CHAPTER 0

The main character, Lizaveta is on the run. She is on a snowy mountain, looking for her tiger,
Jazzy, to come back from hunting so she can plan her next steps in escaping her continent.
She alludes to issues in her house and has decided to run away, knowing she should have run
sooner. When she finally reunites with Jazzy, they ride back to the peak where she has
converted a research outpost into a cabin. There, she finds a runner (a vehicle capable of
flying and driving) parked next to hers and she concludes that she has been found. She
fidgets with the jewelry her grandfather gave her; two anklets, two bracelets, a necklace, and
notes how cold they are.

On the porch of the cabin, however, she sees her best friend, Ilyaas, dressed in his King’s
Guard uniform. She knows she has been caught but doubts Ly would surrender her to the
authorities. When she enters the cabin, he kneels and calls her “Your majesty” when she
should have been called “Your highness.” That’s when she realizes that her grandfather was
dead. She needs to come home, otherwise, the throne will be empty.

CHAPTER 1

We are introduced to the capital city, Lesya, and the House, the palace of the monarch. The
Empire of Eurasia spans from China to England, and Russia to India across the landmass of
Eurasia.

Lesya is a futuristic city of glass, steel and greenery, shaped like a compass. On each cardinal
direction is a pyramid and a garden surrounding them with the flora reminiscent of the flora
found in each direction of the empire. When they land in the courtyard of the House, she is
hounded by the minor advisers from the Privy Council and she finds out that she can only
bury a piece of her grandfather’s hair because the impact of the drone that crashed into his
runner reduced him to dust.

She is informed that her grandfather was shot down by a terrorist group called the White
Ravens.

Lizaveta shows the military skills she gained from when she enlisted a few years before, by
ordering a lockdown, alerting her military, and safeguarding her loyalists. She is then brought
to the bunker where she would meet the ministers and discuss the next steps.

CHAPTER 2

In the elevator down to the bunker, she meets the King’s Guard; Ji Su, the hacker; James, the
muscle; Natasha, the medic; Ly, the transporter; and Raza, the spymaster. She is wary of the
ministers and so she decides to fire Raza.
In Eurasian court, suspects who work for the government signed waivers to be injected with
a truth serum in case of cross examinations or interrogations. Knowing this, Lizaveta fired
Raza. This was so in case Raza was ordered by her to do something illegal, or gain knowledge
of something of great value, he would be able to lie in court. She trusted him since he used
to work for her father, who died with her brother a few years back in a runner accident, just
like her grandfather.

She meets the ministers and is irked by how they immediately chose to move on from the
death of her grandfather even though she was not on good terms with her grandfather. In
fact, he was the reason she ran away in the first place.

He banished her mother, and after the death of her brother and father, he was her only
guardian. He mistreated her most days and made sure she felt unwanted. He even married
multiple times to no avail, just so he would have a different heir.

But she still regarded him as one of the great rulers of Eurasia, and she promised she would
get revenge for his death.

She announces her plans to the ministers, and she announces it on live coverage in her first
speech. After the speech, she meets the older brother of her father, Hassan. He abdicated
the throne when he came out as gay, and thus gave the throne to Lizaveta’s father. He is warm
to her as he is used to acting as her guardian whenever he was allowed to see her. But when
they got alone, he asks her if she killed the king.

As a prince, he had a network of spies who still were loyal to him. He knew what his father did
to Lizaveta, and also knew of another secret that Lizaveta prevents him from saying. He tells
her that the White Ravens had Onus among their ranks. The Onus were mutated people who
came out of World War 3. They had abilities and didn’t look like humans, and were known to
be killing machines. He reassures her though, that those were just rumors and that the Onus
have been wiped from the face of the planet in the Great Dying.

She wonders if they really were wiped out since she somewhat looks like an Onus. She simply
says she didn’t kill the king and that she killed the king’s killers. Therefore, she was still eligible
for the crown since the only disqualifications an heir apparent could have is either being Onus
or patricide.

CHAPTER 3

Lizaveta prepares for her grandfather’s funeral; a private ceremony where they entomb him
in the House’s foundations with the rest of the kings before him. While preparing, she finds
out that her mother, Princess Ayda, has returned to bury the king. She immediately hates her
for coming then instead of the thousands of times she tried to reach out to her.
She pricks her finger at the gate to the foundation level, which only opens to those who share
the royal DNA. She buries her grandfather. Ayda tries to talk to her, but she shuts her down
out of spite because her mother ignored her pleas for six years. Ayda then gives her the key
to the jewelry; the ones her grandfather gave her.

She goes to talk to the portrait of her brother, Kazimir as she takes the bracelets off. She is
then consumed with pain and falls into his tomb and finds that it is empty.

CHAPTER 4

This chapter is in Ilyaas’s perspective.

He is in the offices of the King’s Guard, now renamed the Imperial Guard. He talks with Ji Su
about how Lizaveta was trained by the air force since most of her military record was hidden
from the public. He talks to her about how Lizaveta stopped a Mongolian rebellion until Ji Su
suddenly shows her that the empress’s heart monitor has stopped.

Ilyaas rushes to the crypts but is unable to open them because he doesn’t have access to
royal blood. He asks Ji Su to send him to Lizaveta’s room as he contemplates killing himself
for not protecting her.

Suddenly, Ji Su finds that an elevator is going up there as well. Ilyaas readies himself to face
off the person in the elevator, thinking it is the killer. He finds Lizaveta drenched in blood. As
he helps her out and puts her in a tub to clean her. He doesn’t find any open wounds despite
her telling him she had one on her forehead. Fast healing is a mark of the Onus.

CHAPTER 5

Lizaveta cuts herself to see if she would heal. Ilyaas found her and saw that she was still
bleeding. He seemed relieved to see that she might be human, but held her close to stop
from talking. He told her that her room was bugged and that they needed to go to the gardens
where there were no cameras or mics. They agreed to go to the East Garden where a
celebration after the mourning period would be held.

Lizaveta meets with Raza in the crypts which she notes, strangely smells of motor oil. He tells
her he used her blood from the elevator to get there.

They talk about the third world war and how the rich people escaped underground. They
eventually rose from the tunnels and killed and displaced the inhabitants who stayed above
ground, which they called the “On us” also known as Onus. The reports collected by Raza
informed him of an impending attack by the Ravens since she did not manage to kill all the
Ravens in her retaliation in Chapter 2. This attack would be in the “Chinese fields.” He also
says that the Islanders might have been housing the Onus.

Raza looks down at the empty tomb, and Lizaveta, thinking she would fail as a ruler, asks him
to find her brother.

Lizaveta prepares to sneak out of the house and uses her maid, Marjorie’s handprint to
escape via the servant’s exits.

CHAPTER 6

Lizaveta escapes the house and boards a tram to the East Garden where she overhears
citizens speculate about how she might have killed the king, and how she looks like Onus. She
understands why they’re talking about her, but she is affected and denies that she is.

She meets Ilyaas and he teases her about standing next to a tree that smelled like her. She
tells him to find a tree that smelled like him, a scent she has memorized already. She lies
about her injury and tells him she healed because she had healing nanites in her blood stream
while she got injured at the crypts.

She sees a boy her age who somehow recognizes her, and it shocks her that he simply ignores
her and goes closer to the pyramid at the center of the garden. His hair was curly, she notes.
She wanted to tell Ly but the lanterns started to rise and she got distracted. They go closer
to the pyramid as it opened up.

Fireworks light up the sky in succession until one doesn’t blow up. Suddenly, a huge explosion
rattles the entire garden.

CHAPTER 7

Lizaveta and Ly get blown away by the explosion. She realizes that the attack was in the fields
of the Chinese Gardens, not China. When Ly tries to pick her up and save her from the falling
pyramid, she instead runs towards it to save two children who were about to be crushed.

They manage to escape the garden and go back to the house. They argue about what she
did, and Ly says her life has a greater value than the children she saved. She disagrees with
him and tells him he doesn’t have the right to pick which lives matter more. He retorts that
she once did, and that was why his family was dead. They make up and he promises he will
choose her just as she chose him those years before.

When she meets with the ministers about what happened, they have no evidence to think it
was anything other than an accident. She is wary, however, knowing that accidents never
happened in the capital.
She vows to visit the injured in the hospitals before she would meet the suitors who were to
be presented to her the next day. She is relieved to know that no one was killed.

CHAPTER 8

Lizaveta goes to Natasha to be scanned for her injuries. Natasha notes her jewelry and how
they would interfere with the scans but Lizaveta refuses to get the key from her brother’s
tomb, so she says she will just use nitric acid.

During their conversation, Lizaveta discovers that Natasha and Raza were romantically
involved. She plies Natasha for information. She reveals that King Solomon came from
Antarctica and that the drone that crashed into his runner was from Eurasia, not Africa, where
the Ravens were reported to be in.

The next day, she visits the hospitals to see to the injured. The press hounded her, but she
was glad that the people didn’t think that the Ravens were responsible. She found the boy
she saved and he tells her that a man with curly hair made the fire bend into the explosives,
and that’s why the pyramid collapsed.

She concludes that the Ravens were in the capital.

CHAPTER 9

Lizaveta is reeling from the knowledge that the drone came from her continent, and that there
was truly was a boy with curly hair who caused the explosion. She assumes that the Ravens
are inside the continent already, and she almost doesn’t go through with meeting one of the
thirty men qualified to marry her.

But she is reminded that with the impending threat to her safety, they needed an heir.

Ilyaas tries to distract her by telling her the story of Queen Regent Lesya, a historical figure
who was known for two different stories between Eurasia and North Africa. In Eurasia, she was
known as the great regent who united the empire, while in North Africa, she was known as the
Onus queen who set the Onus of Eurasia free during the Great Dying; a genocide the
Eurasians led against the Onus. Ilyaas also gives her a contact lens and earpiece from Raza
who insisted on contacting her directly, and not through Ilyaas anymore.

When they arrive at the National Gallery, a cluster of museums, she meets two of the thirty
men qualified to marry her. She rejects the first, who is a close cousin, and meets Tino of
Spain. Tino is a charming ray of sunshine and she immediately wants to protect him. She also
comes to the conclusion that in order to protect him, she must not fall for him, knowing that
the country and its pressures would ruin him in the end.
CHAPTER 10

This chapter is in Ilyaas’s perspective.

He overhears Lizaveta talk to Raza about sealing something before Queen Aridni arrives. This
is when Lizaveta wants the tomb of her brother sealed so no one knows that she is looking
for him, in order to avoid inquiries.

Ilyaas tells her that Akim Ogamras of the privy council is there to brief her about the meetings
she would be having with her suitors. They tell her she will meet with the first son of the
Antarctican Chancellor and a prince from Japan, and soon with a prince from India. She asks
why they have special allocated time with her, while the other tributes do not.

Akim lies to her and says it’s about scheduling first, but then Lizaveta sees through it and calls
her out. They chose the tributes they knew were rich, had resources, similar interests, were
good genetic matches, and had cleaner backgrounds.

She loathes a fake meritocracy, and is upset by how the privy council tried to manipulate her
options. Ilyaas speaks with Akim about it, and tells her to do her job.

Lizaveta reads up on the Antarctican tribute, Theo Velez. She reads how most of the residents
there came from up north, South America, but were forced into the barren land due to the
threat of radiation and the Onus who roamed the northern lands they now knew as Eurasia.

Liz meets Theo, while Jazzy hunts in the Kuscovo grounds of Russia. Ilyaas monitors Jazzy’s
hunting. She runs through the grounds of the palace, but then abruptly reacts when he hears
the tiger roar.

CHAPTER 11

Jazzy roared because she saw that Lizaveta was being threatened by Theo. Theo threatens
her by telling her he could expose two things; how the drone that killed her grandfather came
from Eurasia, and the real reason her grandfather went to Antarctica that day.

Lizaveta blackmails him by threatening to expose his mother for corruption. Theo retorts that
he has diplomatic immunity in Eurasia, and so she can’t hurt him.

Lizaveta calms Jazzy and sends her away just in time for Ilyaas to come armed to protect her.

Lizaveta tells him to prepare a runner for her and Theo. Ilyaas is confused by the request, and
so is Theo, but he complies. Lizaveta makes the runner rise to a specific height which
constituted international airspace, and tells Theo she can prosecute him for threatening her
there.
Theo reveals his hand. He has proof of King Solomon fearing for his life against Lizaveta. He
asked for military support from Antarctica. Lizaveta tells him she also has proof of the
corruption, and his blackmailing, and can make sure he rots in prison.

Theo offers a compromise; marriage for silence.

CHAPTER 12

Lizaveta punches Theo in the face and leaves Kuscovo. She has a panic attack and is
comforted by Ilyaas who tells her she didn’t kill her grandfather.

They arrive at Lesya to prepare for the next date, one with a prince from Japan, Akihito. Ilyaas
mysteriously disappears, but Hassan stays and gets her ready. Even his network of spies had
nothing on the pyramid explosion. He supports Lizaveta on disqualifying Theo, but she stays
her hand, knowing she had no good ammunition on him. Before she leaves to meet the Akihito,
Hassan tells her not to mention that she was a pilot.

She notices that Ilyaas still hasn’t showed. Ji Su seems uncomfortable guarding her.

Lizaveta is unnerved by how Akihito wouldn’t speak with her during the dinner. The balcony
they were eating at looked over the East Garden which was being fixed. Akihito tells her that
the pyramid is some sort of secure communication tower for the east, and that’s why no
technology is permitted to be in its premises to prevent glitches or hacking. All the towers
were like that. He knew that because it was his specialty in college where he took up agri-
tech.

When Lizaveta finally speaks up about how he wouldn’t talk to her, he apologizes. He reveals
he loved someone before her, a girl by the name of Reed. Reed was a student in his school,
who was poor and only got in the university with a scholarship. She protested against the
nationalization of farmlands, as her father was a farmer. Akihito tells Lizaveta that Reed was
killed in a drone strike commanded by her grandfather who called the farmers “rebels”. By
principle alone, he refuses to marry into the family that commanded Reed’s death.

Lizaveta understands and tells him that he can stay as long as he wanted, and even proposes
agrarian reform to help the farmers more.

What she doesn’t say is that she was the one who dropped the bombs that killed her under
her grandfather’s false accusation and orders.

CHAPTER 13

Lizaveta realizes that it was the third anniversary of Reed Yan’s death. She breaks down in her
vehicle, cutting her hands on her nails. She stares at the cuts as they close with inhuman
speed. Her guilt almost consumes her, but she calls for Ilyaas, knowing she could do real harm
to herself if she was left alone.

Ilyaas doesn’t reply. So, when she gets to her room, she throws the diamond ring away and
accidentally hits Tino, who was already there. Tino was being sniffed by Jazzy, and he was
terrified. Tino thanks her for the painting, and she asks him to stay with her. Ilyaas still was
missing, and so she clung to the nearest person she could talk to.

Tino wears the diamond ring on his pinky. They were headed to the South Garden with
Lizaveta in disguise, when Raza sends her a message via the contact lens he gave her. Tino
and Lizaveta talk about how it’s too soon for her to be engaged or married. Lizaveta tries to
talk him out of being her suitor but he is convinced it’s a great way to help the Eurasian
people, if he were given a chance.

Lizaveta downloads the information about Kazimir, but then Tino attempts to kiss her. He
misses and is embarrassed. She takes off her disguise and kisses him in front of everyone,
showing how she isn’t embarrassed of him.

CHAPTER 14

Lizaveta and Tino get mobbed by citizens and photographers. They are pushed and hurt, but
James and the Imperial Guard save them. Lizaveta then goes to her room and finds an injured
Ilyaas.

Ilyaas confesses that he got into a fight with Theo over his behavior, and that Theo was in the
hospital. Lizaveta feels no pity for Theo.

Lizaveta takes care of Ilyaas and shows him the footage she got from Raza. It was the footage
from the day Kazimir, her brother, died. They look for him but there is no trace of him in the
videos. They, however, find footage of Lizaveta being pushed into an elevator by a boy with
curly hair.

She shuts down the footage and tells Ilyaas to sleep. She dreams of the boy with curly hair
who called her “Diwata.” She realizes she met him before on the day her brother and father
died.

CHAPTER 15

This chapter is in Ilyaas’s perspective.

Ilyaas is between sleep and waking when he thinks of his family and how much of them he
doesn’t remember anymore. He wonders how Lizaveta must be feeling. He reminisces about
how he saved her from a runner wreck when she got shot down from the sky in an attempt
at running away from her grandfather. He noted how his whole village thought she was Onus
and worshipped her.

When he wakes up, Lizaveta tells him that they would be going to Monaco. This shocks him
as she was raised in Monaco and never went back there since her father and brother died.
He thinks it’s because she was trying to run away, but the truth was that she knew it was her
last time to be free for a while.

They arrive in Monaco with the maid, Marjorie. Marjorie says she wanted to get her family
away from the Pacific Islands, where she is from, but was unable to because the immigration
process was near impossible especially for a low-income domestic worker. Lizaveta simply
declares her a citizen and promises to do something about situations like hers.

Lizaveta and Ilyaas go to a museum by a cliff where she tells him she used to jump off from.
He wonders if she was suicidal, but she tells him it was her and her brother’s tradition to jump
off from the first floor because their mother never allowed them to go on the second.
Sometimes, though, they still jumped from the second. Their mother told them that jumping
off from that point would mean “Broken glass and broken bones.” To her surprise, they never
returned home injured.

Before returning to the Prince’s Palace where they would stay the night, they get mobbed by
photographers again. Lizaveta says it would be good for Tino to see the photos and give up
on her.

When they finally get time alone, Lizaveta says that day was her favorite memory. Ilyaas tells
her that his favorite memory was when he saw an Onus for the first time. Surprised at him
loving the Onus, Lizaveta proposes to him, knowing that no other man she knew would accept
her if they knew what she was.

He rejects her and they fall out.

CHAPTER 16

Lizaveta sleeps in a special room the night before her coronation. She has trouble sleeping as
she is already in ceremonial garb and is surrounded by candles. Queen Aridni, her
grandfather’s sister, lights them for her as per tradition. The queen also says she lit candles
in the crypts for her family.

Lizaveta sees a flame burst upward, then extinguish itself. A second later, it’s lit again, and she
hears laughter from outside her room.
In the morning, she passes through a series of rituals from the across the continent. She is
then dressed for her coronation. She sees Ilyaas but chooses not to talk to him. Then she
finds a red carnation inside her carriage, and takes it as a small apology from Ilyaas.

Then the chapter changes into Ilyaas’s perspective. It is in his perspective as Lizaveta is sworn
into office and crowned. He thinks Tino is the best candidate to marry her. He is overwhelmed
by her.

Then the chapter changes back to Lizaveta’s perspective as she is mid-anxiety attack while
being crowned and presented to the continent.

CHAPTER 17

Lizaveta is dressing for a party her uncle threw for her after the coronation. Ilyaas kisses her
and she is upset by it, feeling like she was being toyed with.

When she arrives at the masquerade, the New Indian prince, Adee she was supposed to meet
a few days prior dances with her. He admits that he was a classmate of her brother, Kazimir.
He also admits that he was in love with him. Lizaveta pities him and herself, knowing he was
already slated to marry the richest woman in New India.

Tino takes her after they dance and they argue about her behavior in Monaco with Ilyaas. The
media has now portrayed her as a player.

She doesn’t look at him and instead looks at the mirror of the bar where she sees a man in
white feathers sit next to her. She ignores both of them but feels something drop into her
pocket. It’s Nitric Acid, the type of acid that dissolves silver, wrapped in a note that calls her
“Diwata.”

When she turns to find the man, he is no longer there.

CHAPTER 18

Lizaveta reads the note and it says “Meet me where you went.” She takes it and heads for the
bunker. She is blocked by Ilyaas but she evades him and goes to the bunker. When she gets
there, the curly-haired boy is nowhere to be found. Instead, she goes to the crypts and finds
that the needle is slick with blood, and now open.

She enters the crypts in darkness as he approaches her. He fights her but she has the upper
hand. He eventually gives up right after he gets pinned down. But as he surrenders, he lights
all the candles of the crypts with a flick of his hand. He says Kazimir sent him.

CHAPTER 19
Lizaveta speaks with him in the crypts and he reveals key information: Kazimir is alive and was
captured by the Pacific Islander government.

His name is Zabdiel and he is the son of the Pacific Islander president, but a rebel against him.
He also tells her that the fight with him was recorded; including the way she instantly healed.

He was sent by Kazimir to protect her and train her since Kazimir still has not been found. He
is also revealed to be one of her thirty suitors. She refuses to work with him, but she also
realizes the video was transmitting. If she wanted to stay alive long enough for her to see her
brother again, she couldn’t let anyone else know she was Onus. She is forced to work with
him.

She meets Tino afterward, who is instantly jealous of Zabdiel. She takes him to the gallery of
the house to calm him down. There, they see paintings of her brother, and Tino notes how
Zabdiel dressed like her brother. They also find a painting of Queen Regent Lesya, the wife of
the first king of Eurasia, but the name on the painting is of someone else. They argue about it
for a while until Ilyaas informs her that she is needed in parliament.

CHAPTER 20

Lizaveta leaves Tino, not wanting him to see her work. She is briefed about the issue regarding
the Southwest Border, along the Arabian Peninsula. Her heart sank when she saw that she was
being led to the War Room. She starts looking around the hall to calm herself and notices
Natasha’s swollen ankles.

She is calmed when she is told that the meeting was regarding a border issue where people
from North Africa were trying to enter the Eurasian border to seek refuge. They only used the
War Room because of its surplus of seats.

The people were displaced since the North African government attacked the Onus
sympathizers after Lizaveta ordered the nuking of White Raven strongholds. Almost a
thousand of the refugees were already dead. Lizaveta immediately wanted to let them in but
she also knew the refugees might have wanted her to die for killing the Ravens. Then Ilyaas
comes into the room and recognizes the place on the map, as he lived there before.

She moves to evacuate the Saud Royal family, but the ministers disagree with her, saying
there is no need since the border will stay closed. They also criticize her for transferring a
bulk of her troops to China back when she got information that there would be an attack on
the Chinese fields.

They agree among themselves and ignore her. Lizaveta snaps.

She moves to sponsor their stay on imperial land, provide for them for three months before
the adults can get jobs, and granted them citizenship. The ministers erupt into debates and
she leaves. Ilyaas thanks her.

The next morning, she gets ready for the tour around the continent that would last half a year.

CHAPTER 21

Lizaveta asked for Akihito, Tino, Theo and Zabdiel to be in the same car as her in the train they
would take for the tour. She went for a private conversation with Akihito where she showed
him a draft of legislation stating that the farmers would receive their land back. She did it out
of guilt. In response, Akihito pledged his life to her.

They were interrupted by Theo. He points out how she wasn’t wearing the ring. He then further
threatens her about knowing that the drone that killed the king came from Eurasia. He also
points out how he knew about Raza looking into the Onus of the Ravens. Lizaveta concludes
that Natasha is the mole, as no one else knew.

CHAPTER 22

This chapter is in Ilyaas’s perspective.

He is guarding Lizaveta when he sees Natasha’s clothes are looser. He went past her and
touched her back for weapons discreetly, only coming to realize that she was pregnant.

Ilyaas asks Lizaveta what happens if a guard from the Pentagon League has their own family,
as the law stated that they had to resign once they did. However, he was interrupted by the
start of the riding games.

The thirty suitors are informed that whoever would win the riding games would be granted a
seat with Lizaveta in her car on the train. They all started betting, and the top bet was Theo
despite his injuries since he was a known polo player. However, Lizaveta also volunteers to
ride. Ilyaas fails to stop her.

Ilyaas overhears Zabdiel betting on Lizaveta against one of the billionaires of the thirty. He
overhears the billionaire insult Lizaveta’s appearance, as Zabdiel defends her.

Theo’s horse’s shoes ignite and he loses control of his steed. Lizaveta rushes past him and
wins, but gets taken down in the collision between her horse and his. Zabdiel is the first to
come to her aid.

CHAPTER 23

Lizaveta is in the medical car of the train after her fall from her horse. Ilyaas is there with her
and they argue about her recklessness. He eventually gives in and they make up. He thanks
her for what she did for the North Africans, and she tells him that she owed them; All the
people she couldn’t save when she saved Ilyaas. She thanks him for saving her from the
wreckage of her runner that night when she ran away from home six years ago.

Zabdiel comes in, and Ilyaas leaves them there together reluctantly. Lizaveta curses him for
breaking her leg again after she fell. He tells her it was so no one would be suspicious, since
no one would survive a fall like hers unscathed. She protested, however, why it was taking
long to heal. He clarifies that it was because he broke it right at the ankle where her silver
anklet was. He tells her that silver was poisonous to Onus and suppressed powers.

It then falls into place for her. Her grandfather gave her the silver to hide her identity, but also
made sure to give her the key once he died so she could expose herself and be unable to sit
on the throne due to her being an Onus.

She is scared that someone else knows about the silver, but Zabdiel reassures her that her
grandfather most likely made sure no one else knew, just so he would remain king. He would
not have wanted to expose himself as well.

He later explains that Onus genes were recessive, and for her to be an Onus, she would have
needed the gene on both sides of parentage. She recalls how he entered the crypts without
royal blood, and realizes the crypts only detect Onus blood. Thus, every royal since its
conception must have had Onus blood.

When the anklet finally melts from the acid, Lizaveta discovers a new ability.

CHAPTER 24

Lizaveta has a vision of a fire. She sees the scene through Zabdiel’s eyes; a burning mansion,
where he runs to find his sister. His sister is Onus too, and she protects them from the fire.
They escape but a lot of people die inside the house, including his mother. When she snaps
out of the vision, Zabdiel is shocked and crying.

She saw his memory.

Lizaveta wonders if that was what he once referred to as “reading” but it wasn’t. It was a new
ability. She understands that his powers accidentally killed his mother and everyone else
trapped in the house.

She confesses that it was another thing they had in common; people they love die. She recalls
why she ran from home before her grandfather died. She heard the deathbed confession of
her aviation mentor, General Hori, who was also her father’s best friend, and her grandfather’s
King’s Guard. She confessed to being ordered by Lizaveta’s grandfather, King Solomon, to kill
his own son, Lizaveta’s father. With that, Lizaveta almost killed her grandfather but decided
to run away instead.

As Zabdiel sleeps on her couch, she starts developing a fondness for him. She can’t reconcile
the history lessons and legends of how the Onus were monsters with how she saw Zabdiel;
Someone who was still so full of hope could not possibly be a monster.

When she starts falling asleep as well, she sees Natasha pass by her door from Theo’s room.
She also sees Ji Su.

CHAPTER 25

Lizaveta and Zabdiel are in the tunnels under Pakistan when they try to use her abilities again.
She fails to call upon them. She is preoccupied with the border crisis and already tried to
stop the tour, but the Privy Coucil wouldn’t let her due to the need for her to marry and bear
an heir. Zabdiel tries to distract her by bringing up other topics, but they eventually land on
the topic of her brother.

Zabdiel tells her that her brother was the most powerful Onus he has ever encountered, and
she assumes he is right because Kazimir has always been the best at everything he did. He
confesses that Kazimir only sent him because he was the one who had an invitation, and not
because of his skills.

Lizaveta is pressured about the thoughts of bearing an heir, but understands why it was
necessary. They talk about Ilyaas eventually, and even though Zabdiel does not understand
why she wanted to marry a non-onus who had no consequence, he supports her, knowing
she would be unhappy if she chose otherwise. This gives Lizaveta hope about her relationship
with Ilyaas.

Lizaveta confesses that she wants to marry a human because she doesn’t want her child to
be Onus. Zabdiel takes this as an insult.

CHAPTER 26

Lizaveta and Zabdiel emerge from the tunnels where they were training and change clothes
on their way back to the train. They get spotted by photographers and are hounded. Zabdiel
fights them off and carries Lizaveta to safety, but is then greeted by Ilyaas who is upset.
Zabdiel defends Lizaveta.

Lizaveta and Ilyaas have dinner where they discuss Natasha’s pregnancy. Ilyaas suggests they
execute her, but Lizaveta stays his hand by telling him that Raza is the father and they still
need his skills. She is shocked at how easy it was for him to suggest killing a colleague.
Ilyaas then speaks against Zabdiel, but Lizaveta cuts him off, telling him he no longer had an
opinion on the matter, seeing as all she wanted was for Ilyaas to marry her. If Ilyaas wouldn’t
marry her, then he shouldn’t force her to marry someone else, disregarding her feelings
completely.

CHAPTER 27

Lizaveta is distraught about their argument, but decides to not speak to Ilyaas at all. She tours
India with the company of Adee, and they discuss plans about the government of their
resources. He compliments her on her ideas and tells her she reminds him of her brother.

She then seeks distraction from her feelings and accepts a dinner invitation from Tino. Before
she goes to the dinner, however, she receives news from Raza about how he finally found the
killer and her brother.

She is nervous to see Tino, and since it was too late to cancel, she meets with him. Raza
refused to send her the information saying he trusted no one anymore. Lizaveta planned to
go meet him with Zabdiel after the dinner. She is preoccupied, but then Tino places a ring box
on the table. It contains the ring she wanted and only told Ilyaas about.

They argue and Lizaveta tells him it was the wrong time. She doesn’t tell him to leave, though,
knowing he was the only one she was willing to marry among the thirty. Lizaveta wears the
ring to keep Tino happy, but Zabdiel interrupts them and hands her a helmet.

CHAPTER 28

Lizaveta and Zabdiel leave the train station to go to the stilts. Zabdi asks about the ring, and
Lizaveta says she agreed to nothing. Zabdiel remarked how he knew even if he proposed with
a pearl the size of eyeballs, Lizaveta would not accept his proposal if he gave one.

Raza refused to meet them in the station as well, and Lizaveta had a bad feeling when they
left. Lizaveta and Zabdiel playfully argue until they have to stop because of the traffic getting
blocked by protests against the empress.

Zabdiel doesn’t stop talking and tries to distract Lizaveta from the shouts of the protesters
who wrote the word “ONUS” across an image of her face.

Zabdiel is apprehensive as to why Lizaveta still wants to find her brother since he is
technically a terrorist. She asks him why he joined the group, and he simply states that no
person alive could stand a chance against Kazimir.

He reminds her that they want Kazimir for different reasons and that their alliance could end
the moment they knew where he was. Lizaveta is confident that Kazimir would choose her
when the time came.
They arrived at the Stilts, a group of houses of informal settlers, elevated from the bay by
wooden stilts. It is devoid of people, as all of its residents joined the protests. Lizaveta feels
guilty for their standard of living. When she traces Raza, Zabdiel remarks on a peculiar smell,
but Lizaveta completely ignores him when she sees Raza on the floor, dimly lit by a small
candle.

Raza was stabbed in the back by a silver knife, judging from how Lizaveta’s hand burned at
the contact. The knife was no longer there, so when Lizaveta tried to do CPR, the blood came
gushing out. She remarked about how the stab wound was how the military trained their
soldiers to stab.

Raza speaks inside her mind to take his hand, and she realizes he is Onus. He tells her to tell
Natasha that he loved her. She tells him that he was going to be a father, but Raza dies.

Lizaveta is stunned, sitting in a pool of Raza’s blood. She grabs his hand, and finds a key.

She turns him over again, smelling a certain perfume on him.

She realizes that without his help, she had no way of finding her brother.

CHAPTER 29

After her stunned silence, she realizes why Zabdiel was frozen. The smell he remarked on was
gasoline, and the candle was melting into it. She screams for Zabdiel to put the fire out but
he is frozen in place. Lizaveta reaches into the memories of his trauma and pulls him out of it
by blurring his thoughts. Zabdiel finally snaps out of it and puts the fire out.

They arrive back at the train, reeling from what happened. They have a deep talk about their
fears, their hopes, and their pasts. Lizaveta opens up about the abuse she suffered at the
hands of her grandfather and how she wished he would have killed her, if only to escape the
situation his throne left her in. Zabdiel opens up about how his father blamed her for killing
his mother and burning their house when he knew for certain that it was his father who killed
her.

Zabdiel talks about how he lost her sister to his father’s Onus experiments. Lizaveta speaks
about how her grandfather was the one who ordered her father’s death.

Zabdiel brings up how they want Kazimir for different reasons, and Lizaveta insists and hopes
that she needs Kazimir more.

Zabdiel sees the key Lizaveta got from Raza’s body and figures out that it’s a key to a
motorcycle. Lizaveta remembers the scent of motor oil in the tunnels and comes to the
conclusion that the information might be there.
They descend to the bunker, and Zabdiel finally asks her if she truly thought she needed her
brother. He remarks on how Kazimir might have changed in the few years he was gone, but
Lizaveta is firm. She is glad for the argument, saying how it was convenient of him to hurt her
just so it would be easier for her to hurt him.

They find the motorcycle and trace the dot leading to one of Raza’s headquarters. She finds
footage of the day her grandfather died, and the time stamp on the moment his runner was
hit by the drone.

Lizaveta realizes why Raza smelled of perfume even as he was dying. It was Ilyaas’s scent. It
was also Ilyaas who told her the king was dead a minute before the actual impact.

CHAPTER 30

Lizaveta goes to her uncle, Hassan. She asks for money and piles them in a bag. She realizes
not even he knew that Ilyaas killed her grandfather. Lizaveta then turns the ring Tino gave her
over just to hide it from prying eyes. Her uncle asks what was happening, and she simply says
she never lied to him.

She goes to her room where Zabdiel waited for her. She touches the silver necklace time and
time again like a nervous tic, and when her hands come off it, she feels as if she could touch
each atom in the air.

Zabdiel apologizes for what he said when they were descending into the tunnels, but she
shuts him up, knowing it would make things more difficult.

They plan on taking Ilyaas to the tunnels to hide when they arrived at the East Indian station.

She tells Zabdiel to hide in the bathroom when Ilyaas finally comes in.

Lizaveta recalls crashing into the desert and being saved by Ilyaas after months of trying to
run away from her grandfather, after her brother and father died. She survived there in his
small village at the corner of the warring states of North Africa for weeks. That was until Ilyaas
accidentally contacted the Eurasians.

The Eurasians came and attacked the village. Lizaveta could only save Ilyaas.

As he stood in front of her, he confessed how on the day she ran away, he was ordered by
the king to kill her. The king equipped him with a drone, but he used it to kill the king instead
of Lizaveta. He finally confesses how much he loves her. He didn’t want to marry her because
he didn’t want her to have any connection to the murder.

She says she would have run away with him if he let her. They kiss as the train halts inside the
East Indian station. And then the alarm blares.
CHAPTER 31

They see the guards lining up outside the train as it screeches to a halt. Lizaveta takes Jazzy,
Zabdiel, and Ilyaas out of her room to rush into the station’s tunnel entrance. She knocks on
all the doors of the thirty suitors and uses them as human shields as her group run for the
tunnel.

Jazzy fights off the guards. Tino is confused. Jazzy led the group, followed by Zabdiel who
would use his blood to open the elevator, and then Ilyaas, followed by Lizaveta who used her
body to shield him.

Then they were surrounded. Lizaveta’s eyes locked with Zabdiel’s and he set the whole hall
on fire. This was his first time commanding fire so great since he burned their house down
years ago. They broke formation as Lizaveta grabbed Ly’s hand and went past Zabdiel and
Jazzy.

Jazzy was hit. Zabdiel was hit. As Jazzy retreated, Zabdiel healed. Ilyaas was hit on his forearm.
Lizaveta panicked. She felt the tingle of the air again, and in a move that almost felt like
instinct, she reached out, felt the air inside the lungs of the guards, and pulled it out.

The guards fell, the fires went out.

The moment she reaches the wall, she covers Ilyaas and pushes her hand against the needle
just as she hears gunshots. Zabdiel screams that it is silver. And as she turns to his voice,
Ilyaas takes silver bullets for her. They fall into the hidden elevator.

He is hit and dying. She wants to go out of the elevator but Ilyaas won’t let her. She sees every
memory he has had and realizes that he took the bullet just so no one could see her heal and
know she was Onus. He knew all along.

He dies in her arms.

CHAPTER 32

Lizaveta’s uncle finds her in the elevator. He says he was not the one who alerted the guards.
She confesses she is Onus and that her brother is alive.

Lizaveta is on a couch in the morgue, then she falls on to the floor, unable to walk. Tino comes
in to comfort her and she gives him back the ring, knowing the authorities were going to come
after her. Tino tells her Zabdiel is missing and Jazzy is in the care of her uncle. Lizaveta asks
Tino to save himself.

She is then taken into custody awaiting her trial.

She attends her trial and is not equipped with a good lawyer. Natasha and Ji Su take the stand
pinning everything on her. Ilyaas is not mentioned, and so is Zabdiel. It is then that Lizaveta
realizes that the pearl Zabdiel mentioned a while ago was a part of a bribe to the Eurasian
Prime Minister, who wore it during the trial.

When she finally takes the stand, she remains silent, willing to die. They inject her with the
serum, and when it doesn’t affect her, it is revealed that she is indeed, Onus. Due to that and
all her other crimes, she is sentenced to death.

As she finally is on her deathbed, she struggles with the remnants of her instinct to survive.
When she feels as though she was finally dying, the whole building explodes.

EPILOGUE

Lizaveta is half asleep when she hears Zabdiel declare war on Eurasia on behalf of her on a
broadcast. When she wakes up, she realizes she is not in Eurasia. She hears a few people
speak about her. When she opens her eyes, she sees heather eyes. It’s her brother. He is alive,
looking at her concerned. He does not remember her.