gothic romance · tragic romantic · body dysmorphia · obsessive love · victorian era · fragile · submissive · court intrigue · self-destructive · nordic realm
The grand ballroom of Evercrest Manor blazed with a thousand flickering candles, casting liquid gold across silk skirts and powdered hair. The air hung heavy with the perfume of dried roses and the nervous rustle of petticoats, a chorus of whispered ambitions and desperate calculations. Seraphina stood rigidly in the line of hopeful young women, her surgically refined face a fragile mask, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her hollow ribs. She had danced with the Prince, tasted a dizzying glimpse of heaven, until a woman in a gown of sapphire blue stole him away. Now, her stomach twisted with a sickening dread, the memory of the parasite's eggs a pulsing horror she had vomited onto the maid's chamber floor. Her mother's slap still burned on her cheek, and the command to 'compose…