Aria's POV
The email arrives at 6:47 AM, and I know—I just know—my life is about to end.
"Dr. Chen, we regret to inform you that your patent application has been denied due to prior submission by Dr. Marcus Webb..."
My hands shake so hard I drop my phone. Marcus. My fiancé. My business partner. The man who kissed me goodbye this morning and promised we'd celebrate our big investor meeting tonight.
He stole my engine design.
Five years of work. My revolutionary propulsion system that could change space travel forever. Gone. Registered in his name two weeks ago while I was visiting my dying mother.
I should call him. Scream. Demand answers.
Instead, I grab my laptop and find worse nightmares. Tech News Flash: "Female Engineer Exposed as Fraud—Marcus Webb Reveals Partner Stole His Research." There's my photo, twisted into something ugly. The article claims I've been stealing Marcus's ideas for years, riding his genius while contributing nothing.
My phone explodes with messages. Investors pulling out. Colleagues asking if it's true. My father—the man who chose my half-sister Sarah over me my entire life—sends one text: "I always knew you weren't good enough."
The apartment door opens.
"Aria! Baby, let me explain—" Marcus walks in, and my traitorous heart wants to believe he'll fix this.
Then Sarah follows him inside.
My half-sister. Perfect, beautiful Sarah who got Dad's love, his money, his pride. She's holding Marcus's hand.
"Surprise!" Sarah's smile is poisonous sugar. "Marcus and I have been together for eight months. We're engaged! Isn't that wonderful?"
The room spins. "Eight months? We've been together for three years—"
"Oh, Aria." Marcus looks at me like I'm stupid. "Did you really think I loved you? You were convenient. Smart enough to do the work, dumb enough to trust me with everything. Sarah's the one I actually want."
"The patent—"
"Is mine now. Along with the investor money, the company, and your reputation." He grins. "Face it, Aria. You lost. You always lose to me."
Sarah examines her nails. "Dad's thrilled, by the way. He always said I was the real Chen daughter. You were just Mom's mistake."
They leave me standing in the ruins of my life, laughing.
I don't remember getting in my car. Don't remember starting to drive. The highway blurs through my tears. My phone won't stop buzzing—news alerts, former friends asking if I'm really a fraud, strangers sending death threats.
The Nobel Prize committee emails. The nomination I worked toward for five years? Withdrawn due to "ethical concerns."
I'm thirty-two years old. My career is destroyed. The man I loved betrayed me. My family never wanted me. And the world thinks I'm a lying thief.
What's the point anymore?
The coastal highway stretches ahead, dark and wet from rain. The ocean crashes below the cliffs. It would be so easy to just... stop fighting.
My phone rings. Marcus. I answer without thinking.
"Aria! Thank God. Listen, I need you to sign these papers saying you were my assistant, not partner. It'll make the legal stuff cleaner—"
"You want me to help you?"
"Don't be dramatic. Sign the papers, keep quiet, and I'll make sure you get a small payout. Twenty thousand. That's generous considering you tried to steal from me—"
Something snaps inside my chest.
"I gave you everything," I whisper. "My ideas. My trust. My heart. And you took it all like I was nothing."
"Because you ARE nothing, Aria. You always were. Sarah figured that out years ago. Even your own mother didn't—"
I throw the phone.
The car swerves.
Headlights blind me—a semi-truck, horn screaming.
I spin the wheel. Too late. The guardrail explodes. Suddenly I'm flying, the car flipping through darkness. Glass shatters. Metal screams. The ocean rushes up to swallow me.
Cold. So cold.
Water fills my lungs. My seatbelt traps me. I claw at it, but my fingers are numb.
This is how I die. Betrayed and broken and alone.
The darkness takes me.
Pain.
Sharp, sudden, everywhere.
I gasp and my lungs fill with air—not water. Air.
My eyes fly open. I'm staring at a stone ceiling. Torches flicker on walls. The smell is wrong—smoke and rot and unwashed bodies.
This isn't a hospital.
I try to sit up. Metal chains rattle. I'm wearing a rough brown dress, not my clothes. My hands look wrong—smaller, softer, someone else's hands.
A woman's scream echoes through stone corridors. Someone shouts in words I shouldn't understand but somehow do: "Silence, murderess!"
Murderess?
Footsteps approach. A guard appears—actual armor, actual sword—and sneers at me. "Awake finally, Lady Aria? Good. His Highness wants you alert when you burn."
"Burn?" My voice comes out different. Higher. Terrified.
"For murdering Princess Elara with poison, you evil witch." He spits at my feet. "The execution's at dawn. Three hours. Better pray to whatever demon gave you that poison."
He leaves me in the dark.
I scramble to a cracked mirror on the wall. The face staring back isn't mine. She's younger—maybe twenty-three. Hauntingly beautiful with dark hair and strange amber eyes. Thin from starvation. Bruises everywhere.
Memories slam into my brain that aren't mine. Lady Aria of House Thornwell. Disgraced noblewoman. Accused of poisoning Crown Prince Cassian's betrothed. The evidence is clear—everyone saw her deliver the wine. The Princess drank it and died screaming, bleeding from her eyes.
This girl is innocent. Someone set her up.
But in three hours, she'll burn alive anyway.
No. NO. I just died escaping one nightmare. I'm not dying in another.
My engineer brain starts working through the panic. The poison was hemlock based on symptoms. But hemlock tastes bitter—how did the Princess drink deeply? Someone masked it. Someone with chemistry knowledge this medieval world shouldn't have.
The door crashes open.
Six guards enter. "Time to meet your judge, murderess. Crown Prince Cassian will hear your final words before you burn. Pray he makes it quick."
They drag me through dark corridors while I frantically think. One chance. I get one chance to convince a medieval prince to investigate using logic this world doesn't know yet.
If I fail, I burn.
We emerge into blinding sunlight—a massive courtyard packed with thousands of people screaming for blood. They throw rotting food. Call me witch. Monster. Murderer.
At the center, on a throne of black stone, sits the most terrifying man I've ever seen.
Crown Prince Cassian Blackthorn rises like Death himself—tall, powerful, devastatingly handsome with black hair and eyes like winter storms. His face could be carved from ice. When he looks at me, I feel his hatred like a physical blow.
"Lady Aria of House Thornwell." His voice could freeze fire. "You murdered the woman I was to marry. My betrothed. My future queen. She died in agony because of your jealous poison."
The crowd roars approval.
Cassian draws his sword. The blade catches sunlight like lightning.
"Before you burn, I will hear your confession. Speak your final words, murderess. Tell me why you destroyed the only light in my dark world."
His eyes promise that my death will not be quick.
Every instinct screams to beg for mercy. But I've been broken before. I've been betrayed before. And I survived by being smarter than my enemies.
Time to see if a medieval prince can handle twenty-first-century logic.
I lift my chin and meet those deadly eyes.
"I'm innocent," I say clearly. "And I can prove it. But only if you're smart enough to listen."
The crowd goes silent.
Cassian's expression doesn't change, but something flickers in those cold eyes. Surprise maybe. Or fury.
He takes one step toward me, sword still drawn.
"You dare?" His whisper is more terrifying than his shout. "You dare claim innocence when the entire kingdom witnessed your crime?"
"I dare claim truth," I say, heart hammering. "Princess Elara died of hemlock poisoning based on the symptoms—paralysis, bloody tears, convulsions. But hemlock tastes so bitter that animals won't eat it. Yet witnesses said the Princess praised the wine's sweetness and drank deeply. Someone masked the poison with honey or spices. Someone with access to your medicine rooms and knowledge of chemistry."
I lock eyes with this prince who holds my life in his hands.
"I'm a minor noblewoman with no resources and no knowledge of poisons. But I can prove who really killed your Princess. Give me three days to investigate. If I'm wrong, you can burn me slowly. But if I'm right..."
I pause, letting the words hang.
"If I'm right, you'll know you almost executed an innocent woman while your fiancée's real murderer watches you do their dirty work."
Cassian stares at me for an eternity. The sword doesn't lower. His jaw clenches so hard I hear teeth grinding.
The entire kingdom holds its breath.
Finally, he speaks.
"Three days. Brother Thomas will supervise your investigation. But know this, Lady Aria—if you fail, if you try to escape, if you waste even one second of my time... I will personally light the fire that burns you. And I will watch until there's nothing left but ash."
He sheathes his sword with a sound like a death sentence.
"Take her to the scholar's tower. Chain her. Guard her. Let her prove her innocence."
His smile is colder than winter.
"Or prove her guilt even further."
As guards drag me away, I catch Cassian's final whisper to his captain:
"She'll fail. They always do. And when she does, I want her to burn slowly enough to regret every word she just spoke."
The door slams behind me.
I have seventy-two hours to solve a murder in a world that doesn't understand forensics.
And if I fail, the man with ice in his veins will watch me die screaming.
But here's what Prince Cassian doesn't know yet:
I've already been destroyed once by a man I trusted.
I'm not letting it happen again.
Even if I have to revolutionize this entire backward kingdom to survive.