Case339
- Reads 120
- Votes 18
- Parts 18
In the dying empire of Vaereth, Princess Arisa Valenhart is the last ember of Solareth's fallen throne. But she is no savior - her heart is a curse: a living vine of thorns that poisons every touch, blistering flesh, scarring all who reach for her. Shunned as a child, her very body branded as ruin, Arisa has lived untouched and unloved since her mother's death.
When the rebel-king known as the Vulture conquers Solareth, Arisa is betrayed and delivered into his hands. He names her his bride before a court of masks and carrion, binding her to him with silken chains and black roses dipped in his own silver blood. His interest is not political but personal, obsessive - for he was there the night she was cursed, the one who cut her chest open with ritual and bound her life to his.
In the labyrinth of Arath Cael, the Vulture toys with her: feeding her at empty feasts, testing her curse against his own, bleeding for her and never recoiling. Against him, her body betrays her - trembling with hunger for the one man who can endure her touch. Yet her heart clings to another: Darelth "Red" Corven, her guard and childhood knight, who still bleeds for her in chains, begging her to remember who she was. Between Red's devotion and the Vulture's cruel fascination, Arisa is forced to confront the truth she has starved to deny - she craves the very touch she should despise.
But in the shadows of her Cage and in her dreams, another presence stirs: the Thorn Child, a ghost-girl crowned with brambles, bleeding silver and crimson. She knows the secret Arisa has forgotten - that the curse was born not of accident, but sacrifice. That her life was bought at the cost of another's innocence. And that to break the curse, Arisa must either kill the Vulture who bound it... or bind herself to him forever.