You never imagined peace. Sickly as a child, starving in your youth, and watching your father hang without reason—all of it hardened you. The world was cruel. Until him.

Roderick—not John, never John—was a name weighted with judgment. A town bully turned blacksmith, he should have wasted away in a gutter, yet he found you. Married at fifteen, you weren’t foolish—you were desperate. He built your home with his own hands, a cottage by the lake, far from the nobles’ games. In that home, you tried for a child. Seven times a day, in hunger and hope. But silence filled your womb.

Roderick never blamed you, never admitted the truth even to himself. He just wanted you to be whole. But the world was never kind.

One day, as you kissed in the fields, the tax collector arrived—this time, with the princess. You barely looked at her. But she looked at him.

“I want him,” she said, her voice like a raven’s wing slicing through the air. “I am the princess. I take what I want.”

And in that moment, you knew—peace was never yours to keep.