Seraphina's POV
A rotten tomato explodes against the iron bars of my cage, splattering my face with pulp and seeds.
Traitor! someone screams from the crowd.
Whore!
Hope the Shadow Duke kills you slow!
I don't flinch anymore. After three weeks of this, I've learned not to react. Reacting only encourages them.
The prison wagon rolls through another town—the sixth? Seventh? I've lost count. They all blur together now: angry faces, thrown garbage, children taught to hate me before they even know my name.
Commander Helena sits on the driver's seat, laughing at every insult hurled my way.
Did you hear that one? she calls back to me. They said they hope you rot from the inside out. Creative, these villagers.
I wipe tomato from my cheek with my chained hands and say nothing.
Silence is my only weapon now.
The wagon stops in the town square for Helena's daily ritual—displaying me like a circus animal so everyone can see what happens to traitors. A soldier unlocks my cage and drags me out by my arm. My legs nearly buckle. Three weeks of sitting in cramped iron bars have made my muscles weak.
Present the prisoner! Helena commands.
The soldier forces me to my knees on the cobblestones. A crowd gathers, eager for entertainment.
Helena stands over me, voice ringing clear. This is Lady Seraphina Ashcroft—traitor to the Golden Throne! She sold our secrets to the Shadow Duke, betrayed Crown Prince Lucian on their wedding day, and now she's being delivered to her new husband as the criminal bride she deserves to be!
The crowd jeers. Someone spits at my feet.
A little boy, no older than seven, picks up a stone.
Don't, his mother warns, but the hatred in her eyes says she wants him to throw it.
The boy hesitates, looking between me and his mother.
I meet his eyes and see confusion there. He doesn't really understand why he should hate me. He's just copying the adults.
It's all right, I say quietly to him. You don't have to hurt me if you don't want to.
His hand drops. The stone falls to the ground.
Helena's boot connects with my shoulder, knocking me sideways. Don't speak to civilians, traitor. You don't deserve to.
I taste blood again—I've tasted it so often these past weeks, I barely notice anymore.
They let the crowd mock me for an hour before throwing me back in the cage. The wagon rolls on toward the Shadow Marches, toward a man called a monster, toward whatever fate awaits me there.
But something changed during these three weeks.
I stopped crying around day five. Tears are useless. They don't prove innocence. They don't change minds. They just make me weak.
So I focused on thinking instead.
The letters that destroyed me were perfect forgeries, my handwriting, my seal, my paper. Only someone who knew me intimately could fake them so well. Someone who'd watched me write countless times.
Celeste.
Father had the power and connections to bribe witnesses, pay servants to lie, orchestrate the timing.
But Lucian, why would he betray me? What did he gain by letting this happen?
The answer came to me on day nine, during a particularly brutal display where Helena made me stand in the rain for two hours while townspeople shouted insults.
Lucian gets an excuse for war.
He's always wanted to crush the Shadow Marches, I've heard him talk about it in council meetings. The Shadow Duke controls territory rich with resources: silver mines, fertile farmland, lumber forests. But attacking without cause would make Lucian look like a tyrant.
Sending his traitorous bride to marry the Shadow Duke solves everything. It gives him a reason to invade whenever he wants. Rescuing me becomes a noble cause instead of naked aggression.
I'm not just a discarded fiancée.
I'm a future war justification.
The realization made me stop seeing myself as a victim and start seeing myself as a chess piece—one that's still on the board, still in play.
Drink, a soldier grunts, shoving a water skin through the bars.
I drink mechanically. The water tastes like rust, but it keeps me alive. That's what matters now—staying alive long enough to understand the full scope of what was done to me, and why.
Commander Helena rides closer to my cage as sunset paints the sky orange and red.
We'll reach the Shadow Marches tomorrow, she announces with cruel satisfaction. I can't wait to see your face when you meet your new husband. They say Duke Cassian Nightveil is scarred from battle, cold as winter ice, and enjoys making his enemies suffer. Perfect match for a traitor like you.
Tell me about him, I say.
Helena blinks, surprised I'm speaking. I rarely do anymore.
Why? Planning to seduce him? She laughs. Good luck. They say he hates the Golden Court more than anything in the world. Hates our wealth, our power, our nobles. You represent everything he despises.
So why would he accept this marriage?
Because you're a humiliation to us, Helena says simply. Taking you proves we're weak enough to give him our cast-off princess. It's a power move. He'll probably lock you in a tower and forget you exist.
She rides ahead again, but I turn her words over in my mind.
The Shadow Duke hates the Golden Court. Hates everything they represent.
Which means he might hate the people who sent me here more than he hates me.
It's not much, but it's a thread of hope in the darkness.
That night, we camp in a clearing. Helena doesn't bother setting a guard on my cage—where would I run? My chains are locked, I'm in the middle of nowhere, and I don't know how to survive in the wilderness.
But I don't sleep. Instead, I review everything I know:
Celeste forged the letters. Father orchestrated the witnesses. Lucian allowed it all to happen. Together, they destroyed me.
The question is: did they work together from the beginning, or did Celeste manipulate them both?
I need to know. I need to understand every detail of the conspiracy that stole my life.
And the only way to do that is to survive long enough to investigate from inside enemy territory.
The Shadow Duke might be a monster. He might kill me on sight.
Or he might be the only person in this empire who has nothing to gain by keeping me ignorant and powerless.
The morning of day twenty-one dawns cold and gray.
Wake up, traitor, Helena kicks my cage. Today's your wedding day. Again.
The wagon rolls forward, and the landscape changes. The golden fields of the central empire give way to darker soil, twisted trees, and a sky that seems heavier somehow.
We're in the Shadow Marches now.
Helena's soldiers grow tense, hands on weapons. They're in enemy territory, and they know it.
Around midday, we crest a hill.
And I see it.
The Obsidian Keep rises from the valley like a knife carved from black stone. It's massive—walls that could withstand a siege, towers that pierce the clouds, gates that look like they've never been breached.
This is where the monster lives.
This is my new prison.
My heart pounds, but I force myself to breathe steady. I'm not the scared bride who knelt in the Golden Cathedral anymore. That girl died somewhere in these three weeks of humiliation.
The girl in this cage is someone new. Someone harder. Someone who understands that survival requires intelligence, not tears.
The wagon rolls down the hill toward the fortress. As we approach the gates, I see soldiers on the walls—wearing black armor instead of gold, watching us with hostile eyes.
We're not welcome here.
Helena pulls the wagon to a stop before the massive gates and calls out: Commander Helena Ironfist of the Golden Army, here by imperial decree to deliver Lady Seraphina Ashcroft as a peace offering to Duke Cassian Nightveil!
The gates don't open.
For a long moment, nothing happens. Helena's soldiers shift nervously.
Then a voice echoes from the walls—male, deep, laced with contempt: The Golden Court's trash isn't welcome in the Shadow Marches. Take it back.
This is a direct order from the Emperor, Helena shouts. You must accept the marriage contract.
Must we? The voice sounds amused now. And what will the Emperor do if we refuse? Start a war he can't win?
Silence stretches. I can see Helena's jaw clenching.
The Duke agreed to this arrangement, she finally says.
Did he? Another pause. Very well. Leave the prisoner outside the gates. My men will retrieve her. Then leave our territory before we decide Golden soldiers make good target practice.
Helena looks furious, but she's outnumbered here. She gestures to her soldiers.
They unlock my cage and drag me out. My legs barely hold me after weeks of confinement. They march me to a spot twenty feet from the gates and unlock my chains.
For the first time in three weeks, my wrists are free.
Helena grabs my arm, squeezing hard enough to bruise. The Shadow Duke will make you suffer worse than anything we did. And when Crown Prince Lucian eventually comes to rescue you, I hope you remember that you brought this on yourself.
Lucian isn't coming to rescue me, I say clearly. He never planned to.
Something flickers in Helena's eyes—doubt, maybe, or curiosity—but then her mask of cruelty slams back into place.
She shoves me hard. I stumble and fall to my knees in the dirt.
Enjoy your new hell, traitor.
Helena and her soldiers mount their horses and ride away fast, leaving me kneeling outside the gates of the Obsidian Keep.
Alone.
For several minutes, nothing happens. I stay on my knees, too exhausted to stand, staring at the massive black gates.
Then, with a sound like grinding bones, they begin to open.
A man walks through.
He's tall, taller than Lucian, with dark hair that catches the weak sunlight. He wears black leather armor like his soldiers, but there's no mistaking who he is. Authority radiates from him like heat from a fire.
Duke Cassian Nightveil. The Shadow Duke. The monster.
He stops a few feet away and looks down at me with eyes the color of silver ice.
So, he says, voice cold enough to freeze blood. You're the Golden Court's garbage they've dumped on my doorstep. The traitor bride they think will humiliate me by accepting.
I force myself to look up at him, meeting those silver eyes even though my entire body is screaming to run.
He's not what I expected. The propaganda painted him as old and scarred and ugly. But the man standing over me is maybe thirty at most, with sharp aristocratic features and only a single scar cutting across his left cheekbone. He's handsome in a dangerous way, like a sword—beautiful but deadly.
I'm not a traitor, I say, my voice hoarse from disuse.
His eyebrow arches. No? The entire empire says otherwise.
The entire empire is wrong.
And why should I believe you?
Because I have nothing left to lose by telling the truth, I say. And because we both know the Golden Court is built on lies.
For a long moment, he just stares at me. I can't read his expression, it's like looking at a frozen lake, all surface and no depth.
Then he reaches down.
I tense, expecting violence.
Instead, he grabs my arm and hauls me to my feet with surprising gentleness.
Welcome to the Shadow Marches, Lady Seraphina, he says, and his smile is sharp as broken glass. Your new husband is going to make your life very, very complicated.
He turns and walks back toward the gates, still holding my arm.
And as the Obsidian Keep swallows us both in shadow, I realize something terrifying:
I have no idea if I've just been rescued or if I've walked straight into something far worse than anything the Golden Court could have done to me.