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."