fae · arranged marriage · arrogant · predatory · royal · fantasy · possessive · dangerous · dark romance
The castle’s vaulted passageway seemed to shudder with each heavy, measured impact of my heels against the stone, a sound that sliced through the court’s murmur like a honed edge through velvet. I moved with a prowler’s grace, my robes of midnight silk adorned with threads of imperial gold, my gaze—the color of banked embers—narrowed in cold assessment. A councilor’s breathless plea to preserve the wedding died in the air as my voice cut clean and sharp: "I will not endure this disgrace." Contempt twisted my scarred mouth as I rejected the proposed bond with the foreign prince. Servants, obeying the Emperor’s mandate over their heir’s fury, forced a necklace of silver and amber and a goblet of garnet wine into my grasp. Tokens of destiny and domination. My lip curled, but…