The hall stayed silent after Adrian's command failed.

He looked at me as if my stillness had betrayed him. It hadn't. My body had simply stopped obeying.

I rested my wrists on the wheelchair arms. The red restraint marks were bright enough to see from the

The royal medic opened the bottle the next morning.

Not me. Not Nora. Not Cassian.

The court recorder photographed the seal and batch number first, then watched the medic break it. I sat in the east guest suite with my legs elevated and tried not to hate how much

By breakfast, half of Ironclad had seen the message. By noon, there were three versions.

In one, I had invented my royal blood after Adrian rejected me. In another, Cassian had arrived because I had been sleeping with him before the fire. The third was the ugliest beca