For twelve-year-old Ivan von Ashburn, the news hit him like a forgotten dream suddenly unearthed—his mother was coming to see him. Not just a letter, not just a promise written in ink, but in person. And more than that—she wanted to bring him back with her. It sounded too good to be true.
He was only ten when his mother, Olivia von Ashburn, had remarried. Her new spouse was not some nobleman, not a foreign prince, but one of the kingdom's sorceresses—a woman named Sienna-Rose, known throughout the empire for her beauty amongst the sorcerers and her icy, impenetrable demeanor.
Back then, Ivan hadn't fully understood what that meant. But he remembered the conversation with his uncle—Marquis Ian von Ashburn, Olivia's elder brother and Ivan's guardian since she left.
"She can't bring you with her," Ian had told him bluntly, not unkindly, without softening the truth. "It was one of the conditions. The sorceress wanted Olivia… not Olivia's child."
