THE DISCARDED PRINCESS: MARRIED TO THE RUTHLESS PRINCE

PROLOGUE: THE NIGHT MOTHER DIED I was eight. I remember the rain that night. It was beating against the windows of my mother's chambers like it wanted to enter. My mother was Princess Liana of Mattaban not a queen, because my father the King never made her queen even though she was his first wife. She was gentle. Too gentle. She always told me, "Davina, kindness is strength." That night, kindness killed her. "DAVINA! COME HERE, MY LOVE!" My mother called me. I ran to her room in my small nightgown. Her room was scattered. Her jewelry box open. And she was holding her stomach, blood coming out. "Mama!" I screamed. There was a woman standing by the window , my step-mother, Lady Varra. And beside her, little Elisa, who was six then, holding a small golden dagger. My mother looked at me with tears. "They... they said I stole..." Lady Varra started crying loudly — fake crying — as guards rushed in. "Oh King! King! Come quickly! Liana tried to kill little Elisa! She took a dagger!" My father entered. He did not look at my mother bleeding. He looked at Elisa holding the dagger and crying. "What is this, Liana?" he shouted. "My mother tried to speak. "It is not... I did not..." I ran to her, held her blood with my small hands. "Mama is not lying!" Elisa pointed her small finger at me. "Father! Davina pushed me! She is a wicked child like her mother!" I was eight. I didn't even know how to push properly. But my father believed her. "Take Princess Liana to the healer," my father said coldly. "And take Davina... take Davina to the old cottage in the suburbs. She is no longer a princess of Mattaban until she learns manners." "NO! MAMA!" I screamed as guards pulled me away. That was the last time I saw my mother alive. By morning, they told me she died. They buried her quickly. No ceremony. No honor. And I was put on a horse in the rain, at eight years old, and sent to a small broken cottage in the suburbs, where I would be forgotten. In that cottage, an old woman found me crying for three days without food. She was Master Yara. A retired martial master. She looked at my small fists clenched even while I cried. "You want revenge, little one?" she asked. I nodded. "Then stop crying. Fists that cry cannot fight." That day, Davina the princess died. And Davina the fighter was born. I trained for ten years. I learned Whispering Wind. I learned how to break a neck with a hairpin. And I swore on my mother's unmarked grave: "Mama, they said you were useless. I will make them pay with their blood, one by one."