"They say the rain follows me. That I was born cursed. Marked. Promised to a monster who lives in the shadows." When seventeen-year-old Elira is torn from her village during a storm, she's told she is the "Storm Bride"-a girl bound by blood to the feared Shadow Lord. Whispers say he's not human, that his castle breathes, and that every bride before her vanished without a trace. Now trapped in a dark fortress where the walls seem to whisper, and eyes watch her every move, Elira must uncover the truth about the curse tied to her bloodline and the mysterious man she is bound to marry. But the deeper she digs, the more twisted the truth becomes. Because the Shadow Lord isn't just hiding secrets... He's hiding her destiny. A slow-burn fantasy romance filled with ancient magic, dangerous court intrigue, and a girl who was never meant to be ordinary.
Chapter 1 The Black Fortress
They say the rain follows me.
That wherever I go, the clouds gather-low and heavy, waiting. I used to think it was a coincidence. A cruel joke the sky played on me. But the night they came for me, I knew it was more than that.
It was fate.
The storm had started at dusk-sharp winds rattling the wooden shutters, thunder cracking like the gods were angry. I was curled beneath the table in my aunt's kitchen, barefoot, still in my nightdress, the hem soaked from where the water seeped in through the floor.
They didn't knock.
The door slammed open, and suddenly the room filled with masked guards in black cloaks, dripping with rain and silence. I tried to run, but my aunt just stood there, pale, shaking, whispering a prayer I'd never heard before. She didn't even try to stop them.
"The Storm Bride," one of them said, as if naming a ghost.
They bound my wrists, rough rope against skin already raw from days of cold. I screamed, kicked, begged-but the thunder swallowed my voice whole.
No one in the village helped me. Not one.
Because they believed the stories. That I was cursed. That I was marked. That the Shadow Lord would come for me when the rain returned and he had.
They dragged me through the mud, through puddles reflecting a sky split by lightning, and shoved me into a carriage as black as obsidian. The door slammed shut. The lock clicked.
And that's when I heard the voice-soft, from somewhere far away. Maybe in my head.
"He's waiting."
My breath caught. My fingers trembled against the wood.
The rain kept falling.
I didn't sleep.
The carriage rattled through the night, through what felt like endless woods. The only sounds were hooves hitting wet earth, the crack of distant thunder, and the constant, steady drip of water from the carriage roof onto the floorboards.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It was cold. The kind that settles into your bones and doesn't leave, even when you stop shivering. My wrists ached where the rope had rubbed them raw. I pulled my knees to my chest, trying to be small, invisible.
But there was no one to hide from. Only the dark.
They said he lived beyond the edge of the world. That the Shadow Lord's fortress was built into the cliffs themselves, carved from black stone by gods who had long abandoned us. They said it breathed. That it watched.
And I believed them now.
By the time the carriage stopped, the rain had slowed to a mist, like the sky was whispering instead of screaming. One of the guards opened the door. He didn't speak, just reached in and yanked me to my feet.
What I saw outside made my breath stop.
The fortress was massive. A jagged silhouette against the pale gray sky, all towers and spires, its walls crawling with vines that looked like they'd bled in the rain. No flags. No warmth. Just black stone and silence.
They marched me across the bridge that led to the gate. Below it: nothing. A sheer drop into fog and darkness. My legs wanted to give out. My heart beat loud in my ears.
When the doors opened, I was swallowed whole.
Inside, it was colder. The halls stretched endlessly, lit by torches that cast shadows like moving arms. I tried to memorize the turns. I lost count after five.
Then we stopped.
A heavy door opened. A woman stood inside the room tall, silver-haired, eyes the color of frost. She looked at me like I was something she hadn't ordered.
"This is the girl?" she asked.
"She is the one the rain chose," the guard replied.
She exhaled, turned her back. "Bathe her. Dress her. The Lord sees no one in rags."
And just like that, I was no longer a person. Just a duty to be done.
But something told me this was just the beginning.
As the maids dragged me toward the bath chamber, I caught a glimpse of a painting on the wall, faded, and cracked. A woman in a black gown standing in the rain, a man behind her shrouded in smoke. Her face...
It looked exactly like mine.
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