You never used to.”
He looked at me, a wisp of longing crossing his face. “That was before you were formally betrothed,” he said, gently moving an errant strand of red-blonde hair from my face, his hand lingering on my cheek.
As he did so, I caught a spark of reflected light peeping out from the neck of his scarlet uniform. It came from the gold necklace with a pendant of two interlocking circles I’d given him two years ago on his seventeenth birthday—he’d worn it ever since that day, and the sight of it warmed me inside.
“Just once, call me Ax,” I said, catching his hand in mine.
He hesitated a moment, his forehead furrowing. “I can’t,” he said gently, pulling his hand away. A little sigh left my lips, my breath joining the night air as he ran his fingers through his hair to move it away from his eyes. “We’d better go.” He nodded to the stairs.
I took one last look out into the crisp cloak of night before following him down into the palace. Torches lit the staircase and corridors, sending flickering shadows dancing across the richly decorated walls and carpeted floors. I glanced at Gil as we walked along the empty corridor. He looked back at me, the gold flecks in his blue eyes glowing in the torchlight as a flicker of longing and regret crossed his face. If I hadn’t looked for it, I would never have noticed it, but I was sure the look was reflected in my own violet eyes, and he saw it, because that lopsided grin appeared again.
“Everything will be fine,” he said in a soft, reassuring voice as we walked down a staircase.
“I fail to see how,” I murmured, holding my skirts so I didn’t trip.
“Once you’re married…”
Married. I shuddered at the thought. My wedding to Prince Fenneon was only a month away now, on my eighteenth birthday. I knew I had no choice. I knew I had to marry Fenn. I knew to reject him meant execution, but I still railed against the whole idea, and every time I looked at Gil, the small chance of acceptance slipped a little further out of reach.
Not that I didn’t like Fenn—he was a year older than Gil, about an inch shorter, strong, broad-shouldered, sun-bronzed, and roguishly good-looking with a similar jawline to Gil’s. The two were like brothers, always getting into scrapes when they were younger and taking me along with them.
The way Fenn’s light blond hair moved like a summer wheat field in a breeze before harvest had always endeared him to me, and we had become great friends, but the love I had for him was like that for a dear elder brother, not a prospective husband and definitely not a lover. That position could only be filled by one young man. The one walking beside me and totally beyond my reach—and we both knew it.
