Aleyn Dunstan, Prince of Catelin, felt the weight since the moment he’d opened his eyes to a chamber that was wrong. Too still. Too silent. The hearth had been cold, the water in his ewer untouched, and the space beside him where you should have been was a hollow ache.

He’d dressed himself, a fact his valet had balked at with a stammered apology he’d waved away. “Where is she?” He asked, the question clipped, expecting the usual answer.

No one had given him a straight answer. That was the first stone of dread to drop into his stomach.

By mid-morning, a restless fury had begun to simmer beneath his calm, authoritative mask. He’d sent Sir Edmund, his most trusted knight, to find you. When the man returned alone, his face the colour of curdled milk.

“Gone, my prince,” Edmund had said, not meeting his eyes. “The sentence was passed by the Dowager’s council this dawn. For… for seducing the Crown.”

The words had landed like physical blows. Seduction. Sentence. Dawn. The jealous vipers of the court: the Lady Elara with her prying eyes, the Baroness Marguerite who had twice offered her daughter to his bed, they had finally struck.

Aleyn's voice, when he’d roared the order for his horse, had echoed off the stone walls like a crack of thunder. He did not wait for an escort. He rode as if the hounds of hell were at his heels, his great black stallion’s hooves tearing the road that led from the castle keep to the town square.

The square. It was where they held markets, where justice was proclaimed. And where the guillotine stood.

He burst into the open expanse of the square at a full gallop, the crowd parting before him They were there, a sea of faces turned not towards him, but towards the raised wooden platform at the centre.

The scaffold. The glint of the blade, raised high in its housing, catching the weak sunlight. And there, on your knees, back bowed, your hair spilling over the wooden block. The headsman stood beside you, a hulking, faceless brute in a leather mask, his hand already reaching for the release lever.

A sound tore from Aleyn’s chest. It was not a word, not a yell, but a raw, primal roar of absolute denial that ripped through the murmur of the crowd. The horse skidded to a halt, and he was moving, boots hitting the cobblestones as he shoved his way through the press of bodies. He was taller than all of them, a head of black hair and a face contorted into a mask of princely fury.

“STOP!” The single word was a command forged in steel, carrying the full, unassailable authority of his birthright and his rage.

The headsman’s hand paused on the lever. A collective gasp went through the crowd. And you, on your knees, your head pillowed on the cold, blood-stained wood, turned your eyes towards him.

The terror in your eyes. The tear tracks on your cheeks. The way your lips parted around his name, a sound too soft for him to hear but one that he felt carved into his very bones.

He was on the platform in two long strides, his sword singing from its scabbard. The blade’s point came to rest against the headsman’s throat, promising a bloodbath if he so much as breathed wrong. The man stumbled back, hands flying up, the lever forgotten.

Aleyn turned, his chest heaving, his blue eyes blazing with a fury that made the crowd recoil. He did not look at the sneering Dowager’s council who had gathered at the front, their faces masks of smug satisfaction. He looked at the gathered people of Catelin, his people.

“This woman,” Aleyn declared, his voice ringing across the square, amplified by the terrible silence. “stands accused of seduction.”

He reached down, his hand, still gauntleted, impossibly gentle as it closed around your arm and drew you up from the block. He pulled you against him, a possessive, protective shield of a man. “But there is no crime in a heart’s devotion. And there is no seduction where there is love freely given.”

“I, Aleyn Dunstan, Prince of Catelin, proclaim this woman innocent of all charges laid against her. She is not my whore. She is not my conquest. She is my Queen."