❝ An exile should remember that they will die in these lands and there is nothing they can do but fight. ❞
[complete | editor's pick | book 1]
The Reaper's Curse has come, the gods have foreseen death and people are helpless to fight it. Those infec...
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6 years later.
If Alicia Zalana could change one moment in her life, it would be speaking the word 'okay' to her ma. It was the moment she began signing away more than just her soul for a desire that seems so pointless now.
She gazes at the ring on her finger, a gold band encrusted with sapphires. Simple but elegant, that's how the nobles of Muovea describe it. Simple but elegant, words thrown in the face of the girl who grew up barefoot in the slums with nothing but a name in her possession.
"Alicia."
She lifts her head at the voice but doesn't turn, already knowing who it is by their uneven gait. Instead, she continues to stare at the portraits before her, gracing the main wall of the palace's gallery. The Safronovs stare back at her, the long line of them stretching along the hall.
There's no portrait for the Faceless queen, the woman who began the line of royal Safronovs in Muovea. It's as though they want to forget her, forget the things she did for power.
Alicia knows the feeling of trying to get people to forget.
"How's the party fairing?" she questions, her voice echoing in the hollow gallery.
"As well as can be expected," Sebastian murmurs, approaching her, his shined boots tapping on the polished marble, his limp more pronounced than usual. He stops beside her and looks up at the portrait before her. The girl they stare at is young, with round cheeks dotted with freckles and wild curls that framing her face. Her dark brown eyes are crinkled at their corners in the beginnings of an easy smile. The portraits beside her are all tight-lipped, stern faces of a family that was crushed beneath their responsibilities.
"Dull as dirt then?" Alicia asks and glances up at him.
His full lips twist into a pained smile. "Without you? Always." He passes her a glass of rosy champagne that she takes, a sharp urge to drown herself in the liquid courage rearing its head within her. It's an urge she shoves down.
His gaze is still upon the portrait of the girl, painted when she was just eighteen, barely a month before she signed up for the war six years ago. Alicia only knows this because the queen frequently stands here and tells her stories of her daughter, the exiled Princess of Muovea.
Alicia looks up at Sebastian again beside her, his amber eyes studying the portrait over her shoulder. He doesn't have the same eyes as his sister; the princess. Unlike the princess' darkness, Sebastian's are brown with flecks of deep gold, like small sparks have been ignited within his irises.
She reaches up and lets her fingers touch his smooth cheek, his skin a few shades darker than her own bronze complexion. Her touch draws his gaze back to her and he blinks the shadows from his gaze. "I'm sorry for leaving you to the mercy of the other nobles," she says, lifting her fingers to touch the circlet of gold nestling amongst the tight curls of his chestnut hair. "It was just becoming... stifling."
