Prologue

There were no guests, no blessings. Had it not been for the veiled bride and the priest standing ready to officiate, no one would have known a wedding was taking place here at all.

“I, Astrinahill Loendis……”

Astrina had been staring blankly at the priest when she realized, a beat too late, that she was supposed to repeat his words.

“……I, Astrina Hill Loendis……”

She turned to look at the man who would soon be her husband.

“Take Hylus Odel de Berg as my husband.”

“Take Hylus Odel de Berg as my husband.”

Hylus. The prince of Berg, twenty-nine years old this year, wore the face of a man being hunted. And in truth, he was. The pursuers closing in behind them had cut the distance to almost nothing over just a few days. Half a day at most, and they would come crashing through the chapel doors.

By then, everything would already be finished.

“And swear before God to live as his faithful wife.”

At those words, Astrina fell silent.

Hylus was, by any objective measure, a good man. He was gentle and gentlemanly in all things, and above all else, he was someone who had brought her all this way for no reason other than love, even though she was a princess of a defeated nation reduced to slavery. He had staked his own life on it.

But if anyone were to ask whether she loved him for his devotion, she could not say yes.

Just then, Hylus reached over and gripped her hand tightly. Astrina looked up at him.

“I know you don’t love me. But this is the only way to save you.”

“……”

“The Duke of Yorden will never forgive Loendis. I cannot stand by and watch you wither away at his side.”

Astrina squeezed her eyes shut. Hylus did not wait for an answer and began signing the marriage vow. He scrawled his name in haste and pressed the pen into her hand.

She stared down at the document with empty eyes. The moment she wrote her name on that paper, she would officially become the Princess of Berg.

She would finally be free of his grip.

But did she deserve that?

She should not have run away like this with another man. She was someone who ought to have stayed and paid the price.

Even if that price was the end of her own life.

“Astrina.”

Hylus called her name with desperate urgency. She could no longer hesitate.

Like someone moving in a trance, she brought the pen toward the paper.

A strange wind stirred. The nearby candles flickered, and every window in the chapel rattled loudly. The color drained from Hylus’s face.

“D*mn it, how are they already……”

Every shadow in the room began to writhe. The air darkened in an instant, and from somewhere came the acrid smell of ash and sulfur.

“Did you think you could run, Princess?”

Astrina froze. That low, dark voice came from directly behind her. How had he gotten so close.

A large man’s hand reached through the space between the horrified Hylus and Astrina.

“How dare you. Like this.”

The moment his hand touched the surface of the vow, it burst into flames. The paper burned away in an instant, leaving nothing but black ash.

Astrina turned slowly to face the man who had come to drag her back. Golden eyes watched her, burning like the first flare of a struck match.

This was the man who had slain a dragon and swallowed its heart. How foolish she had been to think she could run from a monster like him.

He reached out and tore the veil from her head.

“Astrina!”

Hylus moved on instinct to step in front of her, but some inexplicable force held every part of him in place. He had never been a match for this man to begin with.

Duke of Yorden, Taryan Nashakh, finally gathered Astrina back into his arms. With every sense sharpened to a razor’s edge, he took in everything about her.

The scent rising from her pale skin. The way her body had grown thinner since the last time he held her. The slight drop in her warmth.

The energy of the demonic dragon that had been raging inside him, threatening to tear his body apart, slowly subsided. A strange, deep satisfaction filled the space it left behind.

“Let her go!”

Hylus twisted against his invisible restraints and cried out in despair. When Taryan’s gaze shifted toward him, Astrina whispered urgently.

“Don’t k*ll him.”

“……”

“I begged him to help me escape. He was only used by me, so let him go.”

Taryan laughed softly. A lie, he murmured.

“He’s Berg royalty. Even you can’t just……”

“Aaaaagh!”

Before she could finish, Hylus screamed. An invisible force had split open his back. His clothes were soaked through with blood in an instant.

“Hylus!”

Astrina lunged toward him, but Taryan pulled her back against him. His grip was rougher than before.

“If that prince meant so much to you, you should never have come with me in the first place.”

From the moment Taryan had seen the Prince of Berg and Astrina standing together in the center of the chapel before a priest, his reason had abandoned him cleanly.

Or perhaps it had been the moment he realized she had run from him.

With what little self-control he had left, he forced himself to ease his grip. He would not break her arm.

Only then did he notice that the shoulder he held was trembling.

“……Are you afraid of me?”

Astrina did not answer. The white veil crumpled beneath his hand.

“Don’t be. You know,”

His breath brushed close enough to graze her cheek. Astrina shut her eyes tight.

“That I would never hurt you.”

The moment he whispered those words, a black darkness crept up through her body. The cold, crawling power of a dragon’s magic.

She understood it again.

‘He will never let me go.’

Not for a very long time.

Perhaps not until the end of this life.