The Ashcombe crest no longer felt like armor.
As Vivian stood at the eastern balcony of the Hearth, overlooking the snow-dusted flags of the city’s winter parade, she held the weight of her name like a thread pulled taut between two hands—neither severed nor tied.
The whispers had begun again. Not the wild accusations of witchcraft or the hissed criticisms of her unladylike defiance—no, these whispers were different. Curious. Calculated.
They wanted to know what she would do now.
Her engagement to Prince Leonard had been publicly broken, her name scrubbed from court marriage rolls. The prince had withdrawn in humiliation to his family’s mountain retreat, and Arabella now occupied the crown’s attention—gently, persistently, with petals in her hair and a thorn behind each smile.
But Viv
