THE DOLL PRINCESS

Chapter Two: The Doll Princess

Catherine knew three things about Lucien Zwart.

The first was that he had once loved her more than anyone else in the world.

The second was that he had eventually used her obedience to destroy her.

The third was that, at this moment, he believed her to be exactly the same girl he had left sleeping in this room the night before.

That last fact was the only reason she was still alive.

Lucien studied her with the quiet attention of a person inspecting a familiar painting after someone had moved it to a different wall. His gray eyes traveled over her face, her posture, and the hand she had placed against the edge of the dressing table. Catherine suspected that the original princess would have lowered her gaze by now.

Melanie wanted to lower it too.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to ask where she was, why the servants were calling her a princess, and whether someone had hidden a camera in the room. She wanted to wake up in her apartment with the rain tapping against the window and her unfinished coffee growing cold beside her.

Instead, she stood in front of Lucien Zwart and tried to remember how Catherine moved.

The original Catherine had been quiet. Not shy, precisely. Shyness suggested a person who wished to speak but lacked courage. Catherine had been trained not to speak unless Lucien gave her permission. Her silence had been polished into elegance. Her stillness had become part of her beauty.

Melanie straightened her shoulders and let her hands rest lightly before her.

Lucien’s expression softened.

“There you are,” he said. “I was beginning to think your fever had taken a turn for the worse.”

“Did I have a fever?”

The question escaped before Melanie could stop it.

Lucien’s gaze sharpened. “You do not remember?”

A dangerous pause opened between them.

Melanie searched Catherine’s memories, but there were no memories. There was only a thin collection of information that felt as though someone had placed it behind a locked door in her mind. She knew the palace. She knew the names of the nobles. She knew that Lucien was her brother. She knew that the woman sitting in the western wing was their mother in all but name.

But she did not know Catherine’s childhood.

She did not know what Catherine had eaten yesterday or what she had said before falling asleep.

“I remember feeling tired,” she answered carefully.

“The rest is unclear.”

Lucien took another step toward her. “You fainted after dinner. The physician said it was exhaustion.”

“That is all?”

“Must there be more?”

His voice remained gentle, but the question carried a warning.

Melanie lowered her eyes.

“Of course not.”

The response seemed to satisfy him. He turned toward the shattered tea set and frowned at the maid.

“Leave us.”

The maid bowed so deeply that her forehead nearly touched her knees. “Yes, Your Highness.”

She hurried from the room.

Melanie listened until the door shut. Her pulse climbed higher.

In the novel, Lucien’s tenderness had always been difficult to understand. Readers were meant to see him as a protective brother in the early chapters, someone who shielded Catherine from their cold father and their distant mother. He had taught her to play the piano, and sat outside her room during storms when they're Little.

Then Lucien had learned that the late queen was not his mother by blood.

The discovery had changed him.

He had become terrified that the emperor would disinherit him and that the nobility would treat him as an impostor. Rather than confess the truth, he had built a network of loyalists and gradually taken control of the court. Catherine had been his safest instrument because she loved him without question.

In the original story, every time Lucien asked Catherine to do something cruel, she had done it with the same gentle smile.

The court called her heartless.

Melanie thought she looked more like a hostage who had forgotten the door was locked.

Lucien picked up the silver-rose necklace from the open box.

“You have not put this on.”

Melanie’s throat tightened. “It was a gift from Adrian Vale.”

“From the man who will be waiting at the palace this afternoon.”

She remembered the necklace’s purpose. In the book, Adrian had presented it as a token of admiration, but the crystal contained a tracking charm. Catherine had worn it because Lucien had told her to accept the marquis’s favor. Adrian had interpreted her obedience as affection.

Melanie needed to dispose of it.

Not yet.

If she rejected the necklace immediately, Lucien might suspect that something had changed. If she hid it, a servant loyal to the Queen Mother might find it. She needed time, and time required caution.

She looked at the necklace with an expression that she hoped resembled uncertainty.

“Must I wear it?”

Lucien smiled again.

The smile was almost identical to the one he had worn when he entered the room, but now she saw the effort behind it.

“You need not do anything you dislike,” he said. “I would never force you.”

A chill moved down her spine.

It was a lie so smoothly spoken that it sounded like affection.

Lucien stepped behind her and lifted the necklace toward her throat. Melanie froze. Every instinct told her to move away, but she forced herself to remain still. The clasp closed against the back of her neck.

The crystal settled above her heart.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then a faint warmth spread through her skin.

Melanie swallowed.

The tracking charm was active.

Lucien’s hand lingered near her shoulder. “Adrian will be delighted.”

“I thought you disliked him?”

“Yet you want me to encourage his attention.”

His fingers paused.

Melanie had gone too far. She knew it from the stillness that entered the room.

Catherine, according to the novel, never questioned Lucien’s intentions. She had not even asked why he kept sending her into Adrian’s path. She had simply accepted each instruction as proof of her brother’s wisdom.

Melanie turned and offered him a small, apologetic smile.

“I am sorry. I am still confused from the fever.”

Lucien stared at her for several heartbeats.

Then he touched her hair.

The gesture might have looked affectionate to anyone watching from a distance. To Melanie, it felt like a hand closing around a thread.

“You have always been clever,” he said quietly. “That is why I must protect you from people who would use your cleverness against you.”

Melanie forced a laugh. “I have never been clever.”

“No?”

“No. You have always been the clever one.”

The answer pleased him. His hand left her hair.

“Your tea will be replaced. Dress in the blue gown. The Queen Mother expects you at noon.”

Melanie remembered that gown. Catherine wore it to the private tea where Seraphine first tested her loyalty after Adrian’s arrival at court. During that meeting, the Queen Mother had asked Catherine whether she would sacrifice her reputation for Lucien’s future.

The original Catherine had said yes.

Melanie intended to say nothing at all.

Lucien moved toward the door, then stopped.

“Catherine.”

She looked at him.

His face had changed. For the first time, the polished prince vanished, and she saw the frightened boy beneath him—the boy who had not yet learned that fear could be hidden beneath cruelty.

“You know I would never let anyone hurt you,” he said.

The words struck harder than they should have.

Melanie wanted to tell him that he was the person who would hurt her most. She wanted to ask how he could stand in front of her with such sincerity while carrying the future in which he handed her over to the court.

But she had only just arrived. She did not know which servants were loyal to him, which walls concealed listening charms, or how quickly the story would collapse if she acted recklessly.

So she said, “I know.”

Lucien smiled and left.

The moment the door shut, Catherine’s legs gave way.

She sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed both hands against her face. Her body trembled from exhaustion she had not allowed herself to feel in front of him. She was not Catherine. She was Melanie Cruz, a woman who had died in a small apartment with a half-finished novel beside her.

Yet everyone in this palace believed she was a princess.

Everyone expected her to know how to behave.

Everyone already knew the shape of her death.

Catherine lowered her hands and looked toward the mirror.

The beautiful woman in the reflection looked terrified.

“Think,” she whispered.

The novel’s events had begun at the Winter Conclave, held six weeks before Catherine’s execution. Adrian Vale had returned from the northern provinces and immediately became fascinated by Catherine. Lucien had encouraged the fascination because Adrian’s family controlled several votes on the Council of Houses.

The false treason letter would appear in three weeks.

The council hearing would occur in four.

The execution would take place in six.

She had six weeks to change a story that had taken more than six hundred pages to unfold.

Catherine stood and crossed the writing desk. The desk was covered in cream-colored paper, ink, and a silver pen. She opened the first drawer and found a leather-bound journal.

The cover bore Catherine’s initials.

Melanie hesitated before opening it.

The first pages contained nothing but lists of appointments and short notes written in a neat, elegant hand. Catherine’s handwriting was as controlled as her posture.

Tea with Mother.

Piano lesson.

Lucien requests attendance at the western gallery.

Adrian Vale will arrive before the Winter Conclave.

Further in, the entries became even shorter.

Lucien says it is necessary.

I must not disappoint him.

He knows what is best.

Melanie turned the pages slowly.

There was no evidence of a secret villain plotting against the empire. There was no record of Catherine’s ambition or hatred. Only a growing pattern of obedience, repeated until it resembled a personality.

On the final written page, one sentence filled the entire sheet.

I am afraid that if I say no, my brother will stop loving me.

Melanie closed the journal.

For the first time since waking, she felt something besides fear.

It was anger.

Not at Catherine, Never at Catherine.

At everyone who had seen a frightened girl and called her a doll because it was easier than admitting someone had broken her.

Catherine lifted her chin.

She would not become Lucien’s puppet.

She would not become Adrian’s possession.

And she would not die beneath the black marble steps merely because a fictional author had decided that beautiful women existed to make men tragic.

Outside, palace bells began to ring.

Noon was approaching.

Catherine reached for the blue gown waiting beside the wardrobe. As she dressed, she studied the necklace at her throat and made herself a promise.

She would wear the tracking charm for now.

She would smile at the Queen Mother.

She would behave like the Doll Princess until she understood exactly how the strings were attached.

Then, one by one, she would cut them.