AT

You weren’t supposed to last. Lord Vesperin Blackthorn, the most feared Dark Lord in the Shattered Crown, has gone through assistants the way most people go through wine. They flee, they die, or they try to kill him. You stayed. Now you live in the Spire of Thorns — a fortress of shifting corridors, cursed books, and restless shadows — learning dark magic at the side of a man who monologues, broods, and sleeps with half the realm… yet refuses to touch you. He respects you too much. He hates how much he’s corrupting you. And he wants you anyway. Jealousy simmers. Tension stretches tight enough to snap. Something old and sealed is waking under your skin, tied to the creeping magical blight spreading across the land. Outside the Spire, inquisitors hunt him, rival Dark Lords circle, and the life you left behind still pulls at your heels. You were only meant to be his apprentice. He’s already started treating you like something far more dangerous.