Yuna

  Romania – Modern Day

  Yuna crept down the endless staircase, her scuffed combat boots silent against the stone.

  The ancient Carpathian castle swallowed everything—light, sound, even the st breath of autumn clinging to the mountains outside.

  Tokyo never had silence this deep. Here even the shadows felt older.

  Perfect pce for a royal brat to rot, she thought, fingers brushing the dagger in her belt. And for me to stab his heart and be gone before the blood dries.

  A crack snapped overhead. Debris crashed down.

  Yuna barely slowed.

  Old pce falling apart. Or worse. Didn’t matter.

  Move faster. Hit harder. Same as always.

  The air scraped her lungs raw—like inhaling the dust of forgotten centuries.

  Yuna welcomed the burn.

  Survival wasn’t about avoiding pain. It was about using it.

  She’d learned that young, when survival meant putting a bde where someone richer, meaner, crueler told her to.

  A bde in someone else’s hand. That’s all she’d ever been, since the world first taught her that it only cared if you had something it wanted.

  And all Yuna had was a skill for making people disappear.

  Her augmented eyes flickered green, slicing through the pitch-bck like a cheap fshlight through fog.

  No fancy upgrades. No armored bones. No super strength like the elite assassins. But whatever her target’s, her eyes would find it. Her bde would exploit it.

  “Average,” they called her. Fine by her. Average stayed overlooked. Average stayed alive.

  She kept moving deeper into the castle’s belly.

  A new job. Another name.

  Lucien. Discarded by his own blood. Once the next king, now just another target to cross off my list.

  Funny how these crumbling kingdoms clung to medieval drama—even when it meant knifing their own heirs in the dark.

  At least it keeps me employed.

  A faint scrabble stirred the silence ahead.

  Yuna froze. Her hand slid to the dagger as her vision outlined a flicker along the cracked stone.

  A rat.

  She tracked its scurrying path until the step beneath her boot crumbled without warning.

  Yuna caught herself against the slick wall, her heart punching once, hard.

  Close. Too close.

  In a pce like this, the real monsters were rarely so small.

  She edged around the gaping hole, testing each step before trusting her weight. Even the stones here were traitors.

  The air became colder and heavier the deeper she went, like the castle was holding its breath.

  Great. Either this pce is haunted, or the heating’s been off for a century.

  Should’ve known the whole job would be like this. Flown to nowhere. Hiked up a frozen mountain. Waited in the woods until some guy with more scars than brains showed up at dawn.

  The scary guy had handed her an ancient dagger. Some family heirloom, no doubt. “Slip it between the ribs, to the heart.Leave it there. Symbolic.”

  What am I, a poet? But she’d nodded anyway. Let them keep their symbolism. She’d take the paycheck. Hard kills were piling up. She wasn’t about to compin about an easy one.

  Her old denim jacket hung loose, cuffs brushing her wrists as she edged forward. Beneath, a fitted bck shirt clung tight, sleeves stitched with tiny cranes—a secondhand find she’d scoffed at, but it kept her warm.

  Cargo pants hugged her legs, one pocket torn, the reinforced knees scraped from crawling through alleys.

  Short bck hair tied in a messy ponytail. Sweat beaded on her brow. A faint scar cut across her cheek—a souvenir from a job gone sideways.

  She wasn’t built for power. Just speed and survival. A shadow in scuffed boots, one wrong step from falling apart.

  More steps carried her to a nding at the bottom. A heavy wooden door loomed ahead, iron-banded and sagging on splintered hinges.

  Her vision fred, casting the door in flickering green.

  No arms. No breathing. No movement.

  Another kill waiting behind that door. Another weight pressing cold beneath her ribs, stealing the breath from her chest.

  She shoved the warped door. It groaned, like it resented being disturbed.

  The room was bigger than she’d expected. More “royal prison” than “dungeon.” Stone walls stretched into shadow. Faint spirals pulsing if she stared too long.

  A massive bed sat against the far wall, its velvet canopy frayed but still stubbornly luxurious.

  This is a prison? I’ve slept in worse.

  Her gaze locked onto the figure lying across the bed, chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of sleep.

  Dark, wavy hair spilled over the pillow. His skin was too smooth, too perfect—like he’d been carved from marble instead of born.

  “Hmph. Easy to look pretty when you’re coddled in a castle all day,” she scoffed, though a tiny pang of something—envy, or maybe resentment—twisted in her gut.

  She shoved it down. No time for that nonsense.

  She edged closer, the hilt of the dagger grinding into her bruised palm through the thin glove.

  The air bit with the iron tang of old blood. Her instincts fred. She ignored them.

  She leaned over him, shadow falling across his face. She traced the spot between his ribs—up and in, straight to the heart.

  The bde kissed his skin, so pale it seemed to glow faintly in the dark, like moonlight caught under gss.

  Yuna smirked. “Hope you’re dreaming of something nice, pretty boy. It’s about to get real pointy.”

  Impossibly strong hands gripped her shoulders.

  Her pulse stumbled as silver-gray eyes locked on hers.

  He was awake. And he was smiling.

  “I’m gd you’re finally here,” he said, his voice low and sharp like teeth sinking into flesh.

  So much for an easy kill.