POV: Seraphine Vale
Morning comes gray and cold.
Seraphine has not slept. She lay awake through the entire night, listening to the silence of the palace pressing down on her like a weight. Once, hours before dawn, she heard footsteps in the corridor outside her room. Then voices, too muffled to understand. Then nothing again. Just the sound of her own breathing and the slow tick of a clock somewhere distant.
The guards never left their posts.
She tried the door once more near midnight, just to confirm what she already knew. It was locked. It would remain locked. And the two soldiers standing outside — visible through the small gap under the door frame — would not let her pass even if it opened.
When sunlight finally creeps through the window, Seraphine feels something shift inside her chest. Desperation settles into something sharper. Something colder. Something that looks a lot like strategy.
A knock sounds at the door.
"My lady?" A young servant girl opens it, careful and nervous. "The king requests your presence in his study. Immediately."
Seraphine stands without hesitation. She smooths the white gown she wore last night — it is wrinkled now, stained with champagne, but there is nothing to be done about it. Looking disheveled might actually work in her favor. It will remind him that she is not his guest voluntarily. That she is trapped. That whatever he wants from her is something she would never choose to give.
The walk through the palace corridors is longer than she expects.
They pass through halls lined with paintings of previous kings. Stone statues of warriors and saints stand in alcoves. Everything is designed to remind you that you are walking through the heart of power, through the home of a man who can end your life with a word. Seraphine keeps her breathing steady. She keeps her head up. She will not arrive at his study looking broken.
When they reach the study, the servant girl bows and leaves. Seraphine is alone with two guards who stand outside a heavy wooden door. One of them knocks.
"Enter," comes a voice from inside. Cool. Measured. The voice of a man who has never had to raise it to make himself heard.
The study is larger than her family's entire manor house.
Darian Ashvael sits behind a desk that seems designed to establish distance between himself and anyone who approaches it. He does not look up from the papers in front of him. He does not offer her a chair. He simply continues reading for a long moment — long enough that Seraphine understands this is deliberate. This is a test of her patience. Of her willingness to stand and wait while he ignores her.
She waits anyway. Standing. Quiet. Refusing to fidget or break.
Finally, he sets down his pen.
His dark eyes lift to meet hers, and something in her chest clenches. He looks different in daylight. Less like a predator and more like a man. But somehow that is worse. A predator you expect to be dangerous. A man can be cruel in ways that are far more complex.
"Lady Seraphine," he says. His voice carries no warmth, no coldness — just absolute neutrality. "Your father has been cooperating with foreign powers seeking to destabilize the empire. You will have noticed this, given that you were being delivered to them last night."
It is not a question. Seraphine stands very still.
"The names of those men. The places they meet. The specifics of what they want. You will tell me all of it." He leans back in his chair. "You have thirty days to provide complete intelligence. Every name. Every meeting place. Every detail. After thirty days, you are free to leave the palace."
She should feel relief at this. Thirty days is survivable. Thirty days and she can disappear into the empire. Thirty days and she escapes whatever this is.
But Seraphine's mind is already calculating.
"And if I refuse?" she asks carefully. "What if I decide the information is worth more than my freedom?"
Something moves through his expression. A flicker of something that might be respect. Or amusement. Or danger. Before she can identify it, his face is controlled again.
"You will not refuse," he says. His tone is absolute. Not threatening. Just certain. The kind of certainty that comes from understanding people better than they understand themselves. "Because you have no other choice. Your father has betrayed you. The foreign powers will execute you if they ever get another chance. And every lord in this empire will assume you are guilty by association. You have nowhere to go. No one to protect you. No way to survive except through me."
The words land like stones in still water.
Seraphine wants to argue. Wants to tell him he is wrong. But she cannot, because he is not wrong. She is trapped. Not by locks and guards — though those exist — but by circumstance. By betrayal. By the simple fact that a girl with no power has been abandoned by everyone who might have saved her.
Except him.
"If I agree," she says slowly, "I need assurance. Your word as king that after thirty days, I will be released unharmed. With enough money to start again somewhere far from here."
He studies her for a long moment. Then he does something unexpected. He stands. He walks around the desk. He stops in front of her, and the space between them becomes charged with something she cannot name. His eyes move over her face with that same predatory attention from the ballroom.
"You should be begging," he says quietly. "Instead, you are negotiating."
"I am a realist," she replies. Her voice does not waver. "Begging changes nothing. But negotiation — negotiation might keep us both honest."
A smile touches the corner of his mouth. Not a full smile. Just the ghost of one. But it is there, and it transforms his entire face for just a moment before he controls it back to coldness.
"You have remarkable courage for a girl with nothing," he observes. "I wonder if you will still have it in three weeks, or if this palace will have taught you fear."
He returns to his desk and picks up his pen. The dismissal is clear.
"You are free to move through the palace during daylight hours," he continues. "There are libraries, gardens, receiving rooms. You will attend court functions as my guest. You will smile and perform normalcy. And you will bring me the names, the places, and the details of the foreign plot. All of it."
Seraphine wants to ask questions. Wants to know how she is supposed to gather information from the palace. Wants to understand the rules of this game. But something in his expression tells her that this conversation is finished.
"I accept your terms, Your Majesty," she says formally.
"Good." He picks up his pen again, dismissing her without a word. "Captain Solace will show you to your quarters. A proper wardrobe is being prepared. You will need it for tonight's dinner."
She turns to leave, then hesitates at the door. There is one more thing she needs to know.
"The screaming I heard last night," she says quietly. "In the locked corridor. What was that?"
His pen stops moving. For just a moment, something dark flashes across his face. Something that looks like pain, carefully controlled and locked away.
"Nothing that concerns you," he says coldly. "And you will not venture near that corridor again. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Good. Then we have a deal, Lady Seraphine." He does not look up from his papers. "You have thirty days to earn your freedom. I suggest you not waste them."
Seraphine leaves the study with her heart hammering in her chest.
As she walks down the corridor with Captain Solace, one thought repeats in her mind with absolute clarity: Thirty days.
Thirty days in a palace full of secrets. Thirty days serving a king who keeps prisoners somewhere in the depths of this place. Thirty days pretending to be something she is not while trying to uncover intelligence from people who are far more experienced at lying than she is.
Thirty days, and she will be free.
Or thirty days, and she will disappear into whatever darkness lives behind those locked doors, just like whoever was screaming in the night.
Either way, the clock has started ticking.