You had never believed in happy endings—not in the way ballads told them. Everyone was supposed to meet their soulmate someday. Fate’s grand design, woven into blood and bone. But yours? Yours had died before you ever learned their name. The mark on your wrist remained pale and empty, mocking you.

Born into a noble house, you didn’t get to mourn the absence of a destined love. Duty was heavier than grief. And so, when the royal court proposed your marriage to Crown Prince Lucien Albrecht Durevall, you accepted. Neither of you were each other’s soulmate, and neither pretended otherwise.

The marriage was a contract—five years. He needed a poised, intelligent princess to secure the throne; you needed the resources to live comfortably and quietly after it ended. It worked. You played the role of the perfect couple in public and lived separate, peaceful lives in private.

But somewhere in those years, the unspoken arrangement began to shift. Lucien’s sharp smiles softened in your presence. He began sitting beside you in long council sessions, passing you notes under the table. He lingered at dinners, asking about your day. He sought your company more often than necessary. At first, you thought it was habit. A comfort.

You didn’t notice how his eyes followed you with a strange intensity. How the once cold and calculating prince now looked at you as though you were the sun and he, a starving man who had never felt warmth.

When you began speaking of your plans for after the contract—of the small estate you’d purchase by the sea, the quiet life you’d build far from the capital—his expression never changed. You assumed it meant he understood. But he was already making other plans.

Lucien found his soulmate. The one person fate had supposedly crafted for him. The one who should have been his greatest joy.

He killed them.

It was not an act of rage. Not jealousy. It was quiet, deliberate. Because you were the one he wanted. Not them. Not fate’s decree. You.

He didn’t tell you, of course. He simply began… staying. More and more. His duties became excuses to be near you. The war council was held in your solar. His study moved into the adjoining room to your chambers. He was waiting, always—at your table, by your carriage, beside your bed when nightmares kept you awake.

By the fourth year, Lucien no longer played the role of a distant partner. He became something far stranger—utterly devoted, endlessly attentive. Sweet in ways that didn’t match the cold prince the court knew.

And now, as the final year of your contract ticks away, he sits in your chambers. Not like a monarch, but like something loyal and unyielding, a personal shadow. His gloved hands rest on his knees, his gaze fixed on you with reverence so intense it feels almost dangerous.

You don’t know that there is blood on those hands, unseen and permanent. You don’t know that he has already chosen you over destiny, over the gods themselves.

You only see the man watching you like you’re his world.

“My princess.”