The journey to the royal palace was a blur. I sat very still and thought about everything I’ve already lost, and what else I can lose in the days ahead.
By the time the capital’s spires lance the sky, I’m scraped hollow. Love, family, future—gone. Duty remains, sharp as a collar around my throat.
The palace is beautiful in the way cages sometimes are. Ironwork gates, white roses climbing marble, sunlight on gold. Inside the harem, jasmine and candle wax lace the air. Silk drapes in generous folds. Laughter ripples from distant rooms.
My skin prickles. No rumor ever said how soft captivity would feel against the palms.
A severe woman with silver hair waits at the center of a mosaic sun.
“Madam Margot,” she says—head servant, spine like a spear. “You’ll address me as such. Dawn rise, lessons, discretion. What pleases the King is excellence and silence. Learn quickly; the harem is not forgiving of stragglers.”
I nod and hear the others and myself say, “Yes, Madam Margot.”
Just like I’ve said ‘Yes, Father’ all my life.
A young maid leads us through corridors to chambers—to each their own, small, private space. A balcony looks over gardens burning green. The bed’s canopy is carved with the night sky and full moon.
I leave as soon as I’m alone, unable to breathe in the space I’m confined in. As I explore the halls and venture into the garden, there’s a figure blocking my path.
Nathan fills my view—coiled muscle and a shadowed scowl, those green eyes with the tiny dark fleck snagging mine like a hook. The space shrinks around him.
My heart stutters once and keeps going because it has to.
“What are you doing here?” I say, just because I have to say something.
He’s my mate, and my wolf reacts in kind, straining to get closer to him. But I stand still.
“A stroll,” it should sound like a joke, but he’s not smiling. “And I’m fairly sure you shouldn’t be here. At least… not in the harem. Not after what happened.”
Rage burns through his voice, bright and unsheathed.
It isn't a pity. It’s a blade raised for me, not at me. The difference cracks something in my chest.
“What do you want?” I ask.
His jaw tightens. “To know why you’re letting them put you in a cage.” He moves closer, heat and cedar and storm. “You don’t belong here.”
“I didn’t get a vote.” A laugh scrapes out, low and ugly. “Alphas and Kings do the choosing. Daughters do the carrying.”
“That’s not what I see when I look at you.”
“Then look harder.”
The pull between us climbs like a wire drawn taut—familiar, terrifying. I taste its current on my tongue. My wolf presses at my skin the way hands press at a locked door.
“Luca told me what happened. At the festival grounds.” His gaze lowers to my mouth, then drags back up. “I needed to know if it was only him…” His fingers flex at his sides. “Or both of us.”
I should lie. Deny everything. Save myself from the fall.
“It’s both,” I breathe. “It’s been both since before I knew your names. Since the dreams started.”
The confession leaves me lightheaded, as if I’ve stepped off a ledge and found no ground. He closes the last inches like a man walking into the flame he’s chosen. His hands rise but don’t touch.
“Tell me the truth, Coralina. When I’m near, does it feel like gravity turns and I’m the only thing you won’t crash from?”
“Yes…” The word is small and fatal.
He cups my face, palms warm and rough, and leans his forehead to mine. My lungs forget their work. Beyond the door, the palace murmurs. In here, there’s only his breath, my pulse, and a silence so charged it sings.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“So are you.”
“Because if I take one more step, I’ll take all the rest.” His thumbs barely brush my cheekbones and somehow it undoes me more than Luca’s hungry mouth or the Ryder’s reverent heat ever did.
My body sways, caught between ache and sense. He drags in air like penance.
“You shouldn’t be offered to a throne as payment for their sins.” His voice roughens. “I can’t stand it.”
“Can you stop it?” I whisper. “Can you turn back a сeremony? Unmake a choice already made for me?”
His silence is answer enough. He presses his brow harder to mine, like he could fuse steadiness through skin.
“I can wait,” he says at last, fierce and low. “And I can ask you to do the same.”
The plea edges his words, but there’s a sharp clicking of the heels on the pavement.
“Lady Coralina,” Madam Margot’s voice carries from not so far away. “Lady Coraline, are you here?”
Nathan swears under his breath, quiet and vicious. He doesn’t move his forehead from mine; it’s the last defiance he allows himself.
“I’ll find you,” he says, softer than a promise and heavier than a vow. “Wait a bit.”
“Go,” I whisper, because I can feel the edges of something irreversible. “Before someone sees.”
He leaves silently, as if he hasn’t been here at all. The bushes don’t even rustle behind him. Madam Margot rounds the corner and looks at me pointedly.
“Attendants are ready for your first preparation. Presentation before the King is at dusk. Come.”
I nod helplessly, because what else can I do. Margot, face pinched, leads me back to my chambers.
After us enters an army of hands—maids with bowls of warmed oil, trays of silvery pins, folded silks that whisper when touched.
“Undress,” she says, brisk and impersonal. “We’ve work if you intend not to embarrass yourself.”
The women step around me with the choreography of long practice. My travel dress unbuttons and vanishes. The first sweep of rose-scented oil glazes my shoulder, and I go distant to survive it.
They comb my hair into an intricate braid, thread it with moonlight ribbon, and dust my collarbones until I shimmer like frost.
Somewhere in the bustle, someone laughs about a noblewoman tripping last month; another murmurs that the King favors control and calm over theatrics; a third swears the mask he wears in ceremony turns him more wolf than man.
I listen and do not listen. Rumor has teeth, but so do I.
A gown the color of spilled milk slides over my skin. It pools light when I move.
When I meet my eyes in the mirror, a stranger looks back—polished, pale, composed. Instead of pale-blue looking back at me, I see a dull gray. My silver-white hair is woven in intricate braids, the kind I never liked.
The gown doesn’t hide my body, doesn’t try to make me smaller. Not shorter, even though I’m plenty tall; and not dainty, because my body knows training and strength.
“Jewelry,” Margot prompts.
I open my case and find the small velvet pouch I tucked in last. The moonstone pendant glows cool and steady in my palm—a reminder of kindness offered at a stall when the world still made some kind of sense.
I wind its chain twice and fasten it around my wrist, hiding the stone beneath the sleeve’s fall of silk.
My secret talisman. My one untraded thing.