The sun hung in the sky like a gilded mockery. I hated its warmth. It was a false comfort, a ghost of a feeling that belonged to another life, to memories of my mother's lap in this very garden, the scent of her perfume mingling with blooming jasmine.
Now, the perfume was only on the letters of state she no longer had time to write to me. The warmth was just an empty sensation on skin that felt too thin, too easily chilled by loneliness.
I was a princess of tapestries and titles, and utterly alone. A father entombed in a sickroom, a myth whispered by physicians. A mother who belonged to a nation before she belonged to me. And a brother—a ghost in the adjacent wing, a story told in hushed, complicated tones.
We shared a palace, a name, a cursed legacy, but not a single breath in the same room. I had no family. I had their magnificent, crushing reputations.
From the lips of court ladies, I learned of them: my father, the Emperor whose will was law at an age when other men are still boys; my mother, the only soul in the empire who could stand eye-to-eye with such a force. And my brother, the Crown Prince. The replacement heir, they never said but always meant who possessed the same formidable mind, the same chilling competence. They were legends woven from power and steel.
And I? I was the afterthought. The true born heir born from a miracle that broke a curse. The court watched me with hungry, fearful eyes. They saw either an exception to be exalted or a destroyer to be contained. A vessel for their hope or their doom.
But my childish heart knew nothing of destiny. It only knew a hollow, aching jealousy. I saw the daughters of lesser lords, hands clasped in their mothers', laughter shared with siblings in sun-dappled courtyards. They had homes. A desperate, clawing want lived in my chest, not to be what they named me, but to claim something for myself. To have something that was not just given by title, but earned by belonging. The need was a bitter vine, tightening around my ribs.
So, when the summons finally came, after fourteen rejections—it did not bring excitement. It bred a cold, slick confusion. Why now? Had I merely worn him down? Was I an irritation to be managed, a duty to be dispatched like my mother's fleeting, formal dinners?
The ladies-in-waiting descended, transforming me from a lonely girl into a state ornament. Layers of silk, a prison of brocade. Jewels were pinned to my hair, cold against my scalp; gems hung at my throat, their weight a constant reminder. It all itched. It was all a disguise.
"You cannot be dull before the Crown Prince, Your royal highness!"
They chided, fastening another clasp.
"It is etiquette."
Etiquette was just another word for the performance of my life.
The doors to the solar opened. My name was announced—Princess Ciaza Von Raprohenten—a string of sounds that felt less mine than ever.
And there he was.
His silhouette was a dark stroke against the sunlit window, taller than I had imagined. His hands were clasped behind his back with the severe patience of a scholar or a general. My heart, that foolish, hopeful thing, stammered.
Then he turned.
The brother of my daydreams, a fuzzy, friendly figment dissolved into smoke. This was no dream. This was a stark, arresting reality.
His hair was the black of a starless night, not the sun-kissed gold of our family. His eyes were not the warm hazel of my mother or the sharp blue of my father's portraits. They were a deep, unsettling brown, so dark they seemed almost black, absorbing the light rather than reflecting it. He was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a carved obsidian dagger, sharp, cold, and utterly foreign.
Every assumption, every childish fantasy, shattered in that gaze.
This was Xane Von Raprohenten. The Crown Prince. The boy who was brought to replace me. The ghost who was now, irrevocably, my flesh-and-blood reality.