CHAPTER 1
I have been blind for twenty long, bitter years.
But I did not need my eyes to feel the heavy, oppressive weight of the winter fog, or to know that the aristocratic world around me was decaying from the inside out. I could smell the damp soot from the palace chimneys. I could feel the freezing, biting wind rolling off the northern mountains, sweeping through the iron gates of the estate. And I could hear the nervous, terrified whispers of the nobility.
Today was the coronation.
Today, Lord Alaric—the man who had poured poison into the late King’s wine cup, the man who had burned the royal wills, the man who had stolen the crown through lies and blood—would officially be named King.
The bells of the grand cathedral were ringing, echoing off the ancient stone walls of the courtyard. It was a heavy, mournful sound, like a funeral dirge disguised as a celebration.
I stood near the edge of the massive iron gates, shivering in my ragged, wet wool cloak. The mud was thick beneath my worn leather boots, freezing as the morning pressed on. I was nothing to the people around me. Just an old, useless beggar woman. A ghost of the streets.
I gripped my thick wooden cane with trembling hands. My fingers were blue from the cold, stiff with arthritis, but I held onto that cane as if it were the only thing keeping the sky from falling.
It was a heavy stick of dark, polished oak, capped with a simple rounded top. For years, I had leaned on it to navigate the cobblestone streets of the lower city. But it was not just a tool for the blind.
It was a vault.
“Move back, you filth!” a royal guard shouted, his voice cracking like a whip.
I felt the blunt end of a wooden spear slam into my shoulder. I stumbled, nearly losing my footing on the slick stones, but the dense crowd of commoners pressed tightly behind me, keeping me upright.
The aristocracy was arriving.
I could hear the rumble of heavy carriage wheels crushing the gravel. The steady, rhythmic clopping of purebred horses. The air grew thick with the smell of wet horsehair, expensive perfume, and burning torch pitch.
“The Lord Chancellor!” a herald announced.
I tilted my head, listening. Lord Chancellor Sterling. He was an old man now, a man who had served the late King faithfully, only to be forced into serving the usurper under the threat of execution. I could hear his slow, measured footsteps on the stone. He walked with the heavy, dragging gait of a man carrying a terrible secret.
Then, the trumpets blared. A sharp, violent sound that made my chest tighten.
“Presenting the future King, Lord Alaric, and his Queen, Lady Vespera!”
The crowd fell dead silent. There was no cheering. In this ancient, rigid society, obedience was commanded through fear, not love.
The heavy carriage door opened with a slow, grinding creak. I heard Lord Alaric’s boots hit the stone. The sound was heavy, arrogant, completely sure of itself. Beside him, the rustling of heavy, stiff mourning silk announced the Queen. She walked with sharp, precise steps, her heels clicking like a ticking clock counting down to the death of the old bloodline.
They were walking up the grand path toward the chapel doors. The guards were viciously pushing the crowd back to ensure the false King’s velvet robes did not brush against the peasants.
But I could not move back. The crowd behind me was completely packed against the stone walls of the courtyard.
I was pushed forward. My boot slipped on a patch of freezing mud.
I stumbled out onto the velvet runner.
My wooden cane tapped sharply against the marble border of the walkway. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the silent courtyard.
The royal procession stopped.
I froze. My breath hitched in my throat. I lowered my head, staring blindly at the ground, feeling the terrifying weight of a hundred noble eyes turning toward me.
“What is this?” Queen Vespera’s voice was like ice. It was a sharp, aristocratic drawl, filled with absolute disgust. “What is this creature doing on my path?”
“My apologies, Your Grace,” a guard stammered, his armor clanking as he rushed forward. “She is blind. The crowd pushed her.”
“I do not care if she is blind, deaf, or dead,” the Queen hissed. I could smell the overpowering scent of her rose perfume cutting through the damp fog. “She smells of the gutter. She is ruining the visual perfection of my procession. Remove her immediately.”
I tried to step back, to bow my head, but my cold, stiff legs betrayed me. My cane tapped against the stone again.
“You dare stand before me?” Lord Alaric’s voice boomed. It was a cruel, booming voice, used to commanding armies and executing the innocent.
I heard his heavy boots stepping closer. One step. Two steps. He was right in front of me. I could feel the heat radiating from his thick fur collar.
“I… I meant no offense, my Lord,” I rasped, my voice sounding weak and cracked in the frigid air. “I only lost my way.”
“You have lost your right to breathe the same air as your King,” Alaric sneered.
I felt the sudden, violent rush of air before the impact.
Lord Alaric did not use his hands. He used the heavy, oxidized brass head of his royal scepter.
He swung it like a club.
The solid brass smashed into the middle of my wooden cane with a deafening CRACK.
The force sent a shockwave of agonizing pain up my arms. My numb fingers lost their grip. The cane flew out of my hands, spinning through the air before hitting the wet cobblestones a few feet away.
Without my support, my knees buckled.
I collapsed. I hit the freezing, wet stones hard. The rough cobblestones scraped the skin from my palms, and the icy water soaked instantly through my ragged skirt, freezing against my skin.
A few gasps broke out among the commoners, but they were quickly silenced by the menacing shift of the guards’ spears.
The nobles did not gasp. They laughed.
It was a cold, polite, suffocating sound. The sound of lords and ladies hiding their cruel smiles behind expensive feathered fans and gloved hands. To them, my pain was nothing but a brief, ugly piece of theater before the grand event.
“Look at it grovel,” Alaric mocked, standing over me. “A perfect symbol of the old kingdom. Weak. Blind. Broken.”
“Guards,” the Queen commanded, her voice dripping with boredom. “Drag her into the mud by the stables. If she shows her face at the gates again, cut off her hands.”
Two royal guards stepped forward. Their heavy leather gloves grabbed the shoulders of my torn wool cloak. They hauled me up slightly, my knees still dragging on the slick stones, preparing to toss me aside like garbage.
I did not scream. I did not fight.
I only turned my blind eyes toward the sky, listening.
Because I knew the wood of my cane had been cracking for years. And I knew exactly how hard Alaric had hit it.
As the guards began to drag me backward, a strange, haunting sound cut through the winter wind.
Caw.
The laughter of the nobles stopped.
Caw. Caw.
It was the heavy, rhythmic flapping of massive wings.
I felt the rush of wind as something large and powerful dropped from the freezing gray sky, landing directly on the cobblestones.
“What in the hell is that?” Lord Alaric muttered, his voice losing a fraction of its arrogance.
“A raven,” one of the nobles whispered loudly. “But… it’s white.”
A white raven. The ancient symbol of the old royal bloodline. They had not been seen in the capital since the night the true King was murdered.
The bird let out a sharp, guttural cry that echoed against the chapel doors. It did not look at the King. It did not look at the Queen.
It hopped toward my fallen, cracked wooden cane.
“Shoo that beast away!” the Queen demanded, her voice shrill. “It is an omen of bad luck! Kill it!”
A guard stepped forward, raising his spear.
But before he could strike, the white raven drove its sharp black beak directly into the crack in my wooden cane.
Snap.
The old oak split completely in half.
The heavy, hollowed-out top of the cane rolled across the stone.
And from inside the hidden compartment, something heavy, metallic, and distinctly non-wooden clattered onto the wet marble border.
Clink. Clatter.
The sound was small, but in the dead silence of the courtyard, it sounded like a church bell.
The white raven let out one final cry, spread its massive wings, and launched itself back into the fog, disappearing as quickly as it had arrived.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then, I heard the slow, hesitant footsteps of the Lord Chancellor.
His heavy robes brushed against the stone as he walked past the false King, stepping toward the broken pieces of my cane.
“Chancellor, leave it,” Alaric ordered. “It is just beggar’s trash.”
But the Lord Chancellor did not listen. I heard his knees pop as he slowly crouched down to the wet ground.
I heard the scrape of his leather glove as he picked up the small metal object.
For five agonizing seconds, there was absolute silence.
Then, the Lord Chancellor’s breath hitched. It was a sharp, jagged inhale, like a man who had just been stabbed in the chest.
“Chancellor?” Alaric demanded, stepping closer. “What is it?”
“Guards,” the Lord Chancellor whispered. His voice was trembling violently. It was a frail, terrified sound, but it carried the absolute authority of the highest legal office in the land.
“Halt.”
The guards who were dragging me immediately stopped. They released my cloak. I slumped back onto the stones, my chest heaving.
“What are you doing, Sterling?” Alaric snapped, his anger flaring. “I ordered her removed!”
“Close the gates,” the Lord Chancellor commanded, standing up slowly. His voice grew louder, echoing with a sudden, desperate strength. “Close the iron gates! No one leaves this courtyard!”
The heavy iron gates at the edge of the estate began to groan as the soldiers pushed them shut. The sharp CLANG of the metal locking into place sent a shockwave of panic through the nobility. The whispers erupted into frantic, terrified murmurs.
“Have you lost your mind, old man?” Queen Vespera shouted, losing her regal composure. “Open the gates this instant!”
The Lord Chancellor turned slowly to face the King and Queen.
I could hear the metallic clinking of the object shaking in his trembling hand.
“My Lord,” the Chancellor said, his voice breaking. “This… this is the silver seal.”
“What seal?” Alaric demanded.
“The late King’s private crest,” the Chancellor said, the words falling like heavy stones into the quiet air. “The half that went missing the night he died. The half required to legally authenticate any royal will or transfer of power.”
A deathly silence fell over the courtyard.
The false King’s coronation relied completely on a forged document—a document that only held the half-seal they had stolen from the King’s dead body. Without the second half, Alaric’s claim to the throne was completely, legally void.
I heard Lord Alaric step backward, his heavy boots scraping against the marble.
“That is impossible,” Alaric whispered, his voice stripped of all its cruelty, replaced suddenly by cold, naked fear. “He burned it. I saw it burn.”
“It did not burn,” the Lord Chancellor said, stepping toward me.
He stopped right in front of where I knelt on the cold stones.
“Who are you?” the Chancellor asked, his voice barely a whisper. “Who gave you this?”
I slowly lifted my chin, letting my blind, milky eyes stare up toward the sound of his voice. My hands were bloody, my clothes were soaked, but I did not tremble anymore.
“I am the woman who held the late King as he died,” I said, my voice echoing clearly across the frozen courtyard. “And I am here to tell this court exactly who murdered him.”
CHAPTER 2
The silence in the grand stone chapel was deafening. Prince Caelen’s hand remained firmly on the cold iron of my mask.
“I will not say my vows to a piece of iron,” Caelen’s voice echoed off the high, vaulted ceilings. He turned his piercing gaze toward the dais where his stepmother, Queen Kaelia, sat wrapped in dark crimson furs. “Give me the key.”
Queen Kaelia’s lips curled into a wicked, triumphant smile. She loved this. She had planned this humiliation perfectly.
“The girl is a nameless ward, Caelen,” the Queen declared, her voice dripping with mock pity. “She brings no land, no army, and no noble blood to this kingdom. The iron mask is the law for a beggar bride. It hides her unworthiness from the eyes of the gods. If you remove it before the moon rises, the marriage is void.”
A wave of cruel laughter rippled through the pews. The lords and ladies of the court leaned in, their gold and silk glittering in the torchlight. They were eager to watch the rebellious Prince finally bend the knee to his stepmother’s iron will.
Beneath the heavy, suffocating metal, tears stung my eyes. My wrists ached where the rough ropes bound them together under my linen sleeves. I was nothing to them. Just a pawn Queen Kaelia had dragged from the scullery to insult the Prince, forcing him into a shameful union to destroy his reputation among the proud Northern lords.
“Please,” I whispered, my breath echoing inside the cold iron shell. “Just let it be. Don’t ruin yourself for me.”
Caelen looked down at me. His jaw tightened. He didn’t see a beggar. He saw a human being being tortured for sport.
“I take orders from the King,” Caelen said coldly, glancing at the throne beside Kaelia.
King Aldous sat slumped in his massive oak chair, his eyes vacant, his hands trembling. He had not spoken a sane word in ten years. Kaelia ruled in his name, using his silence as her ultimate weapon.
“The King is unwell,” Kaelia snapped, her smile finally slipping. She gestured to the Captain of the Royal Guard. “Force the Prince to read the vows. If the girl speaks again, whip her.”
Two heavily armored guards stepped forward, their hands resting on the heavy bronze hilts of their swords. The noble crowd held its breath.
But Caelen did not back down. Instead, he drew his own dagger. The steel hissed in the quiet chapel.
“Stand back,” Caelen warned the guards. He turned the blade, wedging the thick, forged steel directly into the heavy iron clasp at the back of my neck.
“Stop him!” Kaelia shrieked, standing up so fast she knocked over her silver goblet of dark wine. “If that mask falls, she dies for treason!”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trembling violently as Caelen twisted the dagger with all his strength. There was a loud, cracking sound of breaking metal.
The heavy iron mask split open.
It fell from my face, crashing onto the stone floor with a heavy, echoing clang.
The cold damp air of the chapel hit my flushed, bruised cheeks. I gasped for breath, blinking against the sudden brightness of the torches.
Caelen stared at me. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. His eyes slowly dropped from my face to my collarbone.
The heavy iron collar of the mask had aggressively rubbed against my skin, scraping away the thick layer of dark ash and makeup the Queen’s maids had forcefully applied to my neck that morning.
Exposed on my pale skin was a distinct, silver-white birthmark in the exact shape of a coiled winter wolf.
The breath left Caelen’s lungs in a sharp hiss.
The cruel whispers of the nobility abruptly died. The sneer melted off Queen Kaelia’s face, replaced by a sudden, stark terror. She gripped the wooden armrests of her throne, her knuckles turning bone-white.
Before Kaelia could shout an order for the guards to strike me down, a ragged, wheezing sound came from the high dais.
King Aldous, the mad king who hadn’t stood on his own in a decade, slowly pushed himself up from his throne. His usually vacant eyes were suddenly clear, wide, and locked entirely on me.
He raised a shaking, wrinkled hand, pointing directly at the wolf mark on my neck.
“Aurelia…” the old King whispered, his voice cracking through the dead silent chapel, speaking a forbidden name no one had dared utter in twenty years.
CHAPTER 3
The name hung in the cold, damp air of the chapel like a ghost.
Aurelia.
For twenty years, that name had been forbidden under penalty of death. Princess Aurelia was the King’s firstborn, the only child of his beloved first wife, the true Queen of the North. Everyone believed the infant princess had burned to ashes in the tragic nursery fire two decades ago—the same fire that cleared the path for Kaelia to take the throne.
But as the old King pointed his trembling finger at the silver-white wolf mark on my neck, the terrifying truth struck the room like lightning.
The beggar bride in the iron mask was not a nameless orphan.
I was the true heir.
“Silence!” Queen Kaelia shrieked, her voice cracking with pure panic. She lunged forward, grabbing the King’s heavy velvet robes, trying to drag him back down into his oak chair. “The King is mad! His mind is completely gone! He speaks to phantoms!”
But King Aldous did not sit down. For the first time in a decade, the fog in his eyes was gone, replaced by a desperate, burning clarity. He shoved Kaelia’s hands away with a sudden, fierce strength that made her stumble backward.
“It is her,” the King choked out, tears spilling down his hollow, wrinkled cheeks. “The Winter Wolf. The mark of her mother’s bloodline.”
The chapel erupted into absolute chaos.
The Northern lords in the pews leaped to their feet. Noblewomen gasped, hiding their faces behind silk fans. The whispering turned into a deafening roar.
“Treason!” Kaelia screamed, her face twisting into something ugly and desperate. She turned to the Captain of the Royal Guard, her eyes wide with frantic rage. “She is a witch! A spy sent to humiliate the crown! Kill her! Strike off her head this instant!”
The heavy scrape of drawing steel echoed through the holy hall. Three heavily armored guards rushed up the aisle, their swords gleaming in the torchlight.
I backed away, my heart hammering violently against my ribs. I had spent my entire life hiding in the soot and ash of the palace kitchens, told by an old, terrified nursemaid to never wash the dirt from my neck. Now, I was entirely exposed.
Before the guards could reach me, Prince Caelen stepped directly into their path.
He didn’t just raise his dagger. He drew his massive broadsword.
“The first man who takes another step toward the Princess dies,” Caelen roared, his voice shaking the very stones of the chapel.
The guards froze. To attack the Prince was immediate treason, but to disobey Kaelia meant torture. They looked frantically between Caelen’s ready blade and the Queen’s furious face.
Caelen didn’t look at them. He looked back at me, his eyes searching my bruised, dirt-streaked face. The realization washed over him. The woman he had been forced to marry as a cruel joke was the only person in the kingdom who outranked his wicked stepmother.
“You hid in plain sight,” Caelen whispered, stepping closer to shield me. “Right under her nose.”
“They would have killed me if they knew,” I breathed, my voice trembling. “The fire wasn’t an accident. She tried to burn me in my crib.”
Kaelia heard me. Her face went bone-white, and then flushed with a murderous, desperate heat. Her grand lie was unraveling in front of the most powerful families in the kingdom.
“Lock the doors!” Kaelia screamed, completely abandoning her regal composure. She signaled to the elite Crimson Guard—her personal mercenaries who answered only to her gold. “Lock the chapel doors! Let no one leave! The Prince has conspired with an imposter to overthrow the King!”
The heavy oak doors of the chapel slammed shut with a booming thud. The iron bolts were violently thrown into place.
The Northern lords and ladies cried out in terror as Kaelia’s mercenaries surrounded the pews, blocking every exit with drawn weapons. We were trapped.
King Aldous stumbled down the stone steps of the dais, his hands reaching out for me. “Aurelia… my little wolf…”
“Take the King to his chambers!” Kaelia ordered her men, her eyes completely wild. “And slaughter the Prince and the witch!”
Over a dozen Crimson Guards began to close in on the altar. Caelen gripped his sword with both hands, stepping firmly in front of me and the fragile King. He was a legendary fighter, but it was impossible. He could not fight them all. We were going to die right here on the chapel floor.
“Caelen, wait,” I said, my voice suddenly steady.
The fear that had ruled my entire life vanished. I wasn’t a nameless maid anymore. I was the blood of the North.
I reached down to the hem of my ragged linen wedding dress. With trembling fingers, I ripped the rough fabric open. I reached into the hidden lining, pulling out a small, heavy object wrapped in dark velvet. It was the only thing my nursemaid had managed to pull from the ashes of my mother’s room the night she died.
As Kaelia’s men raised their swords to strike Caelen down, I unwrapped the velvet and held the object high in the torchlight.
The High Priest, standing frozen near the altar, let out a sharp gasp and fell instantly to his knees.
Queen Kaelia stopped breathing entirely.
It was the true crown seal. The blackened iron ring of the First Queen—the only object in the world that gave the Northern Army its orders.
And as Kaelia stared at it in absolute horror, the heavy chapel doors began to rattle from the outside.
CHAPTER 4
The iron seal of the First Queen hit the stone floor with a heavy, ringing chime that seemed to vibrate through the very foundations of the chapel. It was the only object in the world that could command the “Stone-Bound”—the elite, silent legion that guarded the kingdom’s borders.
The rattling at the chapel doors grew into a thunderous roar. The wood began to splinter.
“That seal is a fake!” Kaelia shrieked, her voice thin and high like a dying bird. “She stole it from the royal crypts! Captain, I gave you an order! Kill them all!”
The Captain of the Crimson Guard hesitated, his sword tip wavering. He looked at the seal on the floor, then at me, then at the King who was weeping at my feet. The legend was clear: the seal would only glow in the hand of a true-born daughter of the North.
And beneath my touch, the blackened iron began to pulse with a faint, icy blue light.
BOOM.
The chapel doors didn’t just open; they exploded inward.
A wall of silver-clad soldiers—the High Command of the Northern Army—marched into the hall. They didn’t look at Kaelia. They didn’t look at the mercenaries. They marched straight to the altar, their heavy boots moving in perfect, terrifying unison.
The General of the North, a man with a face like scarred granite, stepped forward. He looked at the glowing seal, then at my face. He saw the mother he had once sworn to protect in my eyes.
He didn’t say a word. He simply unsheathed his sword and drove it into the stone floor, kneeling so hard his armor clattered.
“The Queen is dead,” the General’s voice boomed, directed at Kaelia. “Long live the Princess.”
Behind him, five hundred soldiers fell to one knee. The sound was like a mountain collapsing.
Kaelia backed away, her heels catching on the velvet runner. She looked at the Northern lords, but the same people who had laughed at my iron mask moments ago were now bowing their heads in shame and terror. No one would help her.
“I did it for the kingdom!” Kaelia cried, her eyes darting toward the side exit. “Aldous was weak! The girl would have been a target!”
“You did it for a crown that was never yours,” Caelen said, his voice cold and final. He stepped forward, the iron mask—the tool of my torture—still in his hand.
He didn’t strike her. He simply tossed the broken mask at her feet.
“You wanted to hide the truth behind iron, Kaelia,” Caelen said. “Now, the truth is all that remains.”
The General stood up and signaled to his men. “Take the former Queen to the Black Tower. She will wait there until the Princess decides her fate. And bring the scullery maids who helped her stain the Princess’s skin. They will answer for every bruise.”
Kaelia screamed as the soldiers grabbed her by her velvet-clad arms. They didn’t treat her like a Queen. They dragged her out just as she had ordered me dragged a thousand times—her crown falling off and rolling into the gutter of the chapel floor.
The King reached out, and for the first time, I let him take my hand. His skin was like parchment, but his grip was steady.
“Can you ever forgive a father who was too blind to see his own heart?” he whispered.
I looked at Caelen, who stood beside me, his hand resting protectively on the small of my back. I looked at the seal, the birthmark, and the life of shadows I was finally leaving behind.
“I am not the girl in the mask anymore,” I said, my voice carrying to the very back of the hall. “And the North will never be silent again.”
I walked out of the chapel, not as a beggar bride, but as the winter storm itself, while the kingdom that had mocked me stood in a silence so deep you could hear the snow falling.
THE END.
