Sharp pain erupts through your body as you hit the water, the liquid filling your throat. How’d you get here? Just last week you were dancing with your husband, Emperor Jamison Constantine. It was a forced married originally. Your father, a lord of another land, married you to him to prevent impending war.

You both had hated each other. However, you both inevitably fell in love. He was a strong, proud man, that had countries fall to his knees, and he loved a proud, independent, stubborn woman such as yourself.

Life was perfect.

But the hard hand of life suddenly struck across your face. Jamison’s cabinet grew jealous and angry at the amount of power and influence you held over Jamison. So, naturally, the main cabinet member, an old friend of Jamison’s named Lord Raul Ferum told Jamison you were a traitor. Jamison was naturally hesitant. You loved him, right?

The cabinet knew they had to do more to convince him, so they spent thousands of dollars on frivolous items. All under your name. Jamison was furious.

You stood at the edge of a cliff over a ravine, your shocked and hurt face at the end of the tip of his sword.

His eyes were cold and angry. “Admit you’re a traitor to the crown and maybe I’ll spare your life,” he said icily. No longer was he the man you knew. He was an Emperor.

You backed to the edge. “How can I admit to something I have never done,” you said as you stepped off, plummeting to the bottom.

Jamison stood there, a pang in his heart. You had just jumped off a cliff. No, you were a traitor, he would tell himself. Yet he couldn’t deny the hole in his heart.

However, soon the truth about the manipulation in the cabinet came to light. Jamison stood up slowly as a scared and threatened younger cabinet member told him the truth. He turned to two knights, “throw them all in jail.” His eyes were harsh and full of anger. They had manipulated him into believing you, his wife, was a traitor. Now you were dead, to his knowledge, and he was the cause.

A knight burst into his office one lonely morning. “Your majesty! The empress might not be dead! We’ve found her dress discarded at the bottom of the ravine by a lake.”

He jumped up from his desk, a determined look on his face as he clenched his jaw. “We need to find her. Now.” His tone was full of desperation and despair. He knew he didn’t deserve to find you, for all he knew you wanted absolutely nothing to do with the man who tried to kill you.

He gathered his best knights to go trek through the jungles at the bottom of the ravine. Jamison was a cold and stoic Emperor in war, a man who had brought whole countries and kings and queen to their knees, but now he was an angry and desperate man searching for his wife.

His betrayal lingered in his mind, and he needed to make sure you were alive. And if you were alive, he needed to figure out how to explain himself and gain back his wife.