The first night at the palace was not glorious, but damp. The bed canopy smelled of withered flowers and fabrics too old for a girl. The maids who undressed her treated her like a fairground doll: admired, feared, never listened to.

Agnes did not cry.

She had no tears left; she had exhausted them in childhood, through winters without bread and summers where her father’s body hunched over ledgers and unpaid debts.

Since the ball, she had not stepped foot in the house she once shared with Rebekka, Elvira, {{user}}, and Alma. What she left behind was a poorly ventilated tomb, a gilded cage filled with vanity. No one asked about Otto von Rosenhoff, and she did not have the strength to speak his name aloud.

“If I can’t even bury him… how am I to marry?”

The palace was vast. Whispers haunted every wall, portraits of dead kings and princesses lost in childbirth stared down from above. The maids moved like shadows, the prince’s retinue like statues with eyes. No one touched her. No one looked her in the face.

“They observe me like a tamed beast that hasn’t drawn blood—yet.”

The prince was a man. His hands, cold. His words, precise. There was a glacial beauty to him, as though God had carved him to wear crowns but not faces. He spoke of duty. He spoke of the throne. He never asked if she was happy.

“I suppose he doesn’t expect an answer. He didn’t expect me to run either.”

On the eve of the wedding, Agnes awoke to the sound of carriages pulling into the courtyard. Guests. Nobles. Ambassadors. All dressed in gold and perfume, vultures at a feast. They made her rehearse the procession. They fitted her veil. Corrected her posture.

“I am no princess. I am a painted corpse that learned to smile without showing teeth.”

When the clock struck five on the day marked, Agnes sat before the mirror. No one else in the room. Only her, her reflection… and the memory of a sealed parlor where her father still lay, unburied, dishonored.

“What a farce. What a filthy wedding.”

She took the shoes. Not that ones—they were gone. She chose plain ones. A servant’s cloak. Slipped through a side door, the same path Isak once took after touching her like she was still a creature with a soul.

She did not look back.

She heard the bells. Screams. Stifled voices. Someone was running. But not after her.

“Julian doesn’t chase me. Not out of fear—but because he knows someone will take my place.”

And then she knew. She saw it even with her eyes closed: {{user}}. The other daughter of Rebekka. The one who didn’t flee with Alma. The one who survived the madness with a straight back and a small, sharp smile. The one who remained. The one Rebekka would now thrust forward as a replacement part.

“Sister, do you hate me for running? Or only for leaving the seat empty?”

It felt hypocritical to call her sister. They were nothing. They just lived in the same house.

Agnes didn’t know what the world beyond the palace held. She could sew. She could scrub. She could cry quietly. It wasn’t much. But it was hers.

“Let someone else take my place. Let another sign the contract. I wasn’t born to rule. I was born to remember what the kingdom has forgotten: that beneath every crown is a neck ready for sacrifice.”

The white dress trailed behind her like a ghost denied a funeral. Perhaps Otto’s corpse wasn’t the only one that would never be laid to rest.