The Northern Fortress loomed against the midnight sky, a jagged silhouette of black spires clawing at the tattered clouds like the petrified talons of some ancient, slumbering beast. Inside, the relentless whisper of falling snow hissed against the thick, leaded-glass windows of Lilian's chambers. She paced, a restless shadow in the faint glow of the hearth, the echoes of the tea party's collapse replaying in her mind like a broken, maddening melody.
She was the villainess. The realization was a raw, festering wound, yet it invigorated her, sharpening her senses. Not just any villainess, either—the one who died screaming, stripped of everything, abandoned and broken. A fate so utterly devoid of dignity, it curdled her blood. Her gaze drifted to the polished steel dagger resting on her desk, its hilt gleaming. Her fingers twitched, not with fear, but with a fierce, possessive longing.
Not this time. The vow solidified in her core, a cold, unyielding iron.
A sharp, single knock resonated through the heavy oak door. Before she could even utter a response, it swung inward with a low groan.
Duke Kael Valtoria stood framed in the doorway, a colossal figure silhouetted against the torchlit hallway. His shadow stretched long and distorted across the fur-strewn floor of her chamber, swallowing the faint light. In his hand, he held a crystal decanter stoppered with dark wax, containing a midnight-blue liquid—her father's signature poison, Frostbane. Its very name conjured images of frozen, desolate landscapes, and for good reason.
"We talk." His voice was a low growl, devoid of pleasantries, yet it carried an undeniable weight that compelled instant obedience.
She followed him without a word, her silk dressing gown whispering against her legs, through the fortress's labyrinthine corridors, each stone steeped in centuries of Valtoria history. They reached his study, a cavernous room that felt less like a place of contemplation and more like a crypt of forgotten power. Its walls were lined with towering bookshelves laden with grim, leather-bound tomes and interspersed with glass cabinets, each locked and filled with an assortment of ancient, unsettling artifacts. Above the roaring hearth, the magnificent, bleached skull of a snow direwolf watched over them, its hollow eye sockets seeming to flicker with malevolent life in the dancing firelight.
Her father moved to a heavy oak table, retrieving two etched silver goblets. Without a word, he uncorked the decanter and poured the luminescent blue liquid, the sickly sweet, metallic scent of Frostbane filling the air.
"Drink." His gaze was unblinking, challenging.
Lilian didn't hesitate. She took the goblet, the silver cold against her palm, and brought it to her lips. The poison burned down her throat like swallowed lightning, a fiery agony that spread through her veins. It felt like her very essence was being scoured clean, her nerves alive with electric needles. But she didn't flinch, didn't gasp, didn't even allow a tremor in her hand. This was a test, and she would pass it.
The duke's mouth, a grim, unyielding line, curved into something that was, for him, a smile—a faint, almost predatory baring of teeth. "Good. You're not weak." His approval, rare and hard-won, felt like a cold balm on the burning in her throat.
He leaned forward, the fire casting his rugged face in jagged, shifting shadows, making him look even more formidable. "Now tell me what you saw."
She did. In a voice stripped bare of emotion, steady and even, Lilian recounted everything. The novel. Her predetermined, humiliating fate. Cedric's inevitable betrayal, Elara's sickening triumph, her family's utter ruin, her own wretched end. She painted the picture of the future as starkly as it had been revealed to her, leaving out no detail of the humiliation and destruction that awaited the Valtorias. She described the cold cell, the starvation, the begging—the nothing that was to be her legacy.
When she finished, the cavernous room was silent save for the furious crackling of logs in the hearth, each snap a punctuation mark to her chilling tale.
Then—
Her father laughed. It wasn't a sound of mirth, but a deep, rumbling, almost terrifying sound that echoed off the stone walls, thick with scorn and defiance.
"Destiny?" He swirled the Frostbane in his glass, the blue liquid catching the firelight. His eyes, fixed on the swirling depths, held a fierce contempt. "Child, we are Valtorias. We carve our own paths. Always have, always will. No 'destiny' or 'novel' dictates our end."
He stood, his massive frame dwarfing the room, and moved to a particular cabinet, unlocking it with a heavy, silver key retrieved from his signet ring. The lock clicked with a metallic resonance that seemed to signify the opening of an ancient vault. Inside, nestled on a bed of dark velvet, lay a single, ominous velvet box.
"Your mother left this for you. For when you were ready." His voice softened, imperceptibly, as he handed it to her. A fleeting ghost of a memory, of her mother's sharp wit and even sharper mind, briefly crossed Lilian's vision.
Lilian lifted the heavy lid.
Nestled in the black silk lining was a pair of gloves—not the delicate lace confections she wore to court, designed for elegant tea parties and veiled insults, but something altogether different. These were tactical armor, seemingly woven from shadow itself, yet gleaming with intricate patterns of silver threads that shimmered like captured starlight. And along their inner lining, she saw them: rows of minute, almost invisible venomous moth scales, so fine they were like dust, yet she knew, instinctively, their terrible purpose.
Touch these to a man's wine, and he'd be dead before dessert. A quiet, elegant demise, leaving no trace.
"The world thinks us monsters," her father said, his voice now a low, dangerous rumble, as if speaking a sacred truth. "Why disappoint them? Why not give them exactly what they fear we are?"
Lilian slid the gloves on. They were a second skin, fitting perfectly, molds of lethal grace. The silver threads seemed to hum with a dormant power against her skin. The moth scales felt like a secret, deadly promise.
"I won't," she affirmed, her own voice colder, sharper, infused with a newfound resolve that mirrored his. She would embrace the monstrous. She would wield it.
A sudden, frantic pounding erupted at the study door. Before her father could react, a servant burst in, disheveled and panting, his face pale with exertion and fear. "Your Grace—the prince's men are at the gates! They demand Lady Lilian return to the capital at once! They say she is needed for questioning!"
The duke's lips, already curled, now stretched into a feral, truly terrifying smile, revealing a flash of white teeth. His eyes gleamed with a dangerous amusement.
"Let them wait in the snow." The words were a dismissal, a challenge, and a promise of suffering all at once. "They will learn what it means to demand from the North."
Lilian, however, walked to the towering window, pulling aside a heavy, fur-lined drape. Below, in the vast, snow-swept courtyard, a dozen royal guards shivered in their gilded armor, their breath fogging in the frigid air like ghostly exhales. Their horses stamped restlessly, plumes of steam rising from their nostrils. The sight filled her not with fear, but with a cold sense of opportunity.
One of the guards, a young man, perhaps new to the capital's elite corps, looked up—and met her gaze. His eyes widened, whether from the sudden appearance or the chilling intensity of her stare, she couldn't tell.
She let the curtain fall with a soft swish, cutting off his sight. The game had truly begun.
"I'll go, she said, turning back to her father, her voice carrying an unexpected steel. But not for them."
Her father arched a single, dark brow, a rare display of curiosity.
"For?"
Lilian flexed her newly gloved fingers, watching the subtle shimmer of the moth scales, the silver threads catching the firelight like tiny, predatory eyes.
"The black market auction is soon."
The duke exhaled slowly through his nose—the closest he came to expressing genuine approval, a silent acknowledgment of her cunning and ambition. He saw her, truly saw her, not as a pawn, but as a weapon.
"Take the panther."