DARK DEVOTION

THE LOVE EXISTED

...DOES IT STILL?

The atmosphere in the throne room shifted, a ripple of murmurs breaking through the silence before dissolving beneath the sharp pulse of anger rising in my chest.

There she was. Striding forward with measured grace, she approached the Queen, whose lips curved into a faint, almost inviting smile. My thoughts churned. Why was she here? Revulsion tightened my throat-or was it something else? Anger? Pain, perhaps, simmering just beneath the surface?

She looked almost the same as she had seven years ago, the last time we'd stood face-to-face-when she severed the fragile thread of the promises we had once held as unbreakable. Her midnight-black hair was now drawn into a severe ponytail, her beauty undiminished, but the girl I had known was gone. This wasn't the mischievous teenager who used to dash through the castle halls with reckless abandon, laughing as though time itself couldn't catch her. No, this was a woman transformed.

Her presence was a storm, her aura coiled with the kind of power that only destruction could create. The weight of it pressed against the air, suffocating and unyielding. I supposed this was what happened when you killed enough people to lose track of the count.

The Divine Assassin, they called her now. A name whispered in fear, laden with the sins of the countless lives she had extinguished. They said the ghosts of her victims sought to haunt her, clawing at the edges of her soul-but if that were true, it was clear she had learned to silence them. Her every breath seemed to darken the world around her, leaving nothing untouched.