Seven days.
That was how long I had before a cursed prince became a monster forever and my entire bloodline died with him.
Naturally, the council expected me to accept this calmly.
I did not.
"I want to go home."
My voice sounded embarrassingly small in the enormous council chamber, but anger burned beneath it, hot enough to keep the fear from swallowing me whole.
The silver-haired woman laughed.
"Home? Child, you have no idea what home means to your bloodline."
"I know exactly what it means to me. It means somewhere I can leave without asking a cursed prince for permission."
A few council members exchanged glances.
Lucien turned toward me, his expression unreadable. Only the flex of his fingers betrayed the strain beneath it.
"Rose."
"No. You don't get to say my name in that voice and expect me to behave."
His eyebrows lifted.
For sixteen years, I had swallowed my anger because speaking up only made life harder. My father called me ungrateful. My mother called me difficult. Now a prince was doing the same thing without opening his mouth.
Powerful people clearly disliked being challenged.
The silver-haired woman stepped forward.
"You cannot leave this estate."
"Watch me."
"The curse will kill you."
"Then perhaps you should have considered that before buying me!"
The chamber fell silent.
The words had come out sharper than I intended, but I refused to take them back. If they wanted me frightened and obedient, they had chosen the wrong girl.
Lucien's jaw tightened. His hand closed into a fist.
For one glorious second, I thought I had angered him enough to reveal something useful.
Instead, he turned to the council.
"Everyone out."
The woman stiffened. "You cannot dismiss us."
"I am the prince."
"And you are losing control of the beast."
His eyes flashed gold.
Every candle went out.
A deep growl vibrated through the walls. Several council members stumbled backward, while the silver-haired woman remained still, though her hand trembled beside her robes.
My anger faltered.
The room seemed to shrink around me. I had wanted the truth, had demanded it with all the courage I could gather, but the creature beneath Lucien's skin was no longer an argument or a threat whispered by strangers. It was here. It was listening.
Lucien took one step toward her, claws barely contained beneath his skin.
"Leave."
This time, nobody argued.
The council hurried away. When the doors closed, the candles reignited.
Lucien stood perfectly still, forcing something savage back into its cage. A thin crescent of blood marked his palm where his claws had broken the skin.
I stared at him, my fear twisting into anger again because anger was easier to hold.
"Was that supposed to impress me?"
He turned his head.
"Would you prefer I had let them tear you apart?"
"No. I'd prefer you told me the truth before dragging me into a room full of people discussing my death."
Something flickered across his face.
Regret, perhaps. Or irritation. With Lucien, the two seemed annoyingly similar.
"You are right," he said.
I blinked. "What?"
"You heard me."
"I did. I just wasn't expecting you to admit it."
His gaze dropped to the blood in his palm before he curled his fingers over it.
"Don't become accustomed to it."
There he was. The insufferable prince had returned.
But the sight of his blood stayed with me. So did the way he had looked at the council, as if he feared what he might do next.
He walked toward the doors, but I remained where I was.
"Where are you going?"
"To find out why the frost has returned."
I glanced at the empty chair. Ice had spread across the floor, stopping just short of my shoes in a crooked pattern resembling a hand reaching toward me.
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know."
It was the first time he had admitted ignorance without hiding it. Somehow, that frightened me more than his anger. If Lucien did not know what was happening, then neither did anyone else.
He opened the door.
"Alistair will take you to your room. Stay there."
I folded my arms.
"You should stop giving me instructions. I'm developing an allergy."
For a moment, the corner of his mouth twitched.
Then he left.
I watched the door close behind him.
Seven days.
Fear told me to hide. Anger told me to run. Neither would save me.
I had no intention of spending those seven days waiting for somebody else to decide my fate.
---
By the time I returned to my room, my anger had settled into determination. It was still there, simmering beneath my fear, but now it had somewhere to go.
Elena waited beside the window with a fresh tray of food.
"You look terrible," she said.
"Thank you. Your kindness is a blessing."
"I meant you look frightened."
"I've had a difficult morning."
She placed the tray on the table.
"Did the council tell you about the ritual?"
I nodded.
"And the seven days?"
Another nod.
Elena's face tightened.
"Then things are worse than I thought."
I sat on the bed.
"Can someone in this mansion explain something without making it sound like the beginning of my funeral?"
She hesitated.
"The council believes the ritual will save the prince. But old stories say the first bargain was never meant to save him."
I straightened.
"What was it meant to do?"
"I don't know."
"Of course you don't."
"I'm a servant, Rose, not an ancient book."
Despite everything, I almost smiled.
Then I remembered something.
"My father helped my mother escape from this place."
Elena's expression changed.
"Who told you that?"
"Lucien."
She glanced toward the door.
"Then your father knows more than he's admitting."
A bitter laugh escaped me.
"My father has spent my entire life pretending I barely exist. I doubt he suddenly became a hero because my mother needed help."
"People can do terrible things for complicated reasons."
"That's what people say when they don't want to call terrible things terrible."
Elena didn't answer.
I crossed to my suitcase and pulled out the old family photograph. My mother stood in the center, holding Jacinta, while my father looked younger and almost pleasant.
Something about my mother's necklace caught my attention.
It was the same gold necklace she had given me before I left home, but in the photograph the pendant looked like a tiny key.
I pulled out my own necklace. Its pendant was smooth and oval, but when I turned it over, my fingernail caught on a narrow seam.
"Elena," I whispered. "Can you help me open this?"
She hurried over. Together, we examined the pendant until Elena pressed the raised edge with a hairpin.
Click.
The pendant opened.
Inside was a folded scrap of paper barely large enough to cover my fingernail.
Three words were written in faded ink.
Beneath the roses.
I stared at the message.
"The garden," Elena whispered.
"What?"
"The white roses. They're older than the mansion's eastern wing. Some servants say the original family buried things beneath them."
I folded the paper.
For the first time since arriving at the estate, I had found something that belonged to me.
Not a rule or a threat.
A clue.
My mother had left it for me.
The fear remained, cold and insistent, but beneath it something stronger began to take shape. If my mother had hidden a message, she had expected me to need it. That meant I was not as helpless as everyone here wanted me to believe.
---
We waited until nightfall.
Elena brought a lantern, a small shovel, and a thick coat. I told her to stop whispering every time a branch moved.
"If the prince catches us, we'll be punished," she warned.
"If the prince catches us, I'll ask why his garden is full of suspicious roses."
"That is not a plan."
"It's the beginning of one."
We slipped through the servants' corridor and reached the garden unseen.
The white roses glimmered beneath the moon.
I found the oldest bush near the stone archway. Its roots twisted through the earth beside a weathered stone carved with a crescent moon surrounding a wolf's head.
My necklace grew warm against my skin.
I crouched and began digging.
After several minutes, my shovel struck something hard. Elena helped clear the soil, revealing a small wooden box sealed with black wax bearing the same crescent moon.
My hands trembled as I broke the seal. I wanted to believe the shaking came from the cold, but I knew better. Whatever waited inside had been hidden by my mother, guarded by my father, and buried beneath a house that wanted to consume me.
Inside lay letters tied with a faded ribbon, a silver ring, and a folded parchment.
My hands shook as I opened the top letter.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
It belonged to my father.
Margaret,
If you are reading this, then the prince has found another way to reach us.
I have done what you asked. I helped you escape, and I kept your daughter hidden for as long as I could.
But the bargain was never broken.
I stopped breathing.
Elena leaned closer. I forced myself to continue.
If Rose is taken to the mansion, do not let them perform the ritual.
Lucien is not the only prisoner in that house.
The words should have sent me running. Instead, they hardened something inside me. My father had hidden the truth. My mother had left me a trail. Lucien had tried to command me into silence.
I was done being moved from one secret to another like a piece on somebody else's board.
A branch snapped behind us.
Elena grabbed my arm.
"Rose..."
I turned.
A tall, broad-shouldered figure stood beneath the archway, dressed in black. Golden eyes gleamed in the darkness.
Prince Lucien.
His gaze dropped to the open box, then to the letter in my hands. Every trace of warmth vanished from his face.
"Where did you find that?"
I clutched the letter against my chest.
"Why?"
His eyes flashed.
"Rose, give it to me."
"No."
The word came easily this time.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then Lucien looked at the letter again, and something in his expression shattered.
Not anger. Fear.
His hand tightened at his side as he glanced toward the mansion, measuring the distance to some danger only he could hear.
He stepped toward me.
"Listen carefully. Whatever that letter says, you must not believe it."
"You haven't even read it."
"I know who wrote it."
"My father?"
His silence answered me.
Fear pressed against my ribs, begging me to surrender the letter, to trust the prince because at least his danger was visible. But determination held my ground. I had spent my whole life obeying people who claimed they knew what was best for me.
Not again.
I glanced at the final line.
Lucien is not the only prisoner in that house.
When I looked up, the prince had changed. His fingers had become claws, dark veins spread beneath his skin, and his breathing grew ragged. Somewhere in his chest, the wolf began to growl.
But he wasn't looking at me.
He was staring at the silver ring.
"Where did you get that?" he whispered.
A tiny inscription circled its inner band. I couldn't read it, but Lucien could.
He stumbled backward, claws digging into his palms as though pain were the only thing holding him upright.
"No," he breathed. "It cannot be."
"What is it?"
My voice shook, but I did not step back.
He lifted his golden eyes to mine.
For the first time, the cursed prince looked less like a monster than a man who had seen a ghost.
"That ring belonged to my brother."
I froze.
"You have a brother?"
Lucien's face went deathly pale. When he finally answered, his voice had lost its command.
"My brother died three hundred years ago."
Behind him, somewhere inside the mansion, a bell began to ring.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Lucien flinched at the third chime, then forced himself still.
A soft, unfamiliar voice drifted through the darkness.
"Lucien."
The prince went completely still.
The voice came again.
"Little brother."
His eyes fixed on the sealed west wing, fear hardening into something dangerously close to guilt.
I felt fear rise inside me once more, but this time it did not make me retreat. I tightened my grip on the letter and stepped forward.
Whatever waited behind that door had already taken too much from my family.
I was going to find out what it was.
From behind the sealed door, something began scratching.