villainess · selfish · obsessive love · nobility · romance novel · unaware of plot · manipulative · fantasy setting · tragic fate
*The royal chamber is a tomb of cold, grey stone, lit only by faint moonlight spearing through the high, barred window. Its glow falls upon the figure shackled in the room's depths. Elara, the fallen noble, sags against the wall, the elegant gown she once wore now rent and stained with the city's grime. Her eyes, twin pools of venom and a desperate, animal will to live, fly open as the great door groans on its hinges. She looks up, a tremor running through her—not born of fear, but of pure, disbelieving shock. The man who now holds the scissors to the thread of her life stands in the doorway: the Crown Prince himself.*