Chapter 1: Awakening in Chains
Cold seeped up through his bare knees, a deep, marrow-ache of cold from the marble floor. Miroslav blinked, the world swimming into focus as a sharp gasp ripped its way out of his throat. His head throbbed, a solid, sickening pulse behind his eyes. He tried to move his hands and met the hard, intimate resistance of iron. Manacles. Wrists bound behind his back. The links of the chain pooled on the floor between his splayed knees, gleaming dully in the flickering torchlight.
He was in the throne room. Or what was left of it.
Golden mosaics underfoot were webbed with cracks, their scenes of harvest and triumph shattered into nonsense. The great obsidian throne—his father’s throne—was a broken thing, snapped clean across the middle, the backrest lying in jagged fragments as if some giant had torn it apart from within. The air tasted of damp stone and something older, something metallic and sour. Blood. Old blood.
And then he saw the boots.
They were heavy, scarred leather, planted firmly on the remnants of the royal banner, which itself was torn and stained a rust-brown. Miroslav’s gaze travelled up, over mud-spattered trousers, a worn leather jerkin over a mail shirt, to the face of the man sitting on the simple wooden chair that had been placed before the ruined throne.
King Braxior.
The name surfaced from the murk of Miroslav’s mind, followed by nothing else. No reason, no history, just a cold, lead weight of recognition. The conqueror was big, broad-shouldered, his frame seeming to eat the space around him. His features were rough-hewn, weathered, but his eyes… they were a strange, hot amber, like chips of glass holding a flame. They watched Miroslav with a stillness that was more unsettling than any rage.
“You’re awake.” Braxior’s voice was a low rumble, devoid of warmth. It wasn’t a question.
Miroslav tried to speak. His lips were cracked. “Why?” he managed, the word scraping out raw.
Braxior didn’t answer immediately. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and the movement was oddly casual, entirely at odds with the setting. His eyes raked over Miroslav: the torn silk of his fine shirt, the white hair plastered to his pale neck with sweat and dirt, the vulnerable line of his throat above the collar. Miroslav became acutely aware of his own body—the chill on his thighs where his trousers had ripped, the tremble in his arms from the strain of the position.
“You don’t remember, do you?” Braxior said. A statement, again.
“Remember what?” Miroslav shot back, a flare of defiance cutting through the fog. It felt familiar, this spark. It felt like his.
Braxior smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes. He reached down to his belt and drew a knife. It was a practical, wicked-looking thing, the bone handle dark and stained. He turned it over in his hands, the torchlight running along the blade.
“This,” Braxior said, almost gently, “opened your father’s throat. Right where you’re kneeling.” He pointed the tip casually toward the stained marble between Miroslav’s knees. “The blood pooled here. Took a long time for him to die. He kept trying to speak.”
Nausea, swift and violent, rolled through Miroslav. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the image was there, painted on the inside of his lids. A figure in rich robes, choking, falling. A face that should have meant something. He saw nothing but a blur.
“Look at me,” Braxior commanded, the softness gone.
Miroslav opened his eyes. The king had risen from the chair. He moved with a predatory grace that belied his size, closing the distance between them in a few strides. He stopped, looming over the chained prince. The scent of him—leather, cold smoke, male sweat—filled Miroslav’s nose.
“You were there,” Braxior continued, his amber eyes locked onto Miroslav’s ice-blue ones. “You saw it all. You watched. And then you looked at me. You looked at me with those eyes.”
A memory, sharp as the knife, lanced through the fog. Not of the death. Of the after. The silence, thick and choking. Turning his head, his body frozen in shock, and finding those amber eyes already fixed on him. A connection snapping taut in the carnage, electric and wrong.
Miroslav flinched. “I don’t…”
Braxior knelt. The marble was hard under his knees. He was suddenly level with Miroslav, too close, an invasion of space and sense. He brought the knife up, not to threaten, but to hold it between their faces. “You do. It’s in there. Buried.” With his other hand, he reached out. His fingers, calloused and strong, brushed a strand of white hair from Miroslav’s forehead. The touch was startling, almost tender. Miroslav recoiled, the chain rattling.
“Don’t.” The word was a breath.
Braxior’s hand didn’t withdraw. It slid down, cupping the side of Miroslav’s face, his thumb brushing the high arch of his cheekbone. His gaze was intense, searching, a chaotic mix of fury and something else, something hungry and desperate. “Before the war,” Braxior said, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. “The gardens at night. The scent of night-blooming jasmine. You remember that. I know you do.”
Jasmine. The word unlocked a sensory flood. Not a picture, but a feeling. Warm night air. The crush of leaves underfoot. A shadowy figure pulling him into a hidden alcove, the rough texture of a mercenary’s coat against his silk tunic, a mouth hot on his, a forbidden, thrilling secret.
Miroslav’s breath hitched. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. Confusion swamped him—disgust, fear, and a treacherous, unwelcome spike of heat. “That was you?”
“Yes.” Braxior’s thumb stroked his skin. “And you came back. Again and again.”
The pieces, jagged and awful, began to grind together. The stolen moments. The enemy. This man.
The jasmine-scented memory evaporated, ripped away by the cold, metallic smell of blood and Braxior’s hand on his skin. It was a sickening collision of then and now, the tender thief of his first kiss kneeling in his father’s gore. Miroslav wrenched his face away, the chain biting into his wrists as he tried to put even an inch of space between them. “You killed him,” he breathed, the words drenched in a horror that was both fresh and ancient. “And then you… you touched me.”
Braxior’s hand dropped from his face as if burned, the phantom touch replaced by the room’s chill. “I took everything else,” he said, the words rough and low. “That was the one thing I couldn’t steal.” A bitter laugh escaped him, hollow in the ruined hall. His grip tightened on the knife, his knuckles bleaching white against the stained handle. The blade flashed as his arm tensed, and the knife fell, point driving down with a final, sickening thud into the wood of his chair between them.
The blade flashed as his arm tensed, and the knife fell, point driving down with a final, sickening thud into the wood of his chair between them. In the echoing silence that followed, Braxior closed the distance once more, his hand finding the chain between Miroslav’s wrists and pulling him forward, their faces a breath apart. Miroslav’s body went rigid, a protest dying on his lips as Braxior’s mouth crashed against his, a collision of memory and violence that tasted of metal and conquest. For a terrifying, electric moment, every thought of throne rooms and dead fathers shattered—there was only the shocking, familiar heat, the brutal claim of the kiss, and the undeniable, horrifying response rising from his own stolen past. He kisses back.