Chapter 4

Magnus Asher Dreadborne had never known a childhood of laughter. His earliest memories were not of toys or games, but of whispers.

Whispers that clung to him in every hallway of the royal palace, sharp as knives and soft as poison.

The Emperor’s mistake.

The bastard child.

The mistress’s son.

He remembered his mother only in fragments—her hand smoothing his hair, the faint scent of jasmine, the sound of a lullaby sung so softly it might have been meant for her ears alone. Then the lullabies stopped, her smile gone forever.

They had told him she was ill, that her body had failed her. But even as a boy, he had seen the fear in the servants’ eyes, the way they bowed lower to the empress afterward.

He had learned early that the truth was not spoken, but only hidden.

Asher had never belonged to any world—not to the glittering halls of royalty, nor to the shadows where bastards were meant to fade.

He had been treated unfairly from the moment he was born.

Servants avoided his gaze, nobles sneered at his existence, courtiers whispered that his life itself was an omen. He was the son of a mistress, a woman so beautiful that it eclipsed the empress herself. And because he bore his mother’s face—her striking eyes, her sculpted features—the empress loathed him with a hatred that burned hotter than fire.

She could not bear the sight of him.

There had been days when she passed him in the corridors and flung salt at him, hissing under her breath as if to ward off evil.

Young Asher did not understand anything at first— only to realise later that his face was a curse. So he had learned to cover it, first with simple veils, later with a mask.

What began as a shield against her fury became a prison of his own making. He had grown used to the concealment, to hiding his mother’s passing beauty behind cold steel, until the mask became as much a part of him as the scars he bore from battle.

And yet, not everyone had turned from him.

The emperor—his father—had loved him in his own way, quietly but invisibly. He had ensured that Magnus received tutors, training, and the best of the weapons for wars.

And his older brother—the one who was ruling now as the emperor—had always loved him dearly.

It was in the quietest hours, long after the palace torches had guttered low, that his brother sought him out. The boy who would one day be the great emperor after their father and also the original heir to the throne born to the empress herself hustled the corridors, with a candle in hand, and found him in the cold chambers that had been given to the bastard son by the Empress.

“Asher,” he would whisper, the name a secret, a shield, a comfort. Never the name Magnus. To the rest of the world, Magnus was a name that carried iron and weight, a name forged for battles and hardened stares. But to his brother, he was simply Asher—the boy who mourned his mother, who still hummed the ghost of her lullaby when no one listened.

His brother knew that the empress hated Asher, he knew that if Asher took it to heart then he may also threaten his position as the heir to the throne, but still he accompanied his younger brother. Was it a sympathy or just a companionship? Or was it really a love between siblings? Magnus still couldn’t comprehend the generosity behind his older brother’s actions. But he was heartily grateful to him.

They would sit together beneath heavy drapes, the candle flickering between them, and speak in hushed tones about their future.

His older brother always spoke of himself becoming an emperor and promised to fulfill all his wishes. His brother would press stolen figs into his hand, or slip him parchments filled with stories from distant lands, smuggled from the royal library. There had been laughter then, quiet and fleeting, like stolen treasures. For Asher, it was enough. Enough to remind him that he was not entirely alone.

When the days grew colder, his brother would press a cloak over his shoulders, saying nothing of the empress’s cruelty. He never named her hatred, but his silence was an apology enough. Sometimes, when he thought no one saw, the boy who would be emperor lingered longer than necessary in his younger brother’s shadow, as though he could shield him simply by standing there.

But the palace was not a world that allowed softness. Whispers followed Asher always, and so he grew into Magnus—sharp, unyielding, a man who spoke with his sword when words failed him. The mask, once a veil of shame, became a weapon.

It frightened courtiers who had mocked him, silenced nobles who had doubted him. They did not see the boy that his brother still called as Asher—they saw him only as Magnus Dreadborne, the steel-clad shadow of the throne, ruthless and untouchable mad hunting dog.

And yet, in the emperor’s private chambers, the mask would come off. There, with no eyes to judge, his brother would pour him wine, speak of the burdens of rule, and still call him Asher.

“You are my blood,” his brother had once said, voice thick with conviction. “No mask, no name the court hurls at you, can change that.”

It was the only truth Asher had ever trusted.

Even as a boy, his brother had taken his hand, shielded him when he could, whispered apologies he could never say aloud in front of the empress. But even love had not been enough. His brother had been too afraid of his mother, the empress to protect him openly.

So Magnus had been forced to prove himself in the only way he could: with blood.

He grew into a warrior. Built like his father—tall, broad-shouldered, indomitable—but carrying the ethereal beauty of his mother, the very beauty that had condemned him. On the battlefield, he carved his place with steel and fury, becoming a killing machine who slaughtered in the emperor’s name.

He fought long, brutal campaigns to protect the throne that his older brother would one day inherit.

When his father died, and his brother rose as emperor, Magnus was named the empire’s only Duke—despite the empress’s screams of objection. For all her hatred, even she could not deny the fear his victories commanded, nor the loyalty his presence inspired in soldiers.

Even as the years hardened him, even as Magnus carved his place in the empire with the edge of his blade, the boy his brother had once comforted still lived—hidden, fragile, but alive. And thus his brother remained as the only man in the world who was allowed to see him.

But even with rank and power, the whispers never ceased. He was a shadow prince. A cursed warrior. A man both too beautiful and too monstrous to be truly human.

He learned that silence was power. That the less he spoke, the more others feared what he might be thinking. Soon, silence became armor, and armor became his skin.

By the time he was a man, he was no longer whispered about as a bastard. He was whispered about as a the great mystery duke.

The Duke who never smiled. The Duke who never spoke. The Duke whose eyes saw too much.

Magnus had accepted it. Perhaps even embraced it. In silence, no one could wound him. In solitude, no one could betray him.

And so he withdrew further, deeper into silence. The mask stayed. The walls around him grew taller. He let the world fear him—it was easier than letting it wound him again.

Until her.

The girl he had claimed but would not touch. The bride he had bound to himself by force but forbade from standing in his presence. He told himself it was necessary. That he was protecting her from the darkness of his life, from the curse that clung to him.

He had sworn to keep her away, to let the walls of Dreadborne Manor stand between them. And yet, in the darkness of their first night, he had gone to her, unable to resist the pull.

He could still feel the ghost of her skin against his hand. Warm. Fragile. Alive in a way he had not been for years.

And that frightened him more than any battlefield or whisper ever had.

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