Chapter 1 The Laurel Burns

The execution did not happen.

Cassia Valerius had accepted her death. She had closed her eyes as the guards dragged her from the Forum, her hands bound in iron, her wrists bruised from the weight of the empire's betrayal. She had felt the blade of judgment-cold, sharp, waiting.

But the gods had other plans.

The soldiers, loyal to their orders but shaken by doubt, were intercepted on a deserted road past the city's edge. A sandstorm rose without warning, howling like a beast loosed from the underworld. Horses reared. Men screamed. And when it passed, Cassia was gone.

She awoke in darkness, face buried in sand, throat dry as ash. All around her: silence.

She was alive.

But her world had burned.

Three weeks passed in a haze of pain and wandering. The desert stretched endless and cruel, the sun a constant blade overhead. She should have died many times. She didn't. Something kept her moving. Something beneath her skin whispered, Not yet.

It was on the twenty-third night, delirious and near death, that she found the temple.

Or rather-it found her.

The ruins rose from the sands like broken bones, columns shattered, altar cracked down the center. Vines coiled around black marble like veins. And in the center, untouched by time or heat, lay a single laurel crown-withered, but still whole.

She should have turned away.

Instead, Cassia stepped forward, barefoot, bloodied, and whispered the only name she still dared to believe in:

"Velarion."

The ground trembled. The wind stilled. The sky opened.

And from the altar rose a voice-not kind, not cruel, but hungry.

"Do you seek vengeance, Cassia Valerius?"

She fell to her knees, trembling.

"Yes."

"Then give me your heart."