Timeline: TC1853.07.01 (Night)
Location: Various locations across the Empire
Fourth Ring - The Harper Family Home
Emily Harper was fifteen years old.
In three months, she was supposed to marry a man named Harold Blackstone. He was forty-three. Widowed. Three children who needed a mother. A merchant with money and connections who was willing to take a girl with no dowry in exchange for youth and obedience.
Her parents had explained it carefully, patiently, as if that would make it hurt less. The family needed the alliance. Her younger siblings needed the opportunities her sacrifice would provide. Sometimes, they said, a daughter's duty was to accept her place.
Emily had accepted. Had nodded and smiled and pretended she didn't die a little inside every time someone congratulated her on the "advantageous match."
Now she sat in the family's modest living room, watching footage that made everything she'd accepted feel like a lie.
