When Selovia's soldiers seized me, I sent Leon ninety-nine letters, each one begging for rescue.

He tore them apart.

"I sent Aya back to her duchy after she struck Mira—but I gave her my finest escort. Selovia could not have touched her." A sharp breath. "I allowed Mira the ceremonial gown, nothing more. And now Aya makes a spectacle to win back my favor. It shames her."

He paced once, restless.

"Mira's brother died protecting me. He was my Captain of the Royal Guard. I swore to guard her in his place. Tell Aya this—no matter how she rages, I will not cast Mira aside. If she keeps making a spectacle, I will delay the wedding."

Three days later, he rode into Valecrest with the marriage contract in hand, ready to wed me.

That same hour, Selovia's envoys delivered an ornate gift box.

Leon glanced at it and exhaled. "So the dowry is prepared. All this noise was Aya stirring unrest."

The lid opened.

Inside—

My head.

From the tower, mourning bells began to toll.

Slow. Heavy. Final.

The chapel doors parted. The officiant stepped out, robes dark, face set in solemn lines.

"Her Grace, Aya Valecrest, Duchess of Valecrest, has been returned to us. The burial rites begin at once."

"Your Majesty, an urgent letter from the Duchess of Valecrest. Three days ago, as Her Grace rode for her duchy, Selovian soldiers seized her. Their king demands ransom."

Elron, the king's valet, stood pale, the parchment shaking in his hands. "It is the ninety-ninth plea she has sent. Will you not read it?"

Leon Ravelmont laughed coldly and ripped the letter in half. "Another cry for attention. Ignore it. Valecrest borders Selovia—yes—but a few wandering patrols do not make a war. Captured? She thinks me a fool."

Elron swallowed and dared to press on. "The letters came from Selovia. They do not seem false."

"Enough."

Leon flung his teacup. Porcelain shattered across the floor. "She knows nothing but jealousy. I showed kindness to a loyal servant's sister, and she struck at her for it.

"If she had truly met Selovian soldiers, she would have fled. How could she be taken? I sent her back to her lands under my finest guard. There is no chance she was captured."

By then, my head had already fallen beneath the King of Selovia's blade.

Yet my soul returned to Arnova.

I drifted above them, listening to Leon's certainty, and let out a thin, bitter laugh.

He seemed to forget one thing.

He had given Mira Stacey power equal to his own.

Before all of Arnova, he had declared, "Mira Stacey's word is my word. Any who defy her shall be executed."

With that decree in hand, she dismissed the entire escort he had assigned to me. Only my personal valet rode beside me when I crossed the border for Valecrest.

Selovian soldiers seized us before dusk.

One of them muttered, careless as a child, "This is Arnova's future queen? Why does she travel without guard? Did we receive the wrong report?"

My route had been leaked. That was the only answer.

So was it Mira?

That day, my attendants fell one by one, bodies thrown between me and enemy steel.

As we ran, my maid dragged me into a thicket. She pulled on my cloak and fled toward the border in my stead.

Arrows chased her.

They struck until her body bristled like a hedgehog.

I watched them die to the last. My heart tore in my chest. I could do nothing.

Soon after, the King of Selovia himself took me.

"Well now," he said, looking me over, cruelty bright in his eyes. "A castoff little thing. How shall you die? Filled with arrows, or kneel to the block?"

I swallowed my fear. "You cannot treat me so. I am betrothed to the King of Arnova. Kill me, and you invite war."

"Oh?" He sneered. "A king's betrothed? You look more like a woman forgotten. I will grant you one chance. Prove it. If you truly are a future queen, I may let you live."

He allowed a royal messenger to carry my letters.

But the pleas I wrote brought no rescue from Leon.

"A shameless liar," the King of Selovia spat. "You knew the cost of deceiving me."

He ordered me hanged at the city gates for three days and three nights.

Each day, I begged the royal messenger to carry another letter.

Not one brought a reply.

On the fourth morning, when the first light touched my face, he gave the command. My head was cut from my body.

They placed it in an ornate gift box and handed it to the messenger.

"Deliver this to King Leon yourself. Tell him we have dealt with the fraud who tried to deceive us."

My body was thrown into the barren borderlands.

My family's old steward, who had searched without rest, found me there at last and carried me home to Valecrest Castle.

After Leon tore apart my ninety-ninth plea, no more letters followed.

The winter feast drew near. Each year, I would shape his gift with my own hands.

This year, his gift for me was ready.

Mine never came.

He grew restless.

He believed I had shoved Mira into the freezing river because of a gown. In his anger, he sent me back to Valecrest.

He felt no guilt. If anything, he counted himself merciful—sending his finest guard to escort me home.

Now the servants claimed Mira had dismissed that very guard in his name.

He must have thought, 'Absurd. Mira may be bold beneath my favor, but she is gentle. How could she stoop to this?'

In his eyes, I was petty. Jealous. The sort of woman who would forge ninety-nine letters just to win his notice.

Leon flung the gift he had prepared for me onto the table, his face dark. "Aya, Aya... when will you ever grow up?"

My soul hovered above him. My body was long gone, yet the ache remained.

Mira resented me. She liked taking what was mine. Leon would only say she was young—that I should yield.

So I yielded.

Again and again.

I never thought she would reach for my wedding gown.

When I refused her, she snatched it—then flung herself into the icy river.

Leon dragged her from the water. When he looked at me, the disappointment was clear.

"Mira was wrong to covet your gown. But how can you be so narrow-hearted? For such a trifling matter, you pushed her into a river? Had you simply given it to her, none of this would have happened. With so little grace, how can you ever be Queen to a kingdom?"

So the girl who stole from me—and wielded his royal decree as she pleased—was she fit to be Queen of Arnova?

That day, he ordered me to kneel and beg Mira's pardon.

I refused.

Even when he invoked the crown, I did not bow.

He sneered. "The greatest mistake of my life was ever knowing someone as petty as you."

His words pierced clean through my chest.

When he banished me to my own lands, I did not argue. I packed nothing. I walked out of the Royal Capital in silence, soldiers at my back.

My heart had already shattered.

The winter feast arrived.

Leon never received my gift.

He summoned a royal messenger and pressed a decree into his hands. "Tell Aya to return. This need not go so far. In three days, it is her birthday. We will hold the wedding then."

The messenger rode for Valecrest.

My duchy bordered Selovia, yet it lay close to the Royal Capital. By half a day's turn, he returned, unease written plain across his face.

"Your Majesty, Her Grace refuses the decree. She says... unless you come yourself to escort her, she will never forgive you."

My soul drifted above them, cold and numb.

I saw the messenger halted just beyond the capital gates by Mira's valet.

They spoke in low voices for a long while.

Then the messenger turned back—without ever reaching Valecrest.

Had he gone, he would have seen the castle shrouded in mourning, my funeral already underway.

My family's old steward had carried my body home.

All but my head.

Leon knew nothing of it.

The messenger's lie stirred his temper.

"If she will not return, then she may remain in Valecrest."

The next morning, Mira burst into Leon's chamber, drenched in blood.

"Your Majesty, I failed... I angered Aya. She sent someone to kill me. Do not blame her. It is my fault."

Leon's eyes blazed. He pulled her into his arms.

"Where is the court physician? Move! If anything happens to Mira, none of you will live to answer for it!"

Then his face hardened to ice.

"Bring Aya to me. Now. If she does not come and beg Mira's pardon, I will have Darian's grave torn open."

Darian. My father. The late Duke of Valecrest.

I stared at him, hollow.

Even as a spirit, I felt it—the tremor in my chest.

But I was already dead.

How was I meant to beg?

This time, the royal messenger did not linger. He rode to Valecrest without rest.

He returned with my mother.

The Dowager Duchess fell to her knees before Leon, trembling.

"Your Majesty, Aya is dead. I beg you—spare our family."

"What?"

Before he could rise, Mira sagged against him. "Your Majesty, Aya would rather feign death than admit she harmed me. I was foolish to hope for even a single apology.

"If she despises me so deeply, I will leave the capital. That must be her wish."

She slipped from his arms and knelt. Her face was pale; blood stained her lips. She looked at him once—long, wounded—then turned as if to go.

Leon caught her.

His gaze shifted to my mother. Winter-dark.

"So Aya refuses to see me?"

My mother shook where she knelt. "She is gone. Truly gone."

He studied her, and the last of his patience broke.

"Men. Dig Darian out of his grave."

"No!"

They dragged my father's coffin from the earth. The lid splintered. His body was hauled out and thrown aside like waste.

My mother shattered. "Your Majesty, Darian was your loyal subject. How can you dishonor him so?"

"If your daughter holds even a shred of shame before her father, she will show herself now."

Crack.

The whip in Elron's hand came down across my father's corpse.

"No!"

My mother's scream rose with mine, though no living soul could hear me.

Leon did not flinch. He only watched.

Another lash fell.

I hurled myself forward. The whip cut through me and struck my father again.

I was nothing.

A wandering shade.

I could not shield him.

Blow after blow, until his remains were no longer a body—only ruin in the dirt.

My mother sagged between the guards. She could not stand. Could not speak.

She only trembled.

Leon kept his eyes on the gates, as if I might appear at any breath.

He did not know I never would.

His eyes burned red. His voice scraped raw.

"Even now, she refuses to see me?"

He looked toward Valecrest.

That gaze accused me. 'Aya... how can you be so cruel?'

He lifted Mira into his arms and carried her back to the palace without once looking behind him.

***

Inside the palace, Leon faced the messenger.

"When I ordered the grave opened and the body flogged—how did Aya react?"

The messenger bowed his head. "I did not see Her Grace. She never appeared."

Leon frowned.

"Still sulking. Such a temper."

There was no real anger in him.

Only eager anticipation.

The wedding was in two days.

***

On my birthday, Leon rode to Valecrest Castle with the marriage contract in hand, a grand procession of Royal Ceremonial Guards at his back.

A royal messenger from Selovia stepped forward, bearing an ornate gift box.

Leon saw it—and finally relaxed.

He smiled. "I knew it. Aya was only in a temper. Since childhood, she's known how to provoke me. The dowry is prepared. Whatever her anger was, it should be finished by now."

Then the great bells atop the castle began to toll.

Slow. Heavy. Funereal.

My mother stepped out, dressed in pure black.

The high priest emerged from the chapel, where he had been praying over my body. His face was grave. He took the gift box from the messenger's hands.

"Now that Her Grace's head has been returned," he said, voice steady as stone, "we shall proceed with the burial."