Chapter 1 — The Token He Stole From My Hand

The first thing Crown Prince Adrian did after remembering our last life was break my fingers open one by one.

We stood behind a marble fountain at the heart of the palace maze, hidden from the music and laughter of the Founders’ Masque. His grip looked young and elegant. I remembered those same hands signing the order that had sealed me inside St. Orla’s Tower for forty years.

"Give it to me, Evelyn."

The Golden Lion Medallion lay warm against my palm.

I had just found it beneath the roots of the old laurel, exactly where Queen Eleanor had secretly placed it for me. In our last life, that hidden favor had made me Adrian’s bride.

It had also made me his prisoner.

"You remember," I said.

His face changed.

For one naked second, he was not the twenty-eight-year-old heir to Valedoria. He was the sixty-eight-year-old king who had hated me for four decades.

"I remember everything you did." His voice shook beneath its coldness. "You conspired with my mother. You stole Seraphina’s place. You let me believe fate had chosen you."

He forced my fingers apart and took the medallion.

Pain flashed through my knuckles. I did not resist.

Adrian had returned with one lifetime of memories.

I had returned with three.

He glanced toward the opening in the hedge. Beyond it, Lady Seraphina Voss was approaching in a gown the color of moonlit water.

Adrian placed the lion beneath a bed of white roses directly in her path.

"This time, I will not repeat my mistake," he said.

"No," I agreed. "You will make entirely new ones."

His jaw tightened.

He pointed past the fountain, toward the ancient yew at the western wall. "Lucien’s sapphire signet is beneath that tree. Take it. My brother is respected, wealthy, and gentle. Even you should be satisfied with such a match."

Prince Lucien Vale.

The court called him the kingdom’s conscience. Widows blessed his name. Ministers praised his restraint. Soldiers said he never forgot the name of a wounded man.

In my first life, he had stolen the throne, slaughtered the ministers who opposed him, and knelt to an invading army when the capital fell.

He had offered Seraphina to the enemy commander to purchase his own life.

"How generous of you," I said.

Adrian mistook my calm for surrender. "You are clever enough to understand what is best for you."

He put an ugly weight on the word clever.

In our last life, clever had become his name for every kindness he wanted to turn into a crime.

Three years of marriage. Forty years of punishment.

He had erased me from court records, dissolved our marriage by royal decree, and locked me in a tower while he traveled the kingdom with Seraphina. When he died, he ordered his body buried beside hers.

I had watched their funeral procession from behind iron bars.

Then I had died alone before winter.

Now Adrian stood before me with roses at his back and judgment in his eyes, certain he had corrected fate.

"Go," he said. "Find Lucien’s token before someone else does."

I slid my uninjured hand into the hidden pocket of my gown.

My fingers closed around a blackened silver brooch shaped like a thorn branch.

"I already found what I wanted."

The bells rang before he could answer. I left Adrian behind the fountain and walked toward the Hall of Founders.

Lady Seraphina entered beneath the painted dome on Adrian’s arm. The Golden Lion Medallion shone at her throat. Courtiers smiled before the Queen had spoken. Everyone understood what it meant.

Seraphina looked radiant.

She also looked at Lucien once when Adrian was not watching.

Only once.

It was enough.

When Queen Eleanor saw the lion around Seraphina’s neck, disappointment tightened the corners of her mouth.

"Lady Seraphina has enjoyed remarkable fortune," she said.

Adrian stepped forward before Seraphina could curtsy.

"Your Majesty established the rules. The lady who finds a prince’s token may accept his formal courtship, subject to the Crown’s blessing."

His mother’s gaze sharpened. "I remember my own rules, Adrian."

"Then there can be no objection."

The room went still. Adrian’s challenge was wrapped in perfect courtesy, but it remained a challenge.

Queen Eleanor looked at me.

"And you, Lady Evelyn? Did the maze offer you nothing?"

She was giving me an escape.

If I said I had found nothing, she could quietly arrange another match. If I confessed that Julian’s token had merely fallen into my path, she could declare the discovery invalid.

The entire court knew what kind of man Prince Julian was supposed to be.

The fifth royal son spent his nights in private theaters and gaming salons. He drank with actors, flirted with married countesses, and treated council meetings as an illness best avoided. No ambitious noblewoman wanted his brooch.

I stepped into the center of the hall and opened my hand.

The Blackthorn Brooch rested on my palm.

Silence fell so completely that I heard Seraphina’s breath catch.

Queen Eleanor rose halfway from her throne.

"That belongs to Julian."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Are you certain you found it within the maze?"

"Beneath the statue of Saint Orla."

The Queen knew it was the correct hiding place. Her expression became grave.

Adrian’s composure shattered.

"Impossible."

Every face turned toward him.

He released Seraphina’s hand and came down the steps. "Julian loses his belongings in half the taverns in the city. She could have picked that up anywhere."

"And yet I found it where he placed it," I said.

"You were meant to—"

He stopped before admitting that he had directed me toward Lucien.

Queen Eleanor studied us both. "Lady Evelyn, you understand that the Founders’ Masque is not a parlor game. If you accept Prince Julian’s token, you accept a binding royal betrothal."

"I understand."

"And you still ask for the Crown’s blessing?"

I thought of St. Orla’s Tower.

I thought of my father dying on a battlefield after Lucien had emptied the treasury and broken the army.

I thought of Adrian, dying in another life, clutching my hand and begging me to save a kingdom he had lost.

"I do."

The Queen sat back slowly.

"Then the Crown recognizes two matches. Lady Seraphina Voss to Crown Prince Adrian Vale. Lady Evelyn Ashbourne to Prince Julian Vale. The formal decrees will be issued within three days."

Whispers erupted across the hall.

Adrian stared at me as though I had betrayed a script only he could read.

He cornered me at the palace gates after sunset.

"What are you doing?"

"Going home."

"Do not play games with me." His eyes were red with a fury too intimate for a man who claimed to despise me. "You and Julian are nothing alike. When he humiliates you, do not expect me to intervene."

"You need not worry," I said. "What appears worthless in one life may become what another life begged for."

His face went pale.

Perhaps some part of him heard the echo of words he did not remember saying.

He stepped back. "You chose this. Whatever misery follows, swallow it alone."

"Gladly."

I found my future husband shortly before midnight in a private room above the Red Lantern Theatre.

Prince Julian lounged on a velvet couch with an open bottle beside him and three empty glasses on the table. Music thundered through the floorboards. His black hair had fallen over one eye, and his smile was lazily beautiful.

"Lady Evelyn Ashbourne," he said. "Either I am drunker than I thought, or my fiancée has come to collect me."

I lifted the pitcher of bitter sobriety tonic I had brought from the kitchen.

"Both."

Before he could laugh, I caught his jaw and poured the tonic into his mouth.

He choked, swore, and seized my wrist.

The drunken haze vanished from his grey eyes far too quickly.

I leaned close enough to smell clean rosemary beneath the wine.

"Congratulations, Your Highness. We are going to destroy your brother."

Julian wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Adrian?"

"No."

I smiled.

"Lucien."