POV: Seraphine Vale
The summons comes as dawn breaks over the palace.
A servant arrives with a simple message: the king requests her presence in the palace gardens. Not his study. Not the dining hall. The gardens. The choice of location feels deliberate. Intimate. A place where conversations cannot be overheard by guards or servants.
Seraphine dresses quickly, her heart beating faster than it should. She has not seen Darian since she presented him with Lord Pelham's name. Since he used her first name and showed concern for her safety. Since something shifted between them that cannot be undone.
She is terrified of what he might want to discuss.
Captain Renn escorts her to the gardens in silence. He leaves her at the main entrance, and Seraphine walks alone down the stone path lined with roses. The morning is cool. The flowers are still wet with dew. Everything feels muted and dreamlike.
Darian is waiting for her at the center of the garden.
He wears simple clothes instead of his formal uniform — dark trousers and a shirt without insignia. He looks younger this way. Less like a king and more like a man. But his presence is no less commanding. He simply stands and watches as she approaches, and Seraphine understands that this is still a test. That every moment with him is a test.
"Walk with me," he says.
They begin moving side by side down the stone path. He does not speak. She does not speak. The only sounds are their footsteps and the distant call of birds in the trees above them. Seraphine is hyperaware of how close he is. How he could reach out and touch her if he wanted to. How neither of them seems to know what to say.
They walk for a long time in silence.
She can feel him watching her, though she does not look at him. Can feel the weight of his attention like a physical thing. Can sense that he is trying to decide whether to tell her something or simply enjoy the closeness of her presence.
Finally, she cannot bear the silence anymore.
"Why did you bring me here?" she asks quietly.
"Because no one can hear us," he replies. "And because I needed to know if you would come."
"I would come if you asked," she says. "I am still your captive, Your Majesty."
"You are not my captive," he says, and something in his voice is fierce. "Not anymore. You became something else the moment you risked your life for information instead of hiding behind the safety of the palace walls."
They reach a stone bench overlooking a small pond. He sits, and after a moment, she sits beside him. There is space between them, but it feels full of possibility.
"The locked door," he says suddenly. "You went to it last night."
Seraphine's heart stops.
She considers lying. Considers denying it. Considers inventing an excuse. But she has learned that honesty is the only thing that works with him.
"Yes," she says quietly. "I heard the sound. I needed to understand what it was."
"And did you?"
"Someone is suffering," she says. "Someone who has been suffering for so long they have forgotten how to stop. Someone you care about, which means the suffering is destroying you too."
He does not respond immediately. He stares out at the pond, and Seraphine can see the tension in his jaw. The way his hands grip the edge of the bench. The way her words have reached something inside him that he has spent years trying to protect.
"Did you choose any of this?" she asks.
The question seems to stun him.
He turns to look at her fully, and his dark eyes are suddenly vulnerable in a way they have never been before. A way that shows her the man beneath the king. The boy who was put on a throne before he was old enough to understand what that meant.
He stares at her for a long moment.
Then he says: "No."
Just that one word. But it contains everything. It contains the weight of a crown he never asked for. It contains the burden of choices he was forced to make. It contains the loneliness of a man who learned early that trust is a luxury he cannot afford.
Seraphine nods as if the answer makes perfect sense. As if she understands completely. And somehow, she does understand. She has spent the past weeks reading him. Learning him. Understanding the careful mechanisms he uses to survive.
They do not speak again for the rest of the hour.
They simply walk together down the stone path, and something between them is fundamentally different now. The distance has not closed — there is still space between them that propriety demands. But the wall that existed before has crumbled.
She knows his secret now. Not the specific details of what is locked behind that door, but the truth of it. The truth that he is carrying an impossible burden. That he was never given a choice. That the power everyone fears in him is built on a foundation of things he never consented to.
When they return to the palace entrance, he stops.
"In three weeks, your thirty days will be complete," he says. "You will be free to leave if you wish."
The words are a statement of fact. But underneath them, she hears a question. Do you want to leave? Or do you want to stay?
"And if I do not wish to leave?" she asks carefully.
"Then you will need to decide what you want instead," he replies. "Because I cannot force you to stay, Seraphine. And I cannot let you go without knowing what you are choosing."
He turns and leaves before she can respond.
Seraphine stands in the garden, her heart pounding, understanding that she has just been given a choice that changes everything. That the king has just told her, without saying the words directly, that he cares about what happens to her. That her happiness matters to him.
Which means she has power over him now.
And power over a king is the most dangerous thing in the world.
Because a king will move heaven and earth to protect what he loves. And a king will destroy anyone who threatens it.
As she walks back to her suite, Seraphine realizes that the thirty-day countdown has shifted. It is no longer about whether she survives the palace.
It is about whether she survives falling in love with the man who holds her life in his hands.
And somewhere in the darkness of the locked corridor, she hears that same sound again — the anguished crying of whoever is imprisoned there. And she understands with terrible clarity that Darian's secret and her love are now intertwined.
That to save him, she will have to free what he has locked away.
And to free what he has locked away, she may have to destroy the very foundations of his power.