They said Seraphine of House Aurelian was born a villainess. The truth was, she was built.
She was a project, not a person. Since she was five, she had been measured by the angle of her chin and the silence of her stride. While other children scraped their knees, Seraphine balanced encyclopedias on her head until her neck cramped. Her father didn't look at her with love; he looked at her like a contractor inspecting a bridge—a bridge to the throne.
"Perfection, Seraphine," he would say, his grip too tight on her shoulder. "A Queen is a statue. Statues don't cry. Statues don't want."
So she turned herself into stone. She became the perfect fiancée for Crown Prince Julian. She did everything right. She followed every rule.
Then came the Saintess, who followed none of them.
The Saintess didn't know history. She didn't know etiquette. She tripped over her own feet and laughed about it, and the Empire swooned. In a month, Seraphine's ten years of agonizing discipline were dismissed as "arrogance," while the Saintess's incompetence was hailed as "charm."
Panic had set in like a rot. Seraphine saw her future—the only thing she was good for—slipping through her fingers.
At first, it was just words. Sharp, cutting remarks in the tea salon, designed to put the girl in her place. Then, it was a tripped foot in the hallway. A ruined dress. Petty cruelties born of terror. But the Saintess only cried those pretty, crystal tears, and Julian drifted further away.
Desperation makes monsters of us all.
Yesterday, Seraphine had made her choice. She had slipped a vial of Midnight Bane into the Saintess's wine. It was a coward's move. A villain's move.
But she had failed. The cup was spilled, the plan botched, and the whispers began to swirl.
Fleeing the accusing eyes of the court, Seraphine had run to the Great Temple. Standing before the towering ivory Goddess, something inside her finally snapped.
"Is this your will?" she hissed, her voice trembling. She climbed the dais—a sacrilege in itself—and glared at the statue. "If you are the Goddess of Justice, you are blind. You chose a clumsy fool over a daughter of the founding blood. If you have a heart, it is rotten."
She stormed out, her pride the only thing holding her upright, terrifyingly aware that the guards would be coming for her soon.
But the gods, it seemed, got to her first.
That night, her restless sleep dissolved into blinding white light. A voice, heavy as a mountain, crushed her into the mattress. You, who were given beauty and wealth, chose malice. You sought to poison the innocent to keep your crown. Since your heart is twisted with thorns, so shall you be.
Seraphine woke up screaming.
The pain was searing, like ink boiling beneath her skin. She scrambled to the mirror by the dying light of the hearth.
A black, thorny rose had erupted on her collarbone. It looked wet, like fresh tar, sending jagged vines crawling up her throat, constricting her windpipe, and blooming across her left cheek.
"No... please, no..." She clawed at her face, fingernails digging into the unnatural marks.
BANG.
The door burst open.
"Seraphine!" Crown Prince Julian stormed in. He wasn't alone; the Royal Guards flooded the room behind him. But Julian looked ready to execute her himself.
"We found the vial, Seraphine! We found the maid who bought it for you!" he roared, his hand on the hilt of his sword. "Attempted murder? Of the Saintess? You have crossed the—"
He stopped.
The righteous anger drained from his face, replaced by a look of sheer revulsion. He stared at the black veins pulsing on her cheek.
"It's true," he whispered, stepping back. "The Goddess has judged you before I could."
"Julian, please, it burns!" she sobbed, reaching for him, forgetting the poison, forgetting the dignity, just wanting the pain to stop.
"Do not touch me!" He recoiled as if she were infectious. "You tried to kill her. And now... look at you. You are a monster inside and out."
He signaled the guards. "Drag her out. Strip her of the Aurelian crest. She is no longer a noble. She is a criminal and a blight upon this Empire."
She was dragged by her hair through the halls she used to walk as a future Queen. Tossed into an iron cage. Paraded through the streets as the sun rose.
"Murderer!"
A rotten tomato exploded against her ear. The juice dripped down her neck, mixing with the sweat and the throbbing heat of the curse.
"She tried to poison our Saintess!" a woman screamed. "Witch! Villainess!"
Seraphine huddled in the filth of the carriage floor. The people she had looked down on were now spitting on her. The people she was supposed to rule wanted her dead.
At the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the carriage stopped. Julian looked down at her, his face cold.
"You wanted her life, Seraphine. Now you lose yours. Die in the dark. It's where you belong."
The iron gates slammed shut. Alone in the silence, Seraphine looked into a muddy puddle. The girl staring back was broken, marked by the black thorns of a killer, her emerald eye wide with the realization that her story was over.