SERAPHINA
Four weeks.
Four weeks since I stood before the Eastern Court and listened to nobles scream for my execution. Father, in a voice that brooked no argument, declared I would be confined to the palace under house arrest while they "assessed the political damage." I watched Mother's face crumble as the court called me traitor, coward, and worse.
The compromise was brutal but better than death: I'm stripped of my title as Crown Princess—at least publicly. I cannot leave the palace grounds. I cannot attend court functions. I exist in a strange limbo between princess and prisoner, my own parents my jailers.
And for weeks, I told myself the nausea was from shame. The exhaustion from depression. The tender breasts and dizziness just my body's reaction to the severed bond.
But this mo
