PROLOGUE

Renwick

The throne room of Klamere burns bright with golden light that flickers along with laughter. A string quartet plays from the dais beneath giant twin dragons carved in shadowglass, their instruments sawing through memory like a blade through silk. I’ve rebuilt this dream a dozen times in story form, never quite getting it right—never quite brave enough to face what really happened.

But tonight, I let it play out—all of it.

Across the polished marble floor, nobles twirl in gowns that shimmer. Goblets catch the chandelier light, sparkling with stardust, the illusion perfect in its deception. It was a celebration, after all. The new dragon library was finished, the finest, most revered collection of knowledge and stories in the realm. The air smelled of roasted meat and honeyed wine, and my father wore a smile that reminded me of a wolf with a crown.

And me? I was the young prince in velvet who thought prophecy couldn’t touch us.

The air glimmers, bubbles. Dessalyn appears near the edge of the ballroom, barefoot in the dream, her moss-green cloak fluttering as if caught in a phantom wind. Her eyes—sharp, guarded—match the cloak’s hue. She looks around, her back going straight as a blade when she spots me. It’s not the first time we’ve met in dreams, and it’s one of the only ways I can communicate with her. She’s the only one who still has some memory of Drakenholt, my kingdom. Of me.

I cross through the ghosts on the dance floor, moving slowly, carefully, so as not to frighten her. I fail. She takes a step back, fear and wariness in those pretty eyes, but lifts her chin in defiance. “Where are we?” she asks.

“Home,” I answer, though the word tastes like ash in my mouth.

The music stops, the dancers freezing in mid-step, my father’s goblet suspended in a toast. Her eyes go sharp as flint when they land on the throne. “The palace in Klamere?”

I nod. “The night your mother spoke the prophecy of Drakenholt.”

She stiffens. Her fists curl at her sides. “I’ve seen this,” she says. “In a mirror.”

A mirror? Has she forgotten she witnessed it in person? “You were here.” I point to a table in the far corner of the giant hall. She gasps as she sees herself, her younger sister Calliope, and her parents. Thand Lorewyn was the architect of the library, and the Lorekeeper family had been here for weeks. “The mirror only made you remember.”

Dessalyn covers her mouth with a hand, her eyes tearing up as they rest on her mother. I let the dream play out, and the scene jolts to life. Laughter resumes. The music swells. A pair of dancers twirls past us without seeing either of us, their smiles unnaturally wide.

If only I could stop time right here and not allow the rest to play out. But I must.

Dessalyn’s mother, Serenelle Lorewyn, a Fae woman of indescribable beauty, rises from the table to present herself to my father. Dressed in sunflower gold, her hair braided with glimmering ribbons, she walks with regal grace. The crowd parts, barely disguising their curiosity, their whispers like wind through reeds.

My father lifts his chin, intrigued. He cuts off the band with a flourish of his wrist before waving her forward. 

I tense, remembering the moment as if my bones recorded it. He expected flattery, perhaps a gift. Instead, he received a prophecy.

“A thief will come,” she says, her soft-spoken voice clear enough throughout the crowded hall, “not for your riches, but your remembrances. He will wipe your story from the realm.”

A shocked silence falls. Everyone holds their breath. Even the chandeliers flicker and dim, waiting for the king’s reaction.

My father laughs, a low, patronizing chuckle. I remember joining in from my perch at the royal table, swirling wine in a goblet too fine for my years. I am seventeen and drunk on importance. “Our story will live forever,” I say.

If only I’d known…

Dessalyn, barely fourteen but wise for her age, rushes to her mother’s side, glaring at me like she could set me aflame with her scowl. Elbows too sharp for court, chin too high to bow. She starts to speak, but Serenelle hushes her, saying the words I see in Dessalyn’s eyes. “You arrogant, stupid boy.” Serenelle’s voice is almost sad. “You fancy yourself a king, but you will never sit on the throne.”

I had earned her wrath. Now, I hope to earn her daughter’s help.

“You didn’t believe her,” Dessalyn says from her dream place. 

The sound of her low voice tightens my insides. She owes me nothing. I owe her much. 

I don’t look at her. No matter how much I hate the younger version of me, I can’t change the facts of that night. “No. I didn’t,” I say.

She steps closer, her bare feet silent on marble that doesn’t exist anymore. Her hand reaches out as if she could touch her mother’s dress. “Why show me this?”

“Because it matters. Because you’ve forgotten.”

Her eyes don’t leave her mother, who stands now with her hands clasped in front of her like she’s holding her own anger in check. “I remembered this night for years. Then…”

I risk a glance at her. The music shifts. The dream stutters.

She inhales a sharp breath. “I don’t want to see her like this.”

I don’t want to see my kingdom the way it is now, everyone gone. “She deserves to be remembered.”

“She deserved to be believed.”

If I could, I would rewrite the story and change the past. While my dragon magic once made me a scribe to rival any in our realm, even that can’t undo what’s been done.

She rounds on me, only now fully remembering what happened. “You and your father ignored her warning. You buried it as if that would stop it from coming true.”

I can’t argue. I don’t try. “It didn’t work.”

Her eyes glimmer with unshed tears. “She died believing no one had listened.”

Died? The word spears me right in the gut. I step forward, voice faltering. “Serenelle is…dead?”

Dessalyn sucks in another breath. She looks nothing like the girl in the dream. This version is not only older; she’s haunted. Strong. Filled with grief, just like me. She doesn’t need to confirm it’s true.

I reach for her, but she recoils. I drop my hand. “I’m sorry. No one told me.”

Her eyes flash with anger. “Why would they? You cared nothing for us. Your father banished us from the kingdom after Mother delivered that prophecy, sending us home as outcasts.” She takes a step back as if being too close to me is offensive. “She was never the same after that night. She faded into…nothing.”

The dream begins to fracture. The chandeliers above us crack. The walls tremble.

“Wait—“ I reach for her. “Don’t go.”

But her emotions cause her form to flicker and unravel, smoke caught in the wind.

“Dessalyn—”

Her eyes turn hollow. She speaks, the words too faint for my ears, before she vanishes. 

Smoke coils where she stood. A single gold ribbon flutters to the marble and disintegrates before it can land. The ballroom collapses. Flames lick the curtains. The musicians crumble to dust. My family fades into nothingness. 

I’m left standing in the ruins of the dream memory, alone with the echo of what I could’ve done differently. Above me, the throne sits empty. Cracked. The golden crest of our house is fractured down the middle.

I kneel in the ruins, alone again, as I always am.

Only now, I know something I didn’t before.

Serenelle died. A pure-blooded Fae’s life expectancy is thousands of years. She faded into nothing. I clutch my chest and shake my head. She didn’t pass from time or illness. Not from some natural end.

She was severed.

My father’s banishment was more than it seemed. The Severance Decree, a curse spoken in the old language and sealed with his blood, caused Serenelle to fade.

I never realized the Decree had been used. Not then. Not until now. It explains so much.

 Dessalyn’s mother, the great Fae Lorekeeper with ties to every kingdom, was severed from Drakenholt. From our magic and our laws. My father’s decree made that kind of exile a death sentence for someone like her.

Lorekeepers don’t just live inside stories. They breathe them. Strip away a thread woven tight inside one, and what’s left unravels.

The heat of my dragon magic flares under my hand with the realization, but just as quickly burns out. Creating these dreams leaves me drained, vulnerable to the Story Thief. “You were right, Serenelle,” I say to the air. “I was the stupid boy who thought himself a king.”

But what I don’t say, not even here, in the safety of a memory-dream, is what I now suspect—my father didn’t simply try to erase Serenelle’s prophecy.

He erased her.

~~~

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