It started with the tea.
A delicate cup, bone-white porcelain rimmed in gold. Served on a silver tray by a girl with eyes too wide and hands too steady.
Elara didn't touch it.
Not out of fear.
Out of instinct.
"When the house is on fire, do not waste time chasing rats."
Poison was a small thing in a palace this dangerous. If someone wanted her dead, they would do better than tea.
But it told her something valuable.
Someone had decided it was time.
The attempted poisoning earned no outcry. No investigation. In Moonspire, assassination was not a crime—it was a sport. A message.
Survive, and you earned respect.
Die, and you deserved your fate.
Caelum didn't even blink when she told him at breakfast.
"I warned you," he said, sipping his wine. "Here, loyalty is a mask. And masks are made to fall."
He handed her a scroll—an invitation, sealed with the crimson wax of House Morenji, one of the seven high noble families.
"A welcome feast," he said with a crooked grin. "They want to… 'honor' the bride."
"You're sending me?"
"I'm telling you to go. And to return alive."
Elara narrowed her eyes. "Why not attend with me?"
Caelum's grin deepened. "Because I want to see how well you dance with wolves when they all know your throat is bare."
The Morenji manor was carved from black granite, towering like a fang outside the palace walls. Their crest—a coiled serpent around a bleeding rose—fluttered in silver banners above the courtyard.
Elara arrived alone.
No guards. No prince. No veil.
Just her name, and the ring that bound her to the throne.
Inside, nobles waited like painted dolls—smiles frozen, eyes too bright. The hall shimmered with polished mirrors, perfumed with oils that clung to the lungs like honeyed smoke.
Lady Morenji herself approached, tall and graceful in a gown the color of fresh blood.
"Lady Elara," she purred. "Such a rare pleasure to meet the soul who once tried to kill my great-grandfather."
A murmur rippled through the room. Elara didn't flinch.
"And yet here I stand," she replied, cool as winter rain.
"The monkey may laugh at the leopard, but it builds its home in a tree."
The lady smiled wider.
They played games of pleasantry and poison for hours. Nobles asked veiled questions. They offered riddles as greetings. One even handed her a gift—a necklace of silver thorns—and whispered, "It once belonged to your past self. She wore it when she hanged my sister."
Elara placed it around her neck.
"Then may it remember the feel of my pulse," she said.
The room laughed.
But behind the laughter was fear.
They thought she would break. Bow. Apologize.
Instead, she stood taller.
Near midnight, the music began—a slow, pulsing beat of drums and strings.
The Widow's Dance.
An old tradition. Meant for the consorts of cursed princes. No one had danced it in decades.
"You'll dance, won't you, Lady Elara?" asked Lady Morenji, her smile razor-thin. "It is… customary."
Elara stepped onto the marble floor. A single moonbeam lit the space. Every eye turned toward her.
She closed her eyes.
Let the rhythm guide her.
One step. Then another.
Slow, precise. A predator's grace. She let her body remember what Lycaena must have known—ritual, movement, presence.
She didn't dance like a bride.
She danced like a ghost wearing royal skin.
"Even the corpse of the lion casts a long shadow."
When the final note fell, the silence was thunder.
No one clapped.
No one spoke.
They simply watched as she walked off the floor, her silver gown trailing behind her like smoke.
Lady Morenji met her at the exit.
"You survived," she said, with a look almost admiring.
"For now."
The noblewoman stepped closer, lowering her voice.
"Not everyone in this court fears the prince. But they will learn to fear his bride."
Back at the palace, Elara slipped through the corridors like shadow. She passed a hall of mirrors—glass reflecting fragments of herself in different lights.
And paused.
Because one reflection was smiling.
But she wasn't.
The reflection stepped forward.
Her eyes were wrong.
Black where they should be white. And where her heart should've reflected, there was only fire.
"Do not wrestle with ghosts—lest they remember who they were before death."
The glass cracked slightly.
Then cleared.
She backed away slowly, pulse hammering.
Lycaena's soul hadn't just returned.
It was watching.
And it wanted its body back.