A month later, the decree arrived. Minister Walerick received his reassignment to a remote provincial post, and by daybreak, the entire household began their departure from the capital.
As their carriage rattled through the cavernous archway of the city gates, Marina lifted the silk curtain with a trembling hand and looked back one last time.
The imperial capital, with all its grand illusions, was gradually swallowed by the distance. Those towering stone walls, which had once loomed over her life like immovable giants, shrank with every turn of the wheel until they were nothing more than a jagged, faint blur bleeding into the gray horizon.
In the quiet hum of the carriage, memory caught her. She remembered the first time she had ever laid eyes on Rhaegar.
Back then, she had been standing in the sun-drenched courtyard of the Duke Thorne's estate. The heavy gates had swung open, and he had walked in.
