My entry for the Halloween Writing Contest.
Prompt:
It's All Hallows Eve, and you're gearing up for the most eventful night of your life. While young children are out trick-or-treating, you've made your way to the one house people skip. It's the abandoned mansion, rumored to be haunted.
Dared by your friends to spend a night in the haunted house, will you survive the night, or will you uncover the truth behind the rumors?
One fateful day, the entire Royal Family of the Kingdom of Aeriana was killed in a horrifying attack-all except for one girl. Princess Driana Stasia Antonov: heir to the kingdom and now the last hope of her dying uncle, King Demitri.
Seventeen years later, Iris Daniels is a gifted young painter with no memory of her past, who suddenly finds herself running for her life with undercover government agent Wylan Garrick. Garrick is a man with a singular goal: find the missing princess before the kingdom's enemies do. And as women who look like Iris begin turning up murdered, Garrick begins to suspect that the woman in his care is more than who she appears to be.
Now, Iris must trust Garrick with her life and wrestle with her growing attraction to him, as they both attempt to bring down the very secret society that killed her family. Because if she can't remember her past in time, it will catch up with her in ways she can't see coming-and might never walk away from.
