Prologue Chapter III
Title: Alia’s Test
The first time she was given the cup, Mira hesitated.
It wasn’t the gold of it, though it was fine—too fine for a girl barely of age. It was the stillness of the liquid within. Clear. Fragrant. Deceptively sweet.
Alia watched her with unreadable eyes. “You are not a child now,” she said simply. “You are a mirror.”
Mira blinked.
“A mirror,” Alia continued. “You reflect what they want to see. Until they forget that you’re not theirs.”
The room was warm with the scent of roses and something richer beneath—amber, wine, and sweat. A man’s laughter echoed from the parlor below.
Mira took the cup.
“Tonight,” Alia whispered, brushing a strand of dark hair from Mira’s cheek, “you do not have to bleed. But you must understand what power tastes like on your tongue.”
So she drank.
The world did not blur. Not yet. But her blood felt warmer, her spine lighter, her thoughts strangely silvered. She was led into the Peacock Room, where a diplomat from Venak awaited a “gift” from the house of Alia.
He never touched her.
She only spoke.
And yet when he left—smiling, breathless, and clutching the small scrap of silk she’d tied around his wrist—he paid three times what Alia had asked.
Mira didn’t understand it then. The voice she used, the pauses, the look she gave that man. It came not from practice but instinct. Somewhere, deep within, a new current had stirred. One born not of submission, but control.
Later, Alia handed her the coins. “Power,” she said again, “is more dangerous than beauty. Learn how to wield one, and the other will serve you forever.”
That night, Mira sat by the open window, staring out at the alley shadows. She didn’t cry. She didn’t sleep.
But for the first time in her life, she smiled.