The heavy oak door thudded shut, a sound far too final for a simple latch. She did not just close it; she had sealed it, trapped herself inside with a fear colder than the stone pressing through her thin nightgown. Her feet, numb and trembling, had carried her away, but her mind still replayed the image of him in the blood-slicked antechamber. Not Christopher, her distant, politically chosen husband. This was a different man—a predator, a monster.
She slid down the unforgiving wood, her breath coming in ragged, silent bursts. Blocking his face from her mind was impossible. It was etched behind her eyelids, a terrifying mosaic of raw desire and something darker, a hunger that had eclipsed the sterile duty of their marriage pact.
The phantom touch of his breath on her throat was a searing brand, not a caress, and with it came the echo of his words: "If I told you what I wanted, would you give it to me, princess?". The memory sent a shiver of terror through her, chased by a wave of confusion. Had a part of her, buried deep in the politeness of her courtly life, felt a treacherous, unwelcome thrill at that dark promise?
The idea was a betrayal of her own sanity, a poison creeping into her thoughts. She was the Queen, wife of a king. Theirs was a marriage of alliances, not of passion. But his weeks-long absence, unexplained since their wedding day, now looked less like a matter of state and more like a predator stalking its prey. He had returned cloaked not only in menace, but in secrets.
As her fingers mindlessly traced the silver lilies embroidered on her nightgown—the symbol of his palace, her cage—his gaze returned to her. It was a look that promised not a crown or a consort, but ownership. He saw her not as a wife, not as a Queen, but as something to be possessed, his to take and his to break. "Before I do something we will both regret," he had warned. It had been a gift, a moment of startling clarity in the suffocating dance of their arrangement. He was dangerous. What had she walked into?
A new, chilling fear gripped her. Christopher finding out the reason she accepted the marriage. Her earlier certainty—that he would simply be angry—was now a naive fantasy. This Christopher, the one with blood on his clothes and a possessive fire in his eyes, would not simply end her plan. He would end her. This was not the type of man to forgive.
Driven by a dangerous mix of fear and curiosity, she pushed herself to her feet. Survival depended on understanding the monster she was trapped with. Where had he been? What had he become? These were no longer just questions; they were the first steps in a desperate new game, one she had to play to win, or die trying.
"I will not fail my parents," she repeated the words like a mantra, convincing herself she could do it.