The night I lost my name, it rained.
Not a gentle spring shower, but a storm that split the skies like a god enraged. Thunder cracked over the palace rooftops as I was dragged through corridors that smelled of incense and betrayal.
I was dressed in silk.
I was drugged.
I was nineteen, and my father had decided I would be more useful in the Emperor's bed than on a battlefield.
They said His Majesty had no consorts. That he had ruled five years without a queen. Rumors whispered he preferred men.
So I was offered—painted, perfumed, humiliated—and left on sheets that still bore the warmth of his body.
When he entered, he did not look at me.
He looked through me—as if I were air, or something less.
Damien Drake. The golden tyrant. The boy who had once spat in my food at school. First like a secret. Then, like a sentence.
He stood above me, blade drawn.
"Even dressed like this," he said, voice low and cold, "you're still revolting."
And I knew then: love would never come gently for me.
It would come like this.
With cold steel kissing my throat.
And fire in his eyes.