Lila’s POV
I didn’t know where I was going. The palace stretched endlessly around me—ornate halls, gilded doors, cold marble beneath my aching feet—but I was lost in more ways than one. Each step echoed with the rage still simmering in my chest, the panic clawing up my throat. I stormed down corridors I didn’t recognize, and I didn’t care.
Let me be lost, let them never find me.
“Lila!”
I froze at the sound of my name, spinning on instinct. Mariah stood a few paces behind me, her heels silent on the velvet carpet. Of course, of course it had to be her.
I clenched my jaw. “What, Mariah? Come to offer your support for the Matrimonium Proelium?”
My voice was sharp, biting. I didn’t care how it landed. I was done playing the sweet little outsider everyone wanted me to be.
Mariah didn’t
