I jolt awake, heart slamming against my ribs like a war drum. The room spins, then sharpens—too bright, too quiet. Cold sweat clings to my skin as I lurch upright, breathing like I've surfaced from drowning.

  He's there. Standing by the window.

  Rael.

  The shadows cling to him, sunlight carving sharp lines along his jaw, the rest swallowed by the gloom. He doesn't speak. Doesn't move. Just watches.

  My stomach twists.

  "Tell me you didn't know," I rasp, voice raw.

  Silence.

  I rise slowly, blankets slithering to the floor. "Tell me you didn't know," I repeat, louder now. My voice trembles with something close to desperation. "Please."

  His eyes flick toward me, just for a second. Enough to confirm what I already fear.

  My pulse sputters. "You lied to me."

  No protest. No denial.

  "You knew," I whisper, hands curling into fists. "You knew what this was. And you let me walk into it blind."

  "I didn't want you to get hurt."

  A bitter laugh tears from my throat. "So instead, you let me believe in something that never existed? That's your idea of mercy?"

  "I was trying to protect you."

  "From the truth?" I take a shaky step forward. "From my own demise?"

  He looks away.

  My voice cracks. "There was never a marriage. No treaty. Just a beautiful lie--something to make it easier to bury me."

  "I didn't have a choice."

  "You?" I spit the word, sharp as broken glass. "I'm not the one with blood on my hands!"

  He flinches. Barely, but I see it, and I want it. I want him to feel the weight of it--to drown in it.

  "All those nights on the road," I say quietly. "All those conversations where you played along with the lie. You let me dream... let me hope." I trail off, voice breaking. "This whole time the noose was already around my neck."

  His jaw clenches. "It's not like I can stop it."

  "You haven't tried!" My voice rises. "You've just stood and watched, like I'm already dead."

  "It isn't--" he shakes his head. "It's not like that."

  "No?" I shove past the edge of the bed, moving toward him. "Then what is it like, Rael? What exactly am I to you? A pawn? A liability? Or just something soft to hold onto while you wait for the blade to fall?"

  He steps forward—just a fraction, like instinct—but then pulls back like I've burned him.

  The restraint makes it all hurt worse.

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  "I never wanted you to get this close," he says, quiet and strained. "I thought if I kept you at arm's length—"

  "You didn't," I cut in. "You watched me fall. You let me trust you."

  His silence is damning.

  I take another step forward, a thousand words tangled on my tongue—but something yanks at my ankle. My body jerks, balance lurching.

  I glance down.

  A golden chain wraps around me, gleaming like liquid fire.

  My breath catches. "What is this?"

  He doesn't answer.

  "What did they do to me?" My voice rises again. "Tell me!"

  "It's for your safety," he mutters. "To keep you from running."

  I stare at him. "You let them chain me. Like an animal."

  "I didn't know they would—"

  "But you didn't stop it either, did you?" I spit. "You stood there. Just like always. Letting it happen."

  His hands twitch at his sides. His face twists—but still, he doesn't touch me.

  I away from him, yanking the chain with every step, until I reach the dresser. His book sits there. The one he gave me when I'd grown hopeless.

  I pick it up slowly.

  And then I hurl it at him with everything I have.

  It hits his shoulder, and falls to the floor with a dull thud.

  "Get out," I hiss.

  He doesn't move.

  "Get out!"

  He hesitates. Like he wants to say something. Like it's sitting on the edge of his tongue and he doesn't know how to give it shape.

  But he says nothing.

  Just turns and walks out the door.

  The sound of it clicking shut behind him feels like a blade sliding between my ribs.

  And I am alone.

  I grip the edges of the vanity like it's the only thing tethering me to the earth. My fingers dig into the wood, whitening at the knuckles. The room spins, but I stay rooted there, glaring at the reflection before me.

  Tear-streaked. Wide-eyed. Bloodless. A trembling jaw, eyes red and swollen.

  A ghost of a girl who once dreamed of love and believed in kindness... who believed him.

  A stranger.

  No. Worse.

  A fool.

  Hatred scorches my throat. It tastes like bile and ash.

  With a scream, I slam both fists into the mirror.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Again.

  The sound cracks like thunder, shards splitting and webbing across the glass until they snap loose and shatter downward, raining onto the wood below. Blood blossoms across my knuckles in hot trails. I barely feel it.

  And I don't stop there.

  My arms sweep across the vanity in one wild motion—bottles, brushes, hairpins, and perfume vials scatter like shrapnel, glass exploding against the floor with each impact. The clatter echoes off the walls like applause for my unraveling. My tiara tumbles with them, rolling before coming to a slow, pitiful stop at my feet.

  I pace the room in jagged strides, breath coming fast and broken, chest heaving as I pull at my hair, fingers tangling in knotted locks. I curse under my breath, words strangled and spit out like venom.

  "You liar," I snarl to no one and to him and to everything.

  I kick the golden chain coiled around my ankle so hard it bruises my skin. "You let them bind me like this. You watched." I hiss, yanking it again, again, as if will alone might snap it.

  But it doesn't.

  Of course, it doesn't.

  I'm trapped. In this palace. In this body. In this story I never agreed to.

  Something clatters as I stumble, a dull knock against my foot. I look down, breath catching.

  The history book.

  The one he gave me. The one I clutched like a promise. Like it meant something.

  It lies splayed open on the floor, pages fluttering faintly in the draft leaking through the open window.

  I drop to my knees without meaning to. My blood smears on the parchment as my hand steadies it, and my eyes lock on the bolded phrase illuminated beneath the flickering candlelight:

  The Rite of Challenge.

  My breath hitches.

  I blink, and the words blur, then sharpen again.

  'Any of noble blood may invoke the rite...'

  That's it. No asterisks. No exceptions.

  No mention of being demon-born. No caveat to favor the king's bloodline.

  Just noble blood.

  My heart slows as I trace the line with trembling fingers, the rough texture of the paper grounding me.

  I read it once.

  Twice.

  Again.

  And again.

  Each time, the meaning sinks deeper, steadier. A crack in the foundation of everything they've tried to bury me under.

  I still feel the weight of betrayal clawing down my spine, the echo of his voice whispering half-truths like lullabies.

  I remember the way he looked at me.

  Touched me.

  Promised me nothing, yet let me hope all the same.

  The ache in my chest tightens like a noose, but something new simmers beneath it now.

  Something harder. Sharper.

  Not hope.

  Rage.

  "If I'm to die," I whisper, voice ragged, nearly unrecognizable to my own ears, "then it'll be me who chooses how."

  No soul ritual.

  No payment forged from lies.

  No more chains, golden or otherwise.

  Just me.

  My name.

  My blood.

  My fight.

  Whole and unbroken.

  Even if only for one final moment.