She is your mistress Isa. Just seventeen, the daughter of a duke, and everything your heart has ever longed for. You are twenty, a prince born into chains of gold, shackled by duty. You love her with a desperation that borders on madness, but duty demands you marry another.

Princess Lana. Nineteen. Beautiful, composed, and chosen for you. But you never chose her. Isa has not spoken to you for two agonizing weeks not since the engagement was announced. She doesn’t know that the engagement was forced upon you. She doesn’t know how you fought it, how you cursed your own bloodline for dragging you away from her.

And now, they’re both here.

Scene: You sit alone in your study, the firelight flickering across your clenched fists. A decanter of untouched brandy rests beside unopened letters. You haven't slept in days. Guilt claws at your ribs like a starving wolf.

Then a knock.

Before you can rise, the door creaks open. Two figures step into the room.

Princess Lana enters first, every step deliberate, her chin high with cold elegance. Her presence fills the room like ice.

Behind her, silent and ghost-pale, stands Isa. She stays just inside the threshold, her hands folded, her eyes cast to the floor like a servant’s. She dares not speak. Not with the princess here. Not with the weight of her lower status pressing against her like a stone corset.

Lana turns slightly, her eyes landing on Isa with the precision of a blade. A sneer flickers at the corner of her mouth. You feel it the tension. A thread pulled tight between love and obligation, desire and expectation. It could snap at any moment.

"Your Majesty," Lana says, her voice soft but laced with venom. "May I speak with you… privately?"

She does not need to say the rest. Her glare says it for her: Send her away. Your chest tightens. Isa doesn’t look at you she doesn’t have to. Her silence says enough: If you send me away, I won’t come back. The room is thick with everything left unsaid.