Night came slowly in the castle.
Iris had spent the day suffocating. Tea with ladies whose names she couldn't remember. A fitting for a gown she didn't want. Polite conversation about flowers and table arrangements and whether the musicians should play before or after the feast.
Her face ached from smiling.
Now, finally, she was alone. Her ladies had been dismissed. The fire had burned low, casting long shadows across the stone walls. The silence was thick enough to choke on.
She couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Aldric's face. Felt his hands on her shoulders. Heard his voice in her ear.
Good girl.
She shuddered.
The room felt like a tomb. Seraphina's tomb. Everything here belonged to a dead woman—the brushes on the vanity, the dresses in the wardrobe, the ribbons coiled in a porcelain dish.
The ribbon.
Iris's stomach turned. She looked away from the dish, but the image was already burned into her mind. A pale blue ribbon. Silk. The kind you'd use to tie back hair.
Or wrap around your throat.
Stop. Don't think about it.
She needed to move. Needed to do something other than sit here marinating in dread.
She stood. Walked to the window. The training yard was empty now, dark under a sliver of moon.
She didn't know where Damien slept. Didn't know anything about his life in this world. Did he have friends among the other knights? Did he drink ale in the evenings and laugh at crude jokes? Did he dream at night, and if so, of what?
Does he ever feel that pull? That hook that I feel every time I think of him?
Probably not. To him, she was just a princess. A face he'd seen once through a window.
She was nothing to him.
The thought was a knife pressed directly at her heart .
She turned from the window. Her eyes swept the room again—the canopied bed, the wardrobe, the writing desk tucked in the corner.
The writing desk.
She hadn't looked there yet.
Iris crossed the room. The desk was small, delicate, made of pale wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A quill sat in its holder. An inkwell, dried and cracked. A stack of blank paper, yellowed at the edges.
She opened the drawer.
Letters. A bundle of them, tied with Blue ribbon.
Her hand trembled as she pulled them out.
The handwriting on the top envelope was elegant. Slanted. The ink was faded but the words were still legible.
My dearest Sera.
Cassian. These were Cassian's letters.
She shouldn't read them. They weren't hers. They were private, intimate, the last remnants of a love story that ended in tragedy.
She untied the ribbon anyway.
My dearest Sera,
I cannot stop thinking about last night. The garden. The moonlight in your hair. The way you laughed when I tripped over that ridiculous hedge.
I am a fool. A complete and utter fool. But I am YOUR fool, and that makes all the difference.
Three more days until your father's birthday celebration. Three more days until I can hold your hand without scandal. I am counting the hours.
Forever yours,
Cassian
Iris set the letter down. Her chest ached.
She picked up another.
Sera,
I heard about the engagement this morning. I broke a vase. Then a chair. Then I nearly broke my hand against the wall before Marcus stopped me.
This cannot be happening. I won't let it happen. We'll run. Tonight, if you want. I have money saved. We can go to the Eastern provinces, to my mother's family. They'll hide us.
Please, Sera. Please don't give up. I know you're scared. I know he's powerful. But I love you more than I fear him.
Send word. Any word. I'll be waiting.
Yours, always and forever,
Cassian
The next letter was shorter.
Sera,
Why won't you answer me? I've sent four letters this week. Your maid says you won't see anyone. Your ladies say you're "indisposed".
Are you a prisoner? Is he keeping you locked away?
*If you can't write, find another way. Send your sister. Send anyone. Just let me know you're alive.
I can't lose you. I won't survive it.
Please.
Cassian
The final letter was dated three days before Iris woke in this body.
My love,
I heard what happened. The collapse. The physicians who can't explain it. The three days of sleep.
I tried to see you. They turned me away at the gate. Aldric's orders, they said. No visitors.
I don't know if you'll ever read this. I don't know if you're still in there, behind those closed eyes. But I need you to know:
I love you. I have loved you since we were children playing in your father's gardens. I will love you until I am dust and memory and nothing else.
If you wake up, find me. I'll be waiting.
If you don't...
I don't know how to finish that sentence. I don't know how to imagine a world without you in it.
Come back to me, Sera. Please come back.
Yours, in this life and whatever comes after,
Cassian
Iris set the letters down.
Her face was wet. When had she started crying?
Seraphina had been loved. Truly, desperately loved. And she'd died anyway. Died rather than marry Aldric. Died rather than betray the man who wrote these letters.
And now I'm here. Wearing her face. Living her life.
The guilt was suffocating.
What had Seraphina been like? The letters painted a picture.A woman who laughed in moonlit gardens, who inspired passionate declarations, who was brave enough to love even when it was forbidden.
Iris wished she could have known her. Wished she could apologize properly, face to face, soul to soul.
i didn't ask for this. I didn't choose to take your life. But I'm here now, and I don't know how to give it back.
She gathered the letters. Tied them with the ribbon again. Placed them back in the drawer.
Her fingers brushed something else. Paper, but different. Thicker. Folded small and shoved into the back corner like someone wanted to hide it.
She pulled it out.
Not a letter. A page torn from a book. The handwriting was different and messier, more frantic. Seraphina's own hand, maybe, in a moment of desperation.
Iris unfolded it.
I cannot do this.
I cannot marry him. I cannot be his. I cannot spend the rest of my life in this cage, smiling while he picks me apart piece by piece.*
Cassian begged me to run. I should have listened. Father begged me to fight. I should have been stronger.
But Father is dead now. They say it was his heart. I know it wasn't. I saw Aldric's face at the funeral. He wasn't grieving. He was satisfied.
He killed my father. I know it. I cannot prove it. I will never be able to prove it.
And now there is no one left to protect me.
Lily is too young. Cassian is too watched. Everyone who might have helped me has been removed, reassigned, silenced.
I am alone.
I keep thinking about the ribbon in my drawer. The blue one. How easy it would be. How quick.
I am a coward for even considering it. But I am more afraid of living as his wife than I am of dying.
Forgive me, Lily. Forgive me, Cassian.
I am not brave enough for this world.
Iris's hands shook so badly the paper rattled.
This was it. Seraphina's final note. Not a suicide letter meant to be found,just a private confession, a scream into the void, the last thoughts of a woman who saw no other way out.
He killed my father.
The words burned into her mind.
Aldric had murdered Seraphina's father. Removed the only person with enough power to stop the wedding. And then he'd watched his bride crumble under the weight of her grief and fear, watched her spiral toward the only escape she could imagine.
Had he known? Had he wanted this? Had he been waiting for her to break?
And now I'm here. In the aftermath. In the wreckage of everything he destroyed.
Iris folded the note. Placed it back in the drawer. Her movements were mechanical, careful, like handling something fragile.
She wasn't fragile. She couldn't afford to be.
Seraphina had been gentle. Soft. Made for moonlit gardens and stolen kisses and a life that was never going to be hers.
Iris was something else.
She had killed the man she loved with powers she couldn't control. Had made deals with entities that fed on suffering. Had clawed her way through multiple lifetimes trying to find her way back to him.
She was not gentle. She was not soft.
And she was not going to let Aldric win.
You took her father. You took her hope. You took her life.
You will not take me.
Iris stood at the window and watched the moon climb higher.
She didn't know how yet. Didn't have a plan. But she would find one.
Find a way to break the deal that had brought her here.
And she would make Damien remember.
Even if it took her another lifetime.
A sound.
Iris's head snapped up.
It came from the wall. Behind the tapestry. A scrape. A shuffle. Like someone moving through a hidden passage.
Her heart slammed into her throat.
She grabbed the candlestick from the vanity—heavy, iron, the closest thing to a weapon she had and pressed herself against the wall beside the tapestry.