CHAPTER 1
The Announcement
My entire life, I had been preparing for this day.
I always knew that I was never going to be able to choose whom to marry because I was a woman and a princess. I did not have the right to choose. Hell, I did not have any rights at all. My opinions and feelings did not matter to anyone, not even my own family. In fact, my father saw me as a tool to gain more power — to create an alliance with the Kingdom of Raveneth, a very powerful kingdom — by marrying me off to one of their princes.
“For a prince and princess, the kingdom comes first,” Father had said when I was barely fifteen. “Your desire for something comes after.”
I had nodded and said nothing, the way I always did. What was the point of saying anything? The words had already been decided. The future had already been written. I was simply the ink.
My name is Rosalind, Princess of Eldenmere. I am twenty years old. I have brown hair that falls to my waist, eyes the color of storm clouds, and a smile I have learned to keep carefully controlled, because a princess who smiles too freely invites speculation, and speculation is dangerous.
I am told I am beautiful. I have never known what to do with that information.
✦ ✦ ✦
The morning of the announcement, my handmaid Elara woke me before dawn.
I knew something was different the moment I saw her face. Elara had served me since I was twelve, and I had learned to read her the way sailors read the sky — every small shift a harbinger of larger weather. Her expression now was carefully blank, which meant she was hiding something that frightened her.
“Your father requests your presence in the throne room,” she said, not meeting my eyes. “Immediately.”
“It is barely past sunrise,” I said.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
I dressed quickly, in a gown the color of pale blue — not because I chose it, but because it had been laid out for me, which itself told a story. Someone had anticipated this morning. Someone had planned it.
The throne room was full when I arrived. Full, and silent. Courtiers stood along the walls with expressions ranging from carefully neutral to barely concealed curiosity. My mother stood beside the throne, her hands folded, her face a portrait of composed stillness that I recognized as the expression she wore when she was profoundly unhappy and had made peace with the fact that it did not matter.
My father stood at the center of the room. He was a large man, King Aldric of Eldenmere — broad-shouldered, grey-bearded, with the kind of presence that made rooms feel smaller. He had the look of a man who had not slept, and beneath that, the look of a man who had gotten exactly what he wanted.
“Rosalind,” he said when he saw me. “Come.”
I walked to him with my chin level and my heart beating very fast. A princess does not show fear. I had learned that rule before I learned to read.
“You are to be married,” he said.
The room held its breath.
“To whom?” I asked. My voice was steady. I was proud of that.”
He told me.
And the room — and my heart — went very, very quiet.
