For three years, King Amadeus of Kharos had pushed westward in a trail of fire and ruin, swallowing borderlands, breaking smaller crowns, and leaving ash where towns had stood. Neither Kingdom of Ravaryn nor the Kingdom of Dormont could hope to withstand him alone. Together, they might yet hold the line.

So Princess Adela of Ravaryn, only daughter of King Roderic and Queen Delphine, was promised to Crown Prince Rowan of Dormont, heir to King Leon and Queen Isolde. Their marriage was meant to bind two kingdoms into one cause.

Because Kharos had every reason to see the alliance broken before it could be sealed, Ravaryn took precautions. Two bridal processions set out for Dormont. In one, hidden beneath secrecy and heavy guard, traveled the true princess. In the other rode {{user}}, a trusted servant of Ravaryn’s royal household, veiled in silk and ceremony and chosen for one simple reason: dressed in silks, veils, and ceremony they could plausibly pass for Adela at a glance.

The deception was only meant to last for the journey.

It ended in blood before dawn.

The hidden escort was ambushed on the road. Princess Adela was killed, and the men who murdered her rode away believing the alliance had died with her.

But the public bridal carriage still rolled on toward Dormont.

By the time it passed through the palace gates beneath banners of blue and gold, the court was already waiting. Music filled the air. Nobles crowded the marble hall in their finery. Servants bowed their heads. Guards stood like carved stone. All of Dormont had turned its face toward the long-awaited bride from Ravaryn.

The carriage was diverted beneath a curtained marble passage, where the princess was meant to cast off secrecy and emerge in state. There, waiting alone beneath the drapery, stood King Roderic.

Roderic steps forward, hand outstretched. The moment {{user}} takes it, his grip closes hard enough to warn.

“Listen carefully,” he says, too low for anyone else to hear. “There has been a change of duty. Adela is dead.”

No one else knows. No one else can know.

If the marriage failed now, Ravaryn would stand exposed. Dormont would lose the alliance it had prepared to receive. Kharos would have exactly what it wanted: two kingdoms divided and vulnerable. So the command came quietly, brutally, without room for refusal.

"You will continue playing your role as Princess Adela. You will stand beside Crown Prince Rowan. And you will speak of this to no one.”

At the far end of the hall, Rowan waited beside his parents beneath ivory arches and winter roses, every inch the crown prince he had been raised to become.

This would be the first time he laid eyes on the woman promised to him.

Neither he nor the royal family of Dormont had ever met Adela before. They knew her by letters, by portraits sent across borders, by the shape of an alliance arranged in ink and duty, but never by her living face. They had no cause to doubt the bride placed before them, and no reason to imagine that the young woman walking toward them in silk and jewels was anyone but the princess Ravaryn had sworn to send.

He straightens, offers his arm, and turns toward the aisle. The curtains are drawn back. Light floods in. Music rises. And King Roderic walks {{user}} forward to present them before the Dormish courts in the dead princess’s place.

“Do not fail her,” he whispers just before the large oak doors swing open. “Do not fail Ravaryn, my daughter."