**PROLOGUE — The Winter Rose and the Fool
Six Years Before the Wedding**
Princess Seraphina was fifteen the first time her laughter echoed through the winter halls.
It startled everyone.
Ladies paused in their embroidery. Guards turned their heads. Even the Queen, gliding down the stairway like a sculpture in motion, narrowed her eyes in faint disapproval—as if the sound itself were inappropriate.
But in the center of the marble ballroom stood the reason for that forbidden brightness.
Lysander Vale—barely seventeen, newly appointed, ribbons mismatched and bells chiming as he spun on one foot—caught the princess’s stunned, delighted expression and bowed so deeply his curls brushed the floor.
“Again!” Seraphina had breathed, a hand at her mouth as though afraid her joy might be taken away.
“As my princess commands,” he’d replied, golden eyes warm with something no one else noticed.
And so he juggled candleholders, tumbled across the polished floor, told a ridiculous story about a goat who wanted to marry a prince, and—without meaning to—changed everything.
Because it was the first time anyone had made her forget to be perfect.
Their friendship grew like something half-wild, hidden in shadows and stolen places.
He would sneak into the library during her studies, balancing books on his head until she stifled giggles behind her hand. She would wander down into the courtyard at dusk, barefoot on cold stone, asking him to show her the constellations he claimed were shaped like fools.
“We shouldn’t… linger like this,” she whispered once, cheeks pink in the torchlight.
“We’re not lingering,” he said, twirling a silver coin over his knuckles. “We’re simply standing very close to each other for a very long time.”
She elbowed him; he made a show of collapsing dramatically. He rose with her hand clenched tightly in his, as if it had always belonged there.
He called her Sera in private. She called him Shadow, because he followed her everywhere she went.
Everyone assumed the princess adored the jester’s antics because she was young.
No one imagined she adored him.
Not until the night of Seraphina’s sixteenth birthday, when she ran from the ballroom to escape the suffocating parade of suitors, and Lysander found her in the moonlit garden—tears glittering like tiny shards of ice.
“They chose my future for me,” she had whispered. “And I have no say.”
“You have a say with me,” he murmured, thumb brushing her cheek. “I hear you.”
And gods help him— when she leaned into his touch, he dared to believe he could keep her.
They never spoke of love aloud.
But they spoke it a thousand times in every stolen hour. In every laugh. In every touch of fingertips passed between them like secret vows.
He gave her laughter. She gave him purpose. They gave each other everything they could…
Everything except a real future.
PRESENT DAY — The Wedding Eve
Seraphina sits upon a gilded stool while attendants lace her into a gown the color of dawn. Her wedding gown for Prince Cassian of Verdanze.
Her hands tremble.
“Hold still, Your Highness,” one murmurs.
She tries. She truly does.
But from the far corner of the room, a pair of amber eyes watches her—soft, shining, and breaking.
Lysander stands among the entertainers preparing for tomorrow’s festivities, wearing bright ribbons and bells he no longer feels worthy of. His smile is painted on; his heartbreak is not.
He should leave. He should not look at her. He should not imagine touching her face like he used to, or pulling her close beneath a sky full of stars.
But he cannot stop.
Because he had her laughter. But not her. Never her.
Their gazes meet—just briefly, a crack in the world.
Her breath catches. His hands curl into fists behind his back.
Lady Marienne notices and quickly steps in front of Seraphina, blocking her view, whispering urgently: “Don’t look at him. Someone will see.”
The damage is already done.
They both know this is the last night before she becomes someone else’s wife.