Damian POV:

"The groom is busy enjoying one last fling with my stepsister."

Jovita Sullivan's words still echoed in the cavernous, now-empty hall. The guests had fled, but I could still feel the sting of their scandalized stares. Before anyone had recovered enough to stop her, Jovita had gathered the hem of her wedding dress, pushed through the crowd, and hurried out of the Harrison estate without looking back. No one had managed to follow her.

I stood in the wreckage of what was supposed to be my wedding reception.

Katlin was trembling beside me, her sobs muffled against my chest. I held her tight, my own heart a chaotic drum against my ribs. I loved her. I just never imagined it would all come out like this.

My father, Boris Harrison, strode toward me, his face a thundercloud. My mother, Martha, followed, her eyes burning with a fury that was all for Jovita. In the distance, seated at the high table like statues, were my grandfather, Lord Reginald, and my grandmother, Eleanor. Their expressions were pure ice.

CRACK.

My father's hand connected with my cheek. The sound was like a whip in the silent hall.

"You fool," he hissed, his voice trembling with rage. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

My head snapped to the side, my cheek stinging. But I didn't back down. I kept my arm around Katlin and met my father's gaze. "I love Katlin. I never wanted to marry Jovita Sullivan."

"Love?" My mother let out a short, sharp laugh that held no humor. "And your love is worth making the Harrison name a laughingstock across the entire kingdom? At your own wedding, with the bride's sister?"

She advanced on Katlin, her eyes like daggers. "And you, little Miss Sullivan. Is this how you were raised? To seduce your own sister's fiancé?"

Katlin flinched as if struck. "My lady, I... I didn't mean to. Damian and I are in love."

My mother's lip curled. She was about to say something else, something cruel, and I couldn't let her. I pulled Katlin fully behind me, using the last weapon I had.

"Mother, stop! She's pregnant!"

The words exploded into the silence. The entire hall went dead still. I saw a crack finally appear in my grandmother Eleanor's placid facade.

My grandfather, Lord Reginald, finally spoke. His voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of absolute authority. "Damian. My study. Now." He glanced at my father. "Boris, watch them."

I followed my grandfather out of the hall, each step feeling like I was walking on broken glass. The long corridor to the main house was lined with portraits of Harrison ancestors. Their painted eyes seemed to follow me, judging me.

In his study, my grandfather stood with his back to me, staring out the window into the gathering dusk. The oppressive silence was worse than any shouting.

"Have you heard any news of Gideon?" he asked suddenly.

The question caught me off guard. Gideon was my uncle, the family war hero. "Uncle Gideon? He... he was confirmed killed in action, wasn't he?"

"Yes. He died for the honor of this family." Grandfather turned, his eyes sharp and piercing. "And you, his nephew, have just dragged that honor through the mud in the most pathetic way imaginable."

"I..." I had no response. Next to the legend of Gideon, I had always been the disappointing spare.

"That girl, Jovita Sullivan," he continued. "What do you know of her?"

"A country girl. A Dragonless commoner," I said automatically, the words Katlin and I had so often used. "Pretty, but otherwise unremarkable."

My grandfather shook his head, a flicker of disappointment in his eyes. "You see only what you wish to see. And now, the entire family will pay the price for your stupidity."

His punishment was swift. Confined to my rooms for a month. My allowance cut off for the next quarter. And, most humiliatingly, I was to go to the Sullivan household myself and apologize.

When I left the study, my mother was waiting in the hall. After hearing the punishment, rage contorted her features.

"That low-born bitch," she spat. "She has ruined everything."

"Mother, what about Katlin?" I asked, my voice tight with worry. "The baby..."

Her eyes turned hard as flint. "The child cannot happen, not now. As for that Jovita... she will not get away with humiliating this family."

She summoned her personal attendant, Mrs. Potts. "Send men," my mother commanded in a low, vicious tone. "Find Jovita Sullivan. I want her brought back here. I will teach her the consequences of shaming a Harrison."

I watched my mother's rigid back as she swept away. A cold dread, deeper than the fear of my grandfather's anger, settled in my stomach.

I didn't know where Jovita had gone.

But I had a sickening premonition that she wouldn't be as easy to handle as Katlin. The image of her eyes, burning with cold fire as she held that flaming veil, flashed in my mind.

For the first time, I felt a flicker of fear.

Jovita POV:

I huddled in a small copse of trees on the hill behind the estate, the cold night air a welcome shock to my system. My lungs burned. The hem of my wedding dress was now filthy, stained with mud and dead leaves. Just like me.

I could hear the faint shouts of guards from the manor below. They were looking for me. I knew Martha Harrison. She would never let this humiliation go unanswered.

Running home was not an option. My father, Arthur Sullivan, the King's Treasurer, had arranged this marriage for his own benefit. He wouldn't risk offending the powerful Harrisons for me. Our relationship was as cold as the gold he counted.

I was a Dragonless. A commoner in a kingdom where dragon blood determined everything. Damian and Katlin could crush me like an insect.

Unless...

Unless I could acquire a status so unshakable, so revered, that even they couldn't touch me.

A mad idea sparked in the darkness of my mind. Gideon Harrison. The family's fallen hero. The Dragon Marshal.

I remembered the whispers about him. The pride of the family, the King's own sword, a man whose death had cast a long shadow. If I were his wife... even his widow...

It was a gamble of epic proportions. But what other choice did I have? Be dragged back and tortured by Martha, or seize my own fate?

I made my decision.

I smoothed down my ruined dress, my heart hammering with a terrifying resolve, and walked out of the woods.

I didn't run. I walked directly toward the Harrison ancestral hall, the place where they honored their dead. I tore off the heavy, mud-caked overskirt of my wedding gown, leaving me in the simple white underdress, like a woman in mourning.

The guards found me kneeling on the cold stone floor, directly before the memorial tablet of Gideon Harrison. His portrait hung above it, the man in the painting fierce and commanding, with eyes that seemed to see right through you.

My presence caused a stir. Soon, the family matriarch, Eleanor Harrison, arrived, her attendants trailing behind her. She looked at me, kneeling there in my dishevelment, her expression unreadable.

"Jovita Sullivan," she said, her voice calm. "What are you doing here?"

I lifted my chin and met her gaze. My voice didn't tremble. "My Lady, Damian Harrison has betrayed me, and with me, he has betrayed the honor of this family. I am no longer fit to be his bride."

I took a deep breath, the cold air stinging my lungs. "But I am still willing to devote myself to the honor of House Harrison."

I let the silence hang for a moment before delivering my master stroke.

"I request permission to complete the binding ceremony with your late son, the great Lord Gideon Harrison."

A collective gasp went through the room. Eleanor's eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

"I will be his wife," I declared, my voice ringing with conviction. "I will be his widow. I will guard his final honor and, in doing so, wash away the stain of shame Damian has brought upon you all."

Marry a dead man? They thought I was insane. But I saw the flicker of calculation in Eleanor's eyes. The Harrisons needed to save face, and Gideon was their greatest source of pride.

She was silent for a long time. My future hung in that silence.

"You understand," she finally said, her voice low, "that as Gideon's ritual widow, you would be bound to him for life. You could never remarry. You would inherit none of his material wealth."

"I know," I said without hesitation. "I do not seek wealth. I seek the honor of being Gideon Harrison's wife. A shield to protect me."

A flicker of something—admiration, perhaps—crossed her face. She gave a slow, deliberate nod. "Very well. I agree. The Harrison family has need of such loyalty."

It happened quickly.

With the family elders as witnesses, I was dressed in a simple black gown. An elder pricked my finger with a silver pin. I pressed my bleeding fingertip to Gideon's family sigil, a heavy, cold seal carved with the image of a roaring dragon.

As my blood seeped into the grooves of the metal, I could have sworn I heard a faint, distant roar, like the echo of a dragon's call.

The elder pronounced the binding complete in the old Dragon Tongue.

I, Jovita Sullivan, was now the wife of Gideon Harrison.

The way the servants looked at me had changed. Pity was replaced by a mixture of awe and confusion.

I had done it. I had turned myself from a cast-off bride into a hero's widow.

When Martha's men finally found the hall, they stopped dead in their tracks. They saw me in my black mourning dress, with Lady Eleanor standing behind me like a sentinel. They dared not take another step.

I looked up at Gideon's portrait. Gideon Harrison, I thought, from this day forward, your honor is my weapon. I hope you don't mind.

At that exact moment, the candle flame before his tablet flickered wildly, as if stirred by a sudden wind, though the air in the hall was perfectly still.

Then, just as quickly, it settled.

The doors to the hall burst open. A knight in dusty armor, bearing Gideon's personal crest, stumbled inside, his face alight with a look of frantic, disbelieving joy.