KAEL POV
The tower had no name. That was the cruelest part. A prison needed a name to be real. This place was just a room that went up and up, with windows that showed you everything you'd lost.
Kael stood at the glass now, watching Valorian's city move below. People going to markets. Children playing in streets. Soldiers marching. Life continuing like an entire empire hadn't burned two years ago.
Like her people weren't still grieving.
The room behind her was exactly what a prison looked like when someone wanted to pretend it wasn't one. Soft rugs. A bed with more pillows than anyone needed. Paintings on the walls that probably cost more than villages. Meals came three times a day on silver trays.
She hadn't eaten in four days.
The first year here, she'd refused everything. Food. Water. Sleep. She was waiting to die. The Regent was dead. Her people were enslaved or scattered. What was the point of surviving?
But her body wouldn't cooperate with her mind.
She'd survived that first year through nothing but stubbornness. Through rage that wouldn't let her quit. Through magic that burned too hot to let her body give up, no matter how much she wanted it to.
Now she survived because she didn't know how to stop.
A knock came at the door. Not harsh. Polite even. But it still made her skin crawl.
It was him.
Darius visited sometimes. Not often. Just enough to remind her that the man who destroyed her world wasn't done tormenting her yet. He'd come to her door in his dark clothes and his calm face and look at her like she was something that hurt him to see.
She never understood that. How could she hurt him to look at? He'd won everything.
Today when he entered, something was different.
He looked like he hadn't slept. His jaw was tight. There was something desperate underneath his control, like a cage with something angry inside it.
"I have a proposition," he said. No greeting. No pretense.
Kael stayed at the window. She could see his reflection in the glass. Could feel his presence like a pressure in the room.
"I'm listening," she said flatly.
"There's going to be a peace treaty between Valorian and Meridian. The council voted this morning. It's official." He paused. "Your people will be given back territory. Resources. Protection. They'll be able to rebuild."
She turned around then. Hope and suspicion twisted together in her chest.
"Why would you do that?"
"Because I can't hold an empire with one hand while crushing it with the other. Because my people need trade with your people. Because keeping you locked in this tower while your survivors suffer makes no sense." He stopped. His storm-gray eyes met hers. "And because I need you to agree to something."
There it was. The real reason.
"You want something from me," she said.
"I want you to marry me."
The words just sat there between them like something that had teeth.
Kael's magic flared hot under her skin. She had to push it down before it burned through her hands. Before she did something that would ruin everything she was trying to do.
"No," she said.
"Hear me out."
"No. I won't marry you. I won't make it easier for you. I won't pretend that what you did was anything but genocide."
"I know," Darius said quietly. "I'm not asking you to pretend. I'm asking you to save your people."
The trap was perfect. She could see it clearly. Refuse the marriage and her people stayed broken. Accept it and she became queen of the empire that murdered them. Either way, he won.
"If we marry," he continued, "I'll reinstate Meridian as an equal territory, not a conquered one. Your people come home to rebuilt cities. They get resources to start again. They get protection from the other kingdoms who'd want to finish what I started."
"And what do you get?" she asked.
"A queen. An alliance that holds. And maybe," he said, and his voice dropped lower, "maybe the chance to prove I'm not the monster who burned your empire."
She wanted to laugh at that. She wanted to scream.
Instead she asked the question that mattered. "Will I be imprisoned? After we marry?"
He didn't answer right away. That told her something.
"You'll be queen," he said finally. "You'll have access to the palace. To the kingdom. You won't be a prisoner anymore."
"But I'll still be a prisoner," she said.
"Yes."
At least he didn't lie about it.
Kael walked past him. She needed space. Needed air that didn't feel thick with him. Her hands were shaking and she hated that. Hated that he could make her this way.
"How long do I have to decide?"
"Three days. The treaty is being announced in three days. I need your answer before then."
Three days to choose between watching her people suffer or marrying their destroyer.
Three days to figure out how to survive what came next.
She didn't look at him. "Get out."
"Kael—"
"Get. Out."
She felt him leave more than saw it. The room suddenly got bigger. The air got easier to breathe.
Kael sank onto the window seat and buried her face in her hands.
Her magic was moving again. Waking up from the sleep it had been in since the tower fell. It wanted out. Wanted to burn something. Wanted to hurt him the way he'd hurt her.
She pressed her palms against her eyes until she saw stars.
Marrying Darius meant betraying everything Meridian stood for. Meant sitting next to the man who'd murdered her grandmother while wearing his ring.
But refusing meant her people stayed broken in the rubble of their own homes.
How was this a choice? It wasn't. It was a knife that cut both ways, and she was the one holding it.
That night, Kael didn't sleep.
She paced her tower room like a caged animal. Her magic paced with her, restless and angry and hungry for something to destroy. By morning, her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold a cup of tea.
On the second day, someone else came to her door.
A woman with a maid's uniform and terrified eyes. For a second Kael thought it was a servant bringing breakfast.
Then the woman pulled back her hood.
Kael's breath stopped.
"Helena?"
Her sister was thinner than she'd been two years ago. Her dark hair was hidden under a servant's cap. But it was really her. Helena was really here, in Valorian's palace, dressed like one of their slaves.
"Don't scream," Helena whispered. "Please don't scream."
"What are you doing here?" Kael pulled her inside, locked the door. "How did you—"
"I volunteered," Helena said. Her voice was shaking. "I got myself assigned to this tower. I needed to see you. I needed to tell you something before you make your decision."
"About the marriage?"
Helena nodded. Her hands were twisted together like she was trying to keep them from running away.
"Darius isn't lying. The treaty is real. Our people will actually go home."
Relief flooded through Kael. Then Helena's face made it turn to ice.
"But something happened," her sister continued. "During the invasion. Something I was part of. Something that Darius doesn't even know about. And if you marry him, if you become queen, you're going to find out. And when you do..."
"What?" Kael grabbed her sister's shoulders. "What did you do?"
Helena's eyes filled with tears. "Some truths cost more than they're worth, Kael. And this one is going to tear everything apart."
Before Kael could push for more information, there were footsteps in the hallway.
Helena pulled her hood back up, moving toward the door like a servant dismissing herself.
"Wait," Kael whispered. "I need to know. I need to understand—"
"Just marry him," Helena said. "Find the truth on your own terms. Not from me. Not like this. Please."
She was gone before Kael could stop her.
Kael stood alone in her tower, her magic burning beneath her skin, understanding that nothing about this situation was what she thought it was.
Her sister was here as a spy or a slave or something in between. Darius had secrets he wasn't telling her. The peace treaty had conditions she didn't understand yet.
And in two days, she was going to say yes to marrying him anyway.
Because what choice did she have?
But as she lay in bed that night, her magic moving like something alive under her skin, Kael made a different decision.
She would marry Darius Ravencrest.
And then she would find out exactly what he and her sister were hiding.
And when she found out the truth, someone was going to burn.